Dear Diary,
You really should have told me to trust my gut feelings about this weekend because I, in fact, did not have a good time. Not a single part of it was fun or relaxing, and I have ZERO desire to ever want to try a vacation with this group ever again. I cannot blame any one person for SOME of the happenings of this weekend, as they were out of anyone's control, but other happenings FOR SURE can be (and will be) blamed on the responsible individual.
The trip started off with a departure time of 2:30pm. Went off with a hitch. So far, so good. Our route consisted of taking the scenic detour through Benezette before cutting over to Galeton, which is where our rental cabin was. This particular part of PA is known for it's abundant Elk population, and is a major tourist spot for just that. My mother, my grandmother, and myself in one vehicle, the other woman in her vehicle leading the way since she is overly familiar with the area we are in. Moving along through the numerous mountain roads, the lead vehicle is slowing down here and there for whitetail and elk sightings. For whatever reason this one particular time though, the lead vehicle decides to jam her breaks pretty hard, in turn causing our vehicle to need to jam their brakes too. Well, that one decision was the turning point for our whole trip. Brakes get jammed, suddenly the van no longer wants to change gears and accelerate. Cool! Here we are, up in the mountains on a not-so-main highway, with a broken down vehicle, 4 hours from home. Granted, we still had a working vehicle (the lead vehicle) however, we have a whole weekend getaway worth of luggage for 4 women, the 4 women themselves, a stack of firewood for the weekend, a big cooler holding food for the weekend, and the lead vehicle is just a Dodge SUV. Luckily, my grandmother is an AAA member. A broken down van is just a bump in the road to our glorious weekend. Or so we thought...
6:00 pm. - So here we are, 1 vehicle broken down, on some highway road in the mountains, 4 hours away from home and still another 1.5 hours from the cabin, with way too much in baggage to cram all of it and us into the other vehicle. "Well, just call AAA and get a tow!" you say. Remember where we are, though? Mountain roads. I check my phone, no service. Mom checks her phone, no service. My grandmother checks her phone, no service. D checks her phone, wait! She happens to have just a tiny bit of service. Whew. So we call AAA, they need to know where we are. No clue! On some highway in the mountains, 16 or so miles SW outside Benezette, under some power lines. That's all we could tell her. After a little bit back and forth, she assures us she knows just about where we are and will get a tow truck to us shortly. She asks "where would you like the van towed to?" Miss ma'am, we are 4 hours away from home, we are not from this area (as you very well knew already) so we have no clue where the closest garage is, nor can we look it up because of the teensy tiny issue of having BARELY ANY CELL SERVICE. "Well, unfortunately I cannot get a tow truck dispatched to you until we have an address of where you would like to take it" she says. Listen here you **********... Anyway, got that figured out, fast forward, the phone call comes in from the tow truck guy. "Hey, could you tell me alittle more info on where you are? I cannot seem to find you." After breadcrumbing some info to him, TURNS OUT the AAA woman, in fact, did not know where we were, as the tow truck driver informed us that he was over 2 hours away from us in 2 counties over and he could not help us. Great.
7:30 pm - Cue the second call to AAA, to another representative. We explain what happened with the first attempt at a tow rescue. Go through the same thing with this rep. We cannot really tell you where we are, this is the info we know, and to disregard the tow company info the first rep had submitted because he is over 2 hours away and cannot help. Back and forth, back and forth. before we could establish another tow truck, we lost service and the call drops. Sigh. Do the phone-in-the-air thing to find service, call them back. "We will contact a tow service and have them reach out to you shortly." Okay, great. time passes, phone dings with a text from AAA. "Unfortunately, we cannot secure a tow truck within the service area." THAT'S IT? WHAT NOW?! Call back, this time with alittle less patience and alot more attitude. Same song and dance with the representative. Tensions are high at this point. Get a tow truck company secured, they give us a call...
8:30pm - On the phone with the tow company. Exchange information, sort out the details. "Our ETA is 10:30pm." No. Fucking. Way. we are waiting in the dark, in the mountains, for another 2 hours for this tow truck. Sonofabitch. Okay, so what's the next option? Leave the van until morning, come back to meet the tow truck driver to give him the keys. That's what we are just going to have to do. But what to do with all this luggage now? Take the important stuff, leave the unimportant stuff in the van to get tomorrow. Okay, cool. Did I forget to mention it has been raining this whole time?
9:30pm - SUV is crammed with the important stuff, we are back on the road. 1.5 hours yet to the cabin. Bladders full, spirits crushed, energy levels depleted. Google says to take this road. "That is a dirt road, I don't do dirt roads" Reroutes the gps, another 20 minutes tacked on. *eye roll* Whatever. Dark, raining, winding mountain roads. Another dirt road we are to turn on. "nope! I don't do dirt roads." Another 20 minute reroute.
11:30pm - We FINALLY reach the cabin. Get some quick food, go to bed. No excitement to be had knowing that we have to get up to drive 1.5 hours back to the van to meet the tow truck driver so that will take up most of the day before we get back to the cabin to *actually* start our vacation. All of this happened just to end up seeing only TWO elk....
NEXT DAY. This part won't be drawn out as long. Get up, make the drive to meet the tow truck guy. Done. It is 2pm at this point, still have not gotten to actually start our vacation. Stop for lunch. Go back to the cabin. Did I mention it is still raining? I'm 100% done and ready to just come home. Grandmother is no longer enjoying herself because she is stressing about her van breaking down. D has a headache. My mom is being my mom. You know what? I'm going to take a nap. So that's what I did. Get up, we make dinner. D and grandmother go to bed. Rain slows to a sprinkle, slow enough that I can make a camp fire. Not much else going on and I took a nap so I'm not tired yet. My mother and I sit outside and stare at the fire and listen to 90's country music until 1am. The only not sucky part of the whole trip. Day over, go to bed.
LAST DAY, 7:30 am. Get up, morning coffee. Breakfast. Pack the car. Get on the road. "I don't do dirt roads" ended up adding about 45 minutes onto the total trip home from all of the reroutes. Coffee and miscellaneous pit stops added on another 1.5 hours to the trip home.
4:30 pm - Finally. Home.
Wasn't a big part of the trip, but worth mentioning to reference my previous post about this trip. D did try and sprinkle political yuckies into the trip here and there in conversations but none of it was entertained. Doesn't make it any less annoying though. Two particular yuckies that were mentioned:
1. Apparently, if Kuh-mah-luh would have won, her administration would have destroyed the beauty of state parks and that would have been terrible because "beautiful places like this need to be protected!" (hmmm, VERY interesting.)
2. "Rent is so high anymore because of all of the foreigners that have been let into our country!"