A couple of weeks ago I shared, Life’s A Beach about family vacations and that while they may not always turn out the way we expect they can still leave us with a smile on our face. 

Like many of us, our aunt was also traveling during this time and shared her daily events in an email thread with the family.  Today, we are featuring her first installment of Vacation 2017.  If you have a crazy adventure you’d like to share email us.

The following is an excerpt from our family vacation.  I attended a reunion in Vermont with my husband, Cleve, his family and my 21-year-old son, Brendan, who is on the autism spectrum.

We arrived in Vermont for my hubby’s family reunion and our first stop was at the family cabin to see everyone.  After our initial hellos Brendan and I left to find the house we would be staying in during the reunion. When we pulled out of the driveway, the fuel light came on; it said we had 70 miles before the tank was empty.

We had a map of where the house was roughly located, but no directions or road names because we had no internet connection.  After a few minutes we stumbled upon our rental and unloaded the car. Once inside we realized Brendan’s suitcase was missing.  Assuming we had  accidentally unloaded it at the family cabin we decided to take a look around and look for it later. The Airbnb house was not what I expected; it wasn’t very clean and there were clothes on the bed. I tried calling the owner but there was no answer. I had already texted her saying I didn’t get her directions but didn’t hear back.

Unhappy about our accommodations and waiting to hear from the owner, we decided to drive back to the cabin to get Brendan’s suitcase. It wasn’t there. We had left it at the hotel in Syracuse. As if that wasn’t bad enough I remembered I had packed Brendan’s pink pill bag with all of his medications in the suitcase.  Or was it in the movie bag?  We quickly drove back to the Airbnb but the pink bag wasn’t with the movies. Now we had a dirty Airbnb, none of Brendan’s medications or clothes, and even less gas.

Brendan was upset about his missing suitcase and began dropping lots of F bombs!  We decided the best thing was for him to set up his Blu-ray player and watch some movies while he calmed down.

Meanwhile my husband’s brother-in-law, who is a doctor, stepped in to help us get new meds.  Unfortunately, the nearest 24-hour pharmacy was 2 hours away in New Hampshire.  Cleve and his brother-in-law embarked on their 4-hour journey while I began scrubbing down the house.  I scoured the tub, toilet, sink and then headed to the kitchen.

I washed all of the dishes and scrubbed out a big pot that had been left to soak.  This Airbnb was definitely not getting a good review!

Once that was up to my standards I grabbed my clothes and decided to take a shower when something outside caught my eye.  There was a car in the driveway.  I yelled outside thinking it might be some of our relatives.  There was no answer.  Then I heard a woman hesitantly say, “who is there?”  I was then told that she was the owner and that we were at the WRONG HOUSE!

She explained that I needed to drive up the steep hill and I would find our Airbnb at the top.

Embarrassed, Brendan and I packed up quickly and I apologized profusely, explaining I had not received her emailed instructions. As we loaded the car, I told her I had tidied up a bit, put clean sheets on the bed and that we had figured out the wifi password!  She wasn’t impressed.

Our Subaru Ziva (named after the NCIS character) kicked ass on the steep terrain and we ended up at the top of a hill with a breath-taking view of the full moon. This house was very clean with floor to ceiling glass.  Her house is much cleaner as well. 🙂

We unloaded our belongings again and Brendan went to bed while I waited for Cleve to return with the medication.

About 3 hrs later Cleve made it back from New Hampshire and I went to pick him up at the family cabin.  It was now 12am Monday.

Having driven back and forth several times I was now an expert at finding our remote house in a state I have barely driven in.  The car now said we had 30 miles before the tank was empty.  I was tired and frustrated. This had not been my day.  Then I remembered what Brendan told me when I spilled Lysol at the owner’s house when cleaning. I said it had not been my day and he replied, “No, but tomorrow will be.”

Monday brought a new day, Brendan had his meds and the sun was shining. Of course, we still needed to deal with the fact that Brendan had no clothes and we had very little gas left.  Since wifi was included in our clean and shiny Airbnb I told Cleve to find the nearest gas station. After looking at the map he said all we needed to do was take the road until it dead ended into town.

We took Camp Munn Road several miles, turned and continued for what seemed like forever and we were still not seeing civilization. The gas gauge was now registering 0 miles left in the tank. The area began to look familiar to me and I told Cleve I knew the name of the next road. That’s right, we had gone in a huge circle!  We flagged down a guy who was turning at a stop sign and he gave us directions to the nearest gas station, which was 8 miles away.

Cleve laughed nervously while I sweet talked the car, telling Ziva she could do it.

Someone was definitely smiling on us as we made it to the gas station.  Inside I mixed coffee and hot chocolate to make Brendan’s favorite mocha, then went across the street to Farm All and bought him underwear, socks, jeans, a Carhartt hoodie and 2 T-shirts.  He was going to be happy.

Life is good.

Sunshine & Sarcasm,

Lisa Fry, Guest Blogger