Short Stories From The Road
For some reason, the craziest stories seem to happen to us on the road while we are traveling. I don’t know if it is the main reason why we love traveling so much, or if it just adds to our enjoyment. Whatever the reason, these stories sure do seem to happen a lot.
So we decided to share some of them in a new series we are calling Short Stories From The Road. For now, we will be sharing stories from our past travels, and once we get back on the road we hopefully will have even more to share then.
The 360 Point Turn
The first story takes place in one of my favorite places, Gila National Forest. Shortly after the kids passed, my wife and I and her mother decided to go on a road trip to New Mexico. We were living in Texas at the time and It was our first trip to Gila. This wasn’t an overland trip per se, but more of an old fashion road trip. We just needed to get away for a little while. We didn’t even own the Jeep at the time and took a rented PT Cruiser instead. On our visit, we decided that we wanted to visit the Gila Cliff Dwellings.
The Gila Cliff Dwellings are deep into the Gila National Forest. It is a two-hour-plus drive through tight twisty roads up high in the mountains. It is beautiful but also a little dangerous if you don’t pay attention.
On the road on the way in there was a pull-off on the cliff side of the road. The road up was steep and looked like it went straight up. It was short though and ended at a little plateau, maybe an overlook. The road beyond looked like it went right off the cliff. I asked if we should keep going and the two of them yelled NO in unison!
So I started what ended up being called the 360 point turn. It was so tight up there that I could only turn a few inches at a time. By the time we were about halfway around, we were pointing straight off the cliff. This is when my wife and her mom absolutely lost their minds. They were certain that we were going to die. My mother-in-law had a strange tendency to scream in the back seat whenever something even somewhat scary happened, which happened quite often when we took her offroad. It got so bad that my wife told her that whenever she wanted to scream she had to whistle instead. But the problem was that she can’t really whistle, and was more just blowing loudly and spitting everywhere.
So I am trying to turn us around out on the edge of the cliff, my wife is panicking and has her feet up on the dash to keep danger away, and I have Steamboat Willy blowing away in the backseat and spraying split all over us and the windshield, and I just start laughing. Laughing so hard that I can barely breathe. I start yelling at them to quit it because if I can’t breathe I really might drive us right off the cliff. Needless to say, they didn’t, and while I kept laughing at least I didn’t pass out. It was probably a minute or two but it felt more like ten.
What made it even worse was that when we make it back out and started driving up the road again, just around the corner, of course, the other side of the road came down and we could have just kept driving. But it wouldn’t have been as fun.
The 360 point turn was one of our funniest memories from the road. It is only eclipsed by our next story.
Taking Out The Trash
Not too long after the above story, the three of us decided to go camping in Colorado. By that point, we had started camping and had gone several times across Texas. We set up basecamp camp up on a point on a mountain overlook, a great spot, and then went out exploring from there.
It was a great trip without much excitement, assuming that you don’t count us getting surrounded by howling coyotes. Our four small dogs and the coyotes fought verbally for about 2 hours, it was a little unnerving, to say the least. Especially Rocky our Chihuahua mix who thought he was a wolf protecting his pack.
Rocky our Coyote Hunter
So at the end of the week, we started to pack up camp. As a hazing ritual for my mother-in-law, we made her empty the camp toilet as it was her first time camping. We had brought one of the bucket-style toilets and had used a regular trash bag that we would then dispose of. While she was doing this my wife and I went about packing up the rest of camp. And then all of a sudden all we hear is “Oh you nasty Mother Bleepers!” followed by a dry heave. It turns out that one of our dogs had bitten the bag and it was leaking onto her foot.
My wife and I were in tears we were laughing so hard. The harder she heaved the harder we laughed. This went on for a few minutes with her repeatedly yelling “You Nasty Mother Bleepers!” and dry heaving away. I don’t know if it was the altitude, the laughter, or the combination of the two, but I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. I had to turn around so I couldn’t see her anymore before I passed out.
The icing on the cake though was that my wife told her to pick the bag back up so that she could take a picture and she DID! I absolutely lost it. Just in case you thought I was making it up, here is the picture to prove it:
