Acadia or Bust
- bramblymountainfarm
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Every time we take a road trip I commandeer my puppy blog to share the trip story, for interested family and friends and for my kids to enjoy later as memories. I apologize if you came here purely for puppies and farm life!
Our second of our 7 children, Hannah, graduated this spring. With our first, Abbey, we started a tradition of taking a family road trip to celebrate the milestone and we drove all the way to Seldovia, Alaska from NC and back. It was an epic trip that took us almost 2 months and 300 hours of driving. That trip was documented on our blog and if you’re interested, go ahead and read up on our adventures across the country and back to our old hometown (we lived in Seldovia for 8 years and our first 4 children were born there). As much as we would have loved to return to our roots again (my kids really connected with our Alaskan “family”) we had to keep our trip to a much tighter schedule this summer and choose a different spot.
Hannah was given the choice of the Upper Peninsula and Great Lakes area, the Outer Banks of NC or a New England trip - a few areas of the country we have yet to explore. (We traveled the Southwest a few years ago). She chose New England and I decided we’d take the opportunity to return to some of our older roots and visit Acadia National park as well. My parents are from New England, Dad from MA and Mom from Maine. Not only that, but our even OLDER roots date back to the Mayflower. Confirmed family tree all the way back Mary Allerton through my mom and a very possible line through my dad back to Francis Cooke and Steven Hopkins, but I couldn’t verify that before we left. We also planned a stop in Shenandoah National Park because it was on the way up and it would add another notch in our belt of parks visited :).
I tell you what, every time I plan a big trip, it’s like all the powers of evil converge against us. With our oldest 3 being 17, 19, and 21 it’s already a miracle to find a timeframe that works in a window of college, high school, sports and work for all of us. And on top of that, my 17 year old had paid his way onto a family cruise to celebrate a close friend’s graduation, eating more of our summer time. 2 weeks at the end of June was about all I could scrape up. The day I went to start making campground reservations, Tim calls me from his father/son camping trip to let me know that Malachi had broken his ankle. Trip cancelled.
To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. I had planned this trip for months, down to the stops and hours on the road from here to there, etc. And just giving up a trip where we could all be together is a bit devastating - every trip feels like it could be the last.
We played the waiting game all summer as Malachi went through several checkups and began physical therapy… there was a small window at the end of July that we could squeeze in an even shorter trip. And at last the PT gave the ok! We almost cancelled it again when I began to realize that every campground wanted to charge us $10 extra per kid, per night if you weren’t a family of 4 OR force us to pay for 2 sites. It was really beginning to add up way more than I anticipated…. But after a LOT of digging I found a few campgrounds that only charged me for the extra adults in the group - Abbey and Hannah. And we were booked!
After that the next hump was convincing (requiring, demanding, ordering) the 17 year old that he would absolutely be accompanying us (he was upset that he would be missing a week and a half of work), and the massive amount of preparation it took to cram 9 people in a tiny camper for 10 weeks.
The stress of prepping for these trips really gets me to question the value of them, I will admit. It really takes me a good week of list making, packing, shopping and meticulously thinking through each meal and event to ensure that we have the proper gear, correct cooking elements, and enough food. And so a whole week is essentially dedicated to that. A WEEK of time that maybe I could have spent doing other things. Was it worth it?? Admittedly over the course of the prep and trip there will be moments I will feel like it was all a waste of time, money and effort, an unnecessary and frivolous use of resources and brain power and an inappropriate focus on things that really don’t matter that much.
And yet I press on. For whatever reason, the desire to see a new place, visit an old and forgotten one, and do it with family still urges me on to plan the trips and stress and hassle and worry and regret over and over and over.
And so the day finally came. We loaded up and heading out early on a Sunday morning and were on our way up through TN towards our first stop, Shenandoah.
