Well, we’re five hours into our Vacation Odyssey Driving Trip to Cape Cod and Husband is already in the doghouse.

We are in Bumfuck, Alabama. Today’s headline in the Bumfuck Times is: Feeling Love -- More than 40 students dedicate life to Jesus Christ. On the plus side, Hank Williams apparently grew up around here. 

We’ve actually only been on the road for three hours. Add onto that 45 minutes for breakfast, half an hour trying to extract ourselves from the Cracker Barrel Country Store, and half an hour trying to figure out how to insert the disc into the DVD player that Husband PROMISED HE’D FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE BEFORE WE LEFT ON THIS GOD-FORSAKEN JOURNEY. 

Part of the problem may be that he decided yesterday that we’d leave Destin at 4 a.m. this morning so that the children could sleep part of the way. Then he bought a bunch of rum and served everyone Exotic Island Punch for the rest of the night. 

He did get up at 3:30 a.m. to load the car. Then we carried the children to the car and strapped them into their seats. The Diva resumed slumber immediately. The Pterodactyl dozed off after about 20 minutes. The Tyrant fell asleep three hours later as we were pulling into the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. 

We had a nutritious delicious breakfast. (Husband: eggs, biscuits, sausage, grits. Me: eggs, wheat toast. Diva: steak fries and three bites of chicken. Pterodactyl: bacon and butter. Tyrant: eggs, catsup, butter, gummi worms.)

Then we spent half an hour trying to drag our kids out of the Cracker Barrel store, which is like a retail glue trap. At one point, an employee actually walked up to the Diva and placed a giant purple monkey Webkinz in her arms and said, “Feel how soft!” Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m going to spend $20 on something that isn’t going to keep her quiet in the car for more than a nanosecond? Instead we bought candy they could suck on for a while. 

Husband is pretending to be fascinated by everything he sees along the highway, including billboards, orange work barrels, hills, and the Hyundai manufacturing plant we just passed. “Wow,” he said. “Now that’s the kind of thing you just don’t see when you’re flying.” He added that he thought it would be really cool to take a tour of the plant. 

I asked Husband about his target destination for the day. He doesn’t have one. I’m guessing we’ll stop at whatever point the DVD player stops working. Hopefully by that time, we’ll at least be out of Alabama, where you can still smoke in restaurants and highway road signs advertise the Alabama Division of the Sons of the Confederacy. Yikes. 

My back hurts already from contorting myself around to: hand Pterodactyl a sippy cup, rub Tyrant’s leg, pick up Teddy when she throws it at my head, open the computer to the downloaded AAA Triptik, administer the Tyrant’s pneumonia medicine, and pick up Gummi Worms from the ground. Also, nothing perfects the art of coughing up phlegm like a little bout of pneumonia. So I am surrounded by baby wipes full of mucous  that the Tyrant has spit into my hand or retrieved from her nose. Too bad the dog is in the kennel -  used baby wipes are her favorite snack. 

Okay, fast-forward to the night. We’re in a Knoxville, Tennessee Hampton Inn, having accomplished an 8-hour drive in a mere 13 hours. I thought we’d never get out of Chattanooga. But it seemed silly to be so close to Lookout Mountain and not go look out at it. Then it seemed stingy not to ride the Steepest Incline Train In The World, particularly when the Pterodactyl thinks trains are even better than potty talk. And then the Diva got carsick going up the mountain, we all got cranky coming down the mountain, and after eating a late lunch at a fly-infested Wendy’s, we called it a day.

We walked along Knoxville’s riverfront, which was nice, and found a little Shakespeare in the Park and had some ice cream. The Diva inexplicably loved Hamlet and kept asking me what it was about. Like I know, just because I’m a writer. 

It was a nice evening. Back at the hotel, Teddy came up missing, and Husband had to light out into the night to search; he finally found it at the ice cream store, thank goodness, or I seriously would have canceled the rest of the vacation.

I’m really proud of us for getting through this day. I’d even be giddy about it if we didn’t have two more like it ahead of us. Five more, if you count the trip home. Tomorrow I’m going to calculate how much money we’re actually saving by driving instead of flying. My guess? Not enough.