Our Impossible 11-hour Travel Day

After I wrote that Alice’s Restaurant post, a lot happened.  We didn’t get fined for staying on the beach an extra day, but the opposite happened: we kinda wished the cops had stopped by our trailer, and we wished that twice.

Thanksgiving Night

7 pm: Tracy was watching football and I happened to look out the windows … to see a rolling ball of fire coming our way.  I stepped outside to investigate, and people were chasing it down the beach road. Turns out it was one of those large paper lanterns with a huge votive-thing in it that’s supposed to keep it aloft. 

But in the wind it got away from its tether (big surprise there).

When one looked to be rolling through beach grasses and down a dune at us, Tracy stormed out to threaten the probably drunken idiots with … 

our fire extinguisher. I’d forgotten we even had one! He was so mad that he must’ve scared them away; later that night we could see one remaining ball of fire rolling along the sand-packed road far downwind of us.  Adventure over, right?

Next Day

9 am. We were ready to hitch up the night before, but that morning we did all the last minute things, ready to get off this beach, back to Brownsville where we can take showers and wash laundry and regroup for the winter.  And then the truck wouldn’t start. 

10 am: Our roadside service guy couldn’t jump it. And he said no one would come look at the engine or tow us to a shop because we were technically on the beach, despite tourists driving their vehicles back and forth already. Fears of having to have the truck and the trailer towed and us having to get to a hotel with the dog turned into fears of … what else? Getting stuck on the beach when winds blow the sand around the tires so we really can’t get out? Getting towed by the cops because we’re way over the 3-day limit and the trailer gets damaged? Getting everything we own impounded? How would we even get to a hotel with Banjo?

11 am: We go ahead and bet that both truck batteries are seriously dead. Tracy calls around and finds two new ones a few miles away at an auto parts store, but there’s no Uber, Lyft, or cab driver available the morning after Thanksgiving. None. There’s a bus shuttle with a stop we could walk to, but we’d have to walk back from the stop each of us carrying a battery, and my knee is so tweaked I can’t walk even without a freaking car battery. So how do we get the new batteries?

12 pm: Tracy has a plan. He takes his bike off the truck and rides it to a golf cart rental shop, locks his bike there, drives a cart to the auto parts store, buys the batteries, and drives the cart back to the trailer on the beach. Good plan, until he tweaks his back on the bouncy golf cart ride. Badly. 

2 pm: After he rests for a bit and watches a how-to YouTube video (of course), Tracy and I install both batteries, him standing on a step stool in the sand to reach under the hood, me doing every task for him that involves bending at the waist (but not walking, he does that for me). We don’t electrocute anyone or start a fire. 

3 pm: The truck starts. We’re so relieved that we don’t turn it off for the next five hours for fear it won’t start again. 

I drive the golf cart to a grocery store.

(That was harrowing. You’re not supposed to drive those things on the road with cars, turns out, for a reason. Plus, I could barely reach the pedals.) 

Tracy drives the truck to the parts store to return the core (whatever that is). He then meets me at the grocery store, and I wait in the running truck while he returns the golf cart, unlocks his bike, and rides it back to the truck at the store, puts his bike on the rack, and we drive back to the trailer. 

4 pm: We pack up everything again  (Tracy had to unpack the bed of the truck to get at his tools) and hitch up on the busy beach road. And, the trailer lights don’t work. We wiggle wires all over the place, and suddenly they work and we drive away, headed, finally, to Brownsville. 

5 pm: We do something we’ve never done in four years of traveling: we stop for fast food. Tracy had not yet eaten. Banjo had not eaten. Done.

6 pm: I realize I don’t even have my seatbelt on. 

8 pm: 11 hours later,  we pull in to the rv park in Brownsville and back into the same site from last year. I forget to put the tire chocks around the tires. Tracy forgets to close the trunk of the trailer. He gets in bed right away, trying to get his back to calm down. I lie on the sofa counting the days until I see the chiropractor for my knee (10 days, unless an earlier appointment opens up). We have no water. We didn’t sweep the gallon of sand we’d tracked in throughout the day. We just counted our lucky stars we’d made it there.  

Update: Today, Tracy is upright, the truck started, and I rented a golf cart until my knee appointment—for less $ than Tracy’s 3-hr rental. All the things we were dying to do here—showers, laundry, getting started on our winter to-do list—can wait.