It's Only One Day

Have you ever done one thing for 24 straight hours before? All day. All night. Performing the same activity. An entire rotation of the planet spent on one identical task. Perhaps it was a lazy day, spent binge-watching an entire TV series. 24 hours of Jack Bauer, or Walter White. That would be fun. Rewarding. Or maybe it was one crazy weekend on a long bender in New Orleans. 24 hours of Jack Daniels. Jose Cuervo. That would be exhausting. Similarly rewarding. One whole day. 1440 minutes. Now imagine that same stretch of time, only this time you're crammed in a minivan with 3 small children and a dog. Driving. Across the country. All day. All night. All 86,400 seconds. Surely this is a recipe for disaster, right? Certainly this could go down as the worst idea ever. There has to be like a million other things that you'd rather do for 24 straight hours, right? Well, against our better judgment, and defying logic, that's just what we did. A 24 hour road trip. And guess what? It wasn't terrible. In fact, it was pretty great.


Wait...What? How? More importantly...Why? Why would you? Why would anyone?
It was last spring, when Jenny first got the idea. “Wouldn't it be fun to drive out to Arizona someday and surprise our friends there? Just show up, unannounced, and be like Hey, what's up?” It wasn't a completely crazy idea. They had a guest house and we had a standing invitation to come. I liked the idea immediately. Right away, I clung to it, as if it were an inarguable fact.

“It's all set then. We are surprising the Murphy family in Arizona this coming winter," I declared.

And so it went. Our next adventure was planned.

A 25 year friendship

Now, our friends live near Phoenix, but are from St. Louis, and have made this drive many times over the years. They swear by their straight through approach. Non-stop. No hotels. No overnights. Just power through. Keep in mind, they also have 3 small kids and a dog, so their previous experiences were relevant when planning our own. I mean, the difference between traveling with kids vs. without kids, is nearly the same difference as driving vs. flying. They're not even in the same ballpark.


So, two days after Christmas, we were off. The five of us, plus our dog Smokey, piled into the Odyssey and drove 1500 miles, straight through, to the Valley of the Sun. We had a plan. And somehow, it actually worked. It was simple.


Step 1: Make the Journey Strictly About the Destination. This was the single biggest key to the success of our drive. Now, this sort of crazy thinking went completely against our previous travel mantras. In the past, it was always, “The journey is just as important as the destination!” Usually, we would stop to enjoy the scenery. We'd soak up the sights. Really take it all in. Not this time. None of that was allowed. This time, all that mattered was getting there. The only important thing was the destination. It helped that the drive to Arizona is a pretty dreadful one. Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and Eastern New Mexico are nothing spectacular. By the time you get to the mountains of New Mexico, you can practically see Arizona. But, what helped us even more, was thinking about the surprise we were about to unleash on our friends. Jenny's lifelong best friend, Amanda, and her three kids had absolutely no idea the Woodman's were on the way. We had, for 6 months, planned a vacation to visit them, without her knowing. We did let John (the husband) in on our sneak attack, just to be sure they would actually be home when we got there. Cause that would've sucked. The anticipation of the eventual surprise was palpable, and it kept us going. It drove us on. Literally.

Destination: warmth

Step 2: Leave Early. This was another suggestion from a different road-wise friend of ours. And when I say early, I don't mean “on the road by 8:00 or 9:00”. I mean early. Predawn early. Pitch black early. We completely packed the van the night before, and set our alarms for 4:30. With the kids still in their pajamas, we quickly threw them in the car, and hit the road by 5:00, under the cover of darkness. The kids went back to sleep, and we got a quick 3 or 4 hours out of the way before the day even began. That early momentum helped carry us through. We would drive all day, and into the night. By the time the kids were ready for bed once again, we had made it to New Mexico. And when you're only one state away from your destination, it feels close. No matter how big the state is. You're right there. You can see the finish line. There's no way we would've been that far, or felt that accomplished without waking up before the rooster crows. 
 

“We can do this. It's only one day.” we declared.

Step 3: Minimize The Stops. This goes hand-in-hand with Step 1. The journey is just an ends to a mean. You cover a lot of pavement by minimizing the amount of time you're not driving. It's quite simple. More time on the road = more miles driven. There's no way we were gonna cover 1500 miles if we were stopping every hour or two. “I gotta pee!”... “I'm hungry!” … “Now, I gotta pee! … Now I'm hungry!” That would've been brutal. So, the plan was easy. Every time we stopped, everyone did everything. Everyone. At every stop. Gas. Whether we needed it or not. Potty. Whether they needed it or not. Boom. Back in the car. Always keeping it moving. Every stop. On top of that, we took all of our meals to-go. Eating in the car not only saved time, but also gave the kids another activity to keep them busy for a half hour or so. Something we had never tried before. It worked great. Other than an occasional potty break at some rest areas, that was all the stopping we did. We wasted little time. We were always back in the car. Onward.

Step 4: Get Lucky. This final step was not in the plan. It just happened. We got lucky. How can you plan for that? For whatever the reason, luck was on our side this trip. The kids were amazing. I mean surprisingly so. Real troopers. Somehow, a 24 hour car trip was easier than an 8 hour one. Heck, we've had drives around town that didn't go as smoothly as this one. Little, if any fighting. Little, if any complaining. Perhaps they could sense the magnitude of this drive. Maybe they were just excited to see their friends. It could've been that they are just getting older, and they are better equipped to handle a trip such as this one. Whatever the reason, it went off virtually without a hitch. There were certainly reasons to think there would be problems. The threat of car sickness was never far from our minds. Our previous travels had taught us that. Typically it's the youngest one who suffers. This time it was the 8 year old who actually threw-up less than a few hours in to the drive. (Hooray for on-board barf bags, though) After that, she felt fine, and it never surfaced again. For anyone. We'll call that a win. Luck was (mostly) on our side. The newest Woodman, Smokey, had barely spent even an hour in the car with us before. So 24 straight hours should be fine, right? Again, Lady Luck was with us. Smokey was even more amazing than the kids. A real travel dog. At times it was like she was barely even there.
 
By 2:00 am we were only a couple hours away in Flagstaff. Since they didn't know we were coming, we couldn't exactly show up at 4 in the morning. "Surprise!... Yeah, we know its early." That would not have elicited the reaction we wanted. So, we needed to kill a couple hours. We pulled into a Walmart parking lot to “rest” for a couple hours before the big reveal. And if you think that sounds like another horrible idea, then this time you would be right. When I say “rest”, I really mean just lay there, not really sleeping. And by “lay there” I mean sort of in a reclined position. Not enough to be horizontal, but just enough to be uncomfortable. Meanwhile, there's a kid's foot in your face, and the dog's nose is in your lap. Then one of the kids, or possibly the dog, or both starts farting. After a couple hours of this torture, we made our descent into Phoenix. Amanda and the kids were up, and it was time to announce our presence.

 
We had made it. Over 24 straight hours in the car together. And, in the end, it was absolutely worth it. Without question. In only one day, we made it all the way across the country. In only one day, we gave our friends a surprise of a lifetime. In only one day, we kicked off our vacation in the sun.