RTW: Road Trip Wednesday!

This week for Road Trip Wednesday, we’re actually talking about road trips! Here’s the question posed by the YA Highway team:

In celebration of the release of Kristin Halbrook’s NOBODY BUT US (hooray!!) we’re asking: Zoe and Will set off on the road to seek a better life and encounter loads of drama on the way. What’s the most dramatic road trip you’ve ever been on?

Probably not the most dramatic in terms of life-and-death scares, but certainly one of the longest trips that featured nail-biting moments was the time we went to Canada.

It was sometime in May, 1993. A friend from church was getting married to his Canadian fiancée in her homeland. My wife had known this friend for years, so she, her sister, and her aunt all wanted to go. We were childless at this time (well, almost–FirstBorn was in the womb), and work schedules permitted, so we rented a car and planned the road trip from North Carolina to Kitchener, Ontario. The wedding was actually about three hours away from Kitchener, but my wife and I had a friend whose family lived there, and he had invited us to stay.

Not only did we decided to make a road trip out of it, but we decided to drive straight up–no stop overs. That’s about a 15 hour trip (approximately 800 miles) according to MapQuest (I just checked). I don’t remember when we left that May morning, but I do recall we got to our friend’s place in the small hours of the following day (maybe one or two o’clock). Thankfully they were up and at least didn’t appear to be too displeased.

My wife, her sister, and her aunt were all able to drive, and willingly split the driving duties between them. I had only recently passed my test (I didn’t learn to drive in the UK–it was not a skill I needed there), so I was given minimal wheel-time. We traversed Virginia, West Virginia (where I had my first experience of driving through a mountain), Pennsylvania, and New York. As you might expect, we stopped to visit Niagara Falls: both sides (i.e., the US and the Canadian sides). A truly awesome sight, from both vantage points.

Since I hadn’t had a turn driving for a while, my fellow drivers said I could take the next shift, which, for some reason, went through Toronto. I don’t know what kind of insanity possessed them to allow the newbie driver behind the wheel, navigating the large highways, fast cars, and giant trucks of the big city… at night! I remember concentrating very hard the whole time, praying that we would make it through alive. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous driving as I was then. Looking at a map now, I’m not sure why we went that way–but my memory of driving the highways of Toronto is… um… fairly vivid!

I could talk more about our short visit to Canada, the day we spent in Ontario, our quick trip to Quebec, etc. But maybe another time. Whenever I think of road trips, though, that Canada trip is the one that comes to mind first. Perhaps wifey will comment and add her perspective on the journey…?

Do you have any dramatic road trip tales? Share them here, or join in the virtual Road Trip! (See the YA Highway blog for details on how to participate.)