Prologue

At some point last week, I was talking to one of the guys at work, and the conversation somehow made its way back to a vacation my family took about 3 years ago. I mentioned that we'd had to leave our car in Big Timber, Montana on account of a little minor transmission issue (okay, we had to have it replaced) that surfaced just as we were trying to drive away from the Captain Stephen T. Clark rest area on I-90 (which was really quite fortunate, since we were able to wait for the tow truck in a place that had public restrooms). And I mentioned that we ended up renting a 4-wheel drive SUV in Bozeman to replace it - a 4-wheel drive SUV that was a good foot higher than our 2-wheel drive Suburban (yes, they do exist). And that when we pulled into a hotel in Vancouver, none of us really connected the funny clunking noise we heard with the yellow clearance warning bar suspended from the entrance drive - until we wedged our Thule carrier against its lower surface. And that for some reason, the hotel manager felt really bad that this had happened - so bad that he upgraded our room.

At about this point, he looked at me a little quizically, and asked, "Do you guys ever go by the name Griswold?" At first, I protested, but then I got to thinking. He could be right. Here's a synopsis of some recent trips:

Two Christmases ago, we drove to Memphis. We took the Southern route along I-40, and promptly spent parts of 3 separate days trying to cross Arkansas after a blizzard. We slept one night in the car during this process.

On an earlier Christmas trip to Memphis, we opted to take the train. Which showed up in Denver about 9 hours late, causing us to have an unexpected overnight stop in Chicago on Christmas Eve. I have to add, we all enjoyed the stopover immensely.

Then there was the trip to Seattle with my mother-in-law who was on blood thinners, requiring that all hotel rooms (we shared with her) have their temperature set at 90 degrees, give or take. I spent several nights sleeping on the tile floor of the bathroom, just to get cold enough to fall asleep.

Or a three-family trip to the Northwest in which we only made the Victoria-Port Angeles ferry by the skin of our teeth, due to the world's slowest gourmet breakfast at a very nice B&B.

And finally, a trip to Northeast Iowa in late May, where we all misjudged the whole concept of "Spring" and brought shorts and t-shirts, only to find it in the grip of a cold drizzle, so that we had to buy reinforcements. I still swear that the Lands' End outlet in Dodgeville Wisconsin was only an inch away on the map, but it required a 4-hour road trip.

With a history like this, I guess our upcoming cruise has a decent chance of being blog-worthy. Today is Tuesday. We leave next Monday evening to drive to Los Angeles. Currently, Denver is under a winter storm warning, and the long-term forecast seems to indicate that the best roads are likely to take us via Cheyenne. I'm not so worried about the trip to LA, because we don't have to be there until the 30th, which should be plenty of time. But the ship returns to LA on January 6th, and I have to be back at work on the morning of the 8th. I've already predicted that we probably won't be returning via Donner Pass, which will undoubtedly guarantee our return route.

So sit back, and enjoy. If I don't post much, you can figure that everything is going smoothly - or that we're stranded in a snowbank south of Las Vegas somewhere. If I do find things to write about, I may even try to put some pictures up.