Long Drive

One of my favorite ways to vacation is to drive there. Toronto, being
eight hours away by car, is just within my acceptable radius to drive
versus flying. Except that, as we found out this past week, driving
with kids adds about 5 percent more time to your schedule.

First, it took us fifteen minutes just to get the car packed; luckily,
we were able to jam our three small bags and our one big stroller into
our tiny trunk. No sooner had we gone 20 miles than we stopped at a
Target to get some baby things we'd need for the trip but that I'd
forgotten to get on my last shopping run. Barely an hour after that,
we stopped for lunch, which became a 45-minute affair, between feeding
them, cleaning them off, entertaining them while we ate, and then
giving them some run-around time outside.

So it was early afternoon by the time we had gone a quarter of the
way, leaving us with six long hours of road time and goodness knows
how many more stops. But with the kids obediently getting in their
afternoon naps, and Amy taking the wheel, we made much better time in
the middle stretch.

Our pace was slightly interrupted in the early evening when Jada threw
up all over herself. Thankfully, it was an isolated incident this
time, but it still involved some pretty time-consuming clean-up. We
hit the border at sunset, and were delayed there a half-hour by
traffic. Once we crossed, we zipped to our final destination about an
hour later.

Including circling around downtown Toronto looking for the hotel, we
were twelve hours between leaving home and checking into our room.
Amy and I enjoyed having time to talk, and the kids were reasonably
well-behaved, but it was still a long, long drive. But at least we
avoided the airports.