What a long strange trip it's been

Mission accomplished. The trip has come to a close tonight and we achieved our objectives:

1. Drop Em off at a three week Outward Bound expedition.
2. Get ourselves, our car, our dogs and a trailer full of home furnishings from Daniel Island to Bar Harbor.
3. Spend time with family and friends.
4. Have a little family fun along the way, or at least as much fun as a 15 year old will allow.
5. Somehow avoid having to spend 10 days in an overcrowded minivan with two very spoiled dogs who prefer not to stay in pet friendly hotels.


Trip factoids:
* 10 long days
* 1,988 miles driven
* 112 gallons of gas
* more tolls and continental breakfasts than I care to count
* a round trip plane flight in a single day (see objective #5)
* 7 hotel nights
* 2 ferry rides
* 1 tow truck and a broken hitch
* 5 hours in a U Haul repair shop
* we ended the trip with one less kid and two more dogs than we started with.

As with any momentous journey, I would like to be able to say we learned a lot. It's not a lot, but here goes:

- we are horrible packers and movers. Do not ask us to move your precious and valuable antiques.
- when the instructions on loading a trailer state "load most of the weight toward the front", they mean 60%, not 85%.
- when they tell you to show up an hour early for a ferry, it's a complete scam. 10 minutes is fine.
- a little adversity on a trip makes it memorable. Not that I would have planned it this way, but losing a trailer hitch with a fully loaded trailer attached just as you get on a busy bridge/tunnel with no injuries will be remembered a lot longer than the nice meal we had or the umpteenth roller coaster ride. Some of my longest lasting vacation memories as a child revolve around breaking down (we broke down a lot).
- Atlantic City is NOT Las Vegas with a beach.
- treasure the brief fleeting moments where your teenager is happy and enjoying being with you. They are extremely brief and fleeting, I wish there were a lot more of them but I will take whatever I can get at this point.
- friends and family are SO important, and that's not a cliche.
- life is good.

A hectic start to a great summer vacation. Time to settle down on the porch with a cold drink.

Location:Up and down and up the East coast