Another Easter holiday

After the spectacular trip that we took last Easter, taking in the Grand Canyon, some rather tall trees and the like, it might be considered a little mundane to be towing the caravan off to Pt Hughes, but in reality, there was probably more excitement amongst the family this year than last.

That excitement translated to an off and on again decision as to when we should depart – Tuesday night after work or Wednesday morning? Three out of four children decided that Tuesday night would be the better time to go and so it was to be.

Now anytime you think that you’re going to leave for a trip straight after work, you hope that everything is going to be packed and ready other than all those really awkward and heavy things that become the job of the family pack horse to get into the caravan. With a 2 hour drive to reach our destination, I’d secretly hoped that we might have been able to get away before 6:30pm, but of course am a little more realistic than that given our history with departures. At 7pm I was still comfortable, but by the time we actually left at 7:40pm, tempers were starting to fray (well mine was).

At least we were underway. It was on Main North Road that things got a little sticky. We were cruising along quite happily when an apparently juiced up cat decided to streak from the side of the road and play chicken. Given the weight that we had behind us, swerving and stopping were equally undesirable in the sort of time frame that could have made any difference.

Feeling three solid hits as the cat used up nine lives in very quick succession, I felt pretty terrible, but was in something of a quandary as to what to do. There was no way in hell the poor little bugger survived and we were in the middle lane, so I couldn’t exactly stop without having a massive impact on traffic anyway. Not to mention that had I stopped there would have been all sorts of questions as to why it was that we were stopping.

I really didn’t want to have to tell Emily that we were stopping so that I could scrape the pancaked remains of some poor family’s pet cat from the road. I felt bad enough without adding that to the occasion. So we continued on a somewhat less merry way at least as far as a dinner stop, where I made the mistake of crossing the road. Only when I went to come out again did I realise that you couldn’t turn right to get back to where we were headed. Hence, a scenic detour ensued, through the back streets of North Adelaide, weaving the caravan through bloody annoying speed restriction devices.

We did get here though. It was late and it was windy, but we managed to eventually get to a point where we could sleep in the van, ready to tackle the full set up in less windy and daylight. We at least got the daylight part of the equation right!