And an hour and a half in, we found ourselves on the side of the highway with our hood open and smoke puffing out of a radiator hose. We weren’t going no further. I immediately felt a sense of doom. “We just cancelled our trip, didn’t we?” I said to Tim. My mind jumped right back to our move across the US 14 years ago almost to the day when we found ourselves in the exact same situation hauling our trailer through the wilds of British Columbia. And that led to a week spent in BC until someone miraculously donated an engine and their skill to get us and our 4 kids back on the road.
Thankfully just a short distance away we weren’t in that dire of a situation, but it did have us connecting with friends through their Sunday worship services as to whether or not we were going to need a ride home. Sunday is not a good day to break down as nothing is open either, making things a bit more challenging, and at all cost, we wanted to avoid the very expensive tow bill that hauling a 15 passenger van, camper and the rental it would take to get all 9 of us somewhere. From past experience, we knew that would absolutely be the end of our trip.
After trying a few options, the first one that worked was calling a state trooper for some help. Who couldn’t do a whole lot for us as he couldn’t give Tim a ride to the parts store (which we had waited an hour to open) and he also couldn’t pick it up for us bc the store would not allow us to pay for it over the phone. Harumpf. However the trooper at least had a number for a Mobile Mechanic who finally was able to drive Tim into the store and help us navigate fixing the van on the side of the very busy highway. He kindly let Tim and Micah handle the work, waiting to make sure it would start before leaving us. Wouldn’t even let us pay him.
Attempt #1 got us off the exit but no further. Something STILL wasn’t right. Another trip to the store to try something else. Meanwhile the rest of us trek across the road to a Dollar General for bathrooms and a few sodas to lighten the mood. It’s a bit rough to be stuck in a hot van for several hours - I don’t care if you’re hot and bored, but ain’t no one playing with a soccer ball while semis fly by not 10 feet away! While Tim and Micah hung over the engine doing this and that, another interested older man stopped to help and the rest of us set up a picnic and had lunch. At least off the exit now we had a place to stretch out and the kids found wineberries and ticks to keep themselves busy. Thankfully, the Lord blessed our spot with shade on a hot Tennessee day. The cold sodas and sandwiches followed by some ice cream bars Abbey treated everyone to.
Attempt #2 unfortunately had things looking pretty dire. We started thinking about who we could ask for a ride home and just leave it all so that Tim could come up the next day and deal with the van and camper, ending the trip for good. The older gentleman kindly offered to let us camp on his land close by until we could get it sorted. But the thought of spending a day ore more in a hot field with a camper and no water or electric or any way to get away did not sound like fun. I was definitely struggling with feelings of defeat and “why me?” For sure, I had the most time and effort invested along with some hopes and dreams. All was being dashed. Again. It hardly seemed fair. I remembered before our epic Alaska trip we had battled Lyme, a broken finger, and a serious infection in the days before we left (it wasn’t all Malachi that time - but he had at least one of those issues). It all came together in the end but why does it just feel like you can’t catch a break some times?? I’m sure you can all relate in some way. Again it had me berating myself for spending all our precious time and money on frivolous pursuits. Of course we deserved to have the wind knocked out of our sails. Fools. Go home, cancel the reservations, put the money back in the bank and be thankful it was only a few hours from home instead in the middle of the east coast. I had been l praying. Ever since we had stopped I had asked Him to either work it out or send us home. It was disappointing and as I talked with my kids about the disappointment, I don’t like to talk about “signs” that God may be telling us to turn around or that He may be punishing us for something. A broken world means the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and the most we can hope for when the rain starts falling is that God will use it as an opportunity to show up and glorify Himself.
And He did - He showed up in the mechanic that helped but wouldn’t take the money. He showed up in the guy that stopped to offer some pointers and a place to stay. And He showed up in the last ditch effort Tim made to try one last thing… and it worked!
It worked and we were back on the road. 7 hours later, yes, but heading north. The decision was to give the van the chance to make it to Shenandoah and if all seemed well, press on with the trip as planned. We missed out on Shenandoah entirely - pulling in with just enough time to set up the camper, cook some burgers, and get a decent night's sleep. But we were on our way.
