On The Way To Philly...

(You may want to grab a cup of coffee, tea, or another favorite beverage and sit down to hear my story. Be sure to click on the pictures to get the full effect too.)

On The Way To Philly....

We had some stress and some good hearty laughs on the way to Philadelphia. I have to share this little story. I hope you can appreciate it as much as we did but I will understand if when I get done you say, "hmm, guess you just had to be there".

The day we went to Philadelphia, Michael's Dad needed to stay home to do some work. He was so nice to let us take his car though. Well, that was cool because it is an awesome burgundy Ford Explorer ( my current dream car-future dream car will be a Mustang-not much of a family car though) that is great to ride in and it sure looks great to drive. Well, his Dad also has this really nifty gadget that is a GPS that is like having a tour guide talk to you all the way to where you are going. You tell it where you are going and it tells you how to get there. Pretty cool huh? Yes, it is and my husband keeps saying I need one. He wants someone to tell me where to go all the time? Should I be insulted? I choose not to be. ;-)

Anyway, my brave husband and I left New Jersey on our way to Philadelphia without a map so we were a bit nervous-turns out he was a LOT stressed, I mean nervous. I was wondering can we really trust this smooth talking lady?

We realized rather quickly that there is a time of getting used to the lovely smooth voice of the "Lady GPS" and getting accustomed to her lingo and style. She is really nice and all and she never gets mad at you when you make a wrong turn or calls you an idiot if you get "off route" as she so lovingly puts it. It took me a while to realize there was actually a little map in the box in addition to her voice. I thought we were just having to count on listening. This would have worked out just fine if there were only 2 of us in the car. However, when there are 4 people in the car and 3 of them are girls, well, you have a problem. Add to that the fact that 2 of them are OUR girls (anybody ever notice my husband and I like to talk?) they get it honestly. Right about the time that "Lady GPS" would say turn right in 500 ft. one of my daughters would have something comical or nifty to say. Of course, they didn't understand why Dad's face turned beet red and he told them to be quiet! Even though she may have said turn right in 500 ft. we didn't hear that part so we just knew we were supposed to turn at some point in some direction...soon! Ugh! After a few times of that we moved on to the next problem-traffic circles.

As the name implies you would assume that a traffic circle is, well, a circle right? Silly reader! Did I mention we were in New Jersey and not a sane state like Indiana or Oklahoma? Sorry, New Jersey readers but you have some crazy things going on there and I haven't even mentioned Jug Handles yet....look it up.

(Maybe the 'Jug Handles' are where you get to enjoy going in circles.)

I also won't even go into this sign that I took a picture of. Huh ?????

That sign was SO confusing. If I had to sit there for the 5 minutes it would take me to figure this one out I am sure I would have been rear ended. Good thing my courageous husband was doing the driving right?

OK, so smooth talking Lady GPS says we are now entering a traffic circle but we are looking all over for anything that resembles even a HALF circle. At some point we realize OH, we must be IN a traffic circle. Let's put it this way, either the first or second traffic circle we must have made a wrong turn....easy to do when you think you are in a "circle" but you aren't and there are several exits in the so called "circle" and you are supposed to get out on the 2nd one. Go figure!

Although my wonderful husband is turning red, his knuckles turn white as he is tightening his grip on the wheel, and growing ever more impatient with his amazingly wonderful daughters I try to keep him calm. We realize that "Lady GPS" has this wonderful feature when she follows up her negative comment of "Off Route" with "Recalculate?" Well, yes we certainly do want to recalculate....how considerate of her! Don't you just love this gal? So after a big sigh my wonderful husband has her recalculate...after all we do NOT want to go back to that crazy & confusing traffic circle. In addition to that, thanks to the above mentioned "jug handles" we kept trying to turn around but every turn said "no left turns-ever". Yes I added the 'ever' part but they might as well have said that too. The saying, "going around your fist to get to your thumb" must have been invented when the first person laid eyes on the very first "jug handle".
The only problem with this recalculating is that we are not really sure if we are adding years to our trip or if it will be a short distance. We just have to trust Lady GPS. Hmm, ever heard about how guys stop for directions all the time trusting other people to tell him the correct way to go to the destination? Me either. Let's just say for some time my husband has many concerns about this. After a short period of time we start to notice the scenery around us changing. It is becoming more and more obvious that we are going farther and farther away from the cities and getting farther and farther into the country. It isn't long before we are on two lane roads.

About the time that I catch the "nervousness & concern" that my husband has been afflicted with we see a sign. Now it would have been better to see a sign from the Lord saying something like, "all is well, be at peace my child, your journey will end well & there are really cute houses on this road for you to look at"

(I would have even been happy with the sign we saw later that day-below)

Instead we get a sign that gives us both a bit of a jolt, "bridge out-detour". Uh oh! Did Lady GPS know the bridge was out? Was she leading us this way so she could laugh at us when she realized we were totally lost and left with a bridge that was out? It isn't like we could pull out our handy-dandy map to compare notes to....it was all on Lady GPS.

I have to tell you that up to this point I had been telling my brave husband that even if we were "off route" we were getting to see some really cool things. In NJ it seems to me that there are no "bad areas of town" or "bad neighborhoods". Sometimes the houses may be small but they are always cute, well kept, and the lawns look great too. You don't ever see cars on blocks, grass that is really needing to be mowed, or junky yards. I can't tell you how many times I saw Classic American or "Leave it to Beaver" type homes or neighborhoods. The towns were just lovely too. Michael said they were all "Martha Stewart" homes or areas. As a matter of fact I kept taking pictures of these cute houses. I have sprinkled them into this post. The pictures never come out as good but you can get a good idea. I enjoyed going through the "back way" and the less direct way. I am pretty sure this was the day we saw an Amish horse & buggy too. My eldest daughter, although she is a dear has a habit that is annoying on occasion. Most of you that know her already know this. She takes with her everywhere she goes, a clipboard, paper, research notebook, box of writing utensils, and an electronic thesaurus. Most of the time I don't mind. However, when we are driving through such a pretty state with new and unusual sights to see I would prefer she be looking outside of the car rather than inside. She misses a lot of interesting things. I realized at some point during the journey that she was most likely working on her writing. I spoke up and said, "Catrina, you should stop writing and look outside. If you don't you might miss seeing something cool ( at this point, out of nowhere, I actually SEE this huge wild turkey and am able to finish my sentence with) .....like...like....THAT TURKEY RIGHT THERE!" Since this was not planned at all we got a good laugh out of it. I don't think my lovely daughter learned her lesson though and she DIDN'T see the turkey. :-(

(Below: We didn't get a picture of the turkey since it happened so fast but we did get a picture of these geese.)

As we continue our journey past the traffic circles, past the bridge out-detour signs, we look down the road and see this....

When we first saw it we wondered how we were going to get past it since it was covering 3/4ths of a 2 lane road. At the last minute he must have moved over a bit. However, we did a little four-wheeling two. As we passed this vehicle I said something like....oh my gosh! What's next! We had the traffic circles, then the detour or "recalculation" as Lady GPS said, then the bridge out-detour, then the mowing vehicle, so what else would there be? Moments after we announced "what else could happen" we see the sign that makes us all laugh hysterically....

What? Are you serious? Now we have to dodge blind people? Oh my gosh! What's next????

As if that weren't enough we laughed even more when we saw the next sign that said, 'Construction Entrance.' Fortunately, the last two signs didn't affect us at all and we didn't see any construction entrances or blind people. We did wonder however, if a blind person was walking with a sighted person would you be allowed to not be cautious of the sighted person? It does warn you after all of only the blind person. ;-)

But our story does have a happy ending. We did make it to Philadelphia and we aren't sure that it took us a whole lot longer than the original route that we took going back. We got to see 2 different ways to make the same journey.

True to her word, smooth talking, Lady GPS (see her above) drove us right up to Independence Hall. Thank you Lady GPS--you are faithful and true.

The one coming back was less stressful, that is for sure. As one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost goes......

Two roads diverged in a wood,

and I -I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

It made a hilarious difference to us one day .........on the way to Philly.

(After such a long story-yes it took me a long time to write it all down, I would sure appreciate a comment.)