Road Trip Stories

Got any anecdotes?

Once while driving through North Carolina, I was pulled over by a Trooper (mainly because of my Maryland tags). My wife and our dog were in the car. Because of the 70mph traffic flashing past on the driver's side of our stopped vehicles, the Trooper approached the passenger side window. My wife pulled the window down a few inches, the Trooper leaned forward, and our dog almost took his nose off. The Trooper and I conducted the rest of the conversation behind the car....

Was hitch hiking between Fairfax and Charlottesville VA, and a car with two girls pulls over. I run up to the car and they're sitting there with the windows rolled up argueing about something. After a few minutes, one roles down her window and asks "Are you going to rape us?"

On my first trip to visit my high school boyfriend at Frostburg, I looped the Beltway twice before finding the right exit.

Then on the way home, I got lost and ended up at Kings Dominion. I lived in Waldorf at the time.

K_Jo said:

On my first trip to visit my high school boyfriend at Frostburg, I looped the Beltway twice before finding the right exit.

Then on the way home, I got lost and ended up at Kings Dominion. I lived in Waldorf at the time.

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:snort:

On a family road trip when I was younger. Mother and five of us kids in the station wagon. Pulled into a fast food joint for a rest stop. We all piled back in the car and took off. Twenty minutes later, mom calls out for my sister, no answer. "Where is your sister"? Nowhere to be found. We rush back to our last stop. There she was sitting on the curb,

My Dad used to think he was Mario Andretti and drove like a mad man through the Santa Cruz mountains going to visit my Great-Great Aunt and Uncle. I got car sick on several occassions.

RoseRed said:

My Dad used to think he was Mario Andretti and drove like a mad man through the Santa Cruz mountains going to visit my Great-Great Aunt and Uncle. I got car sick on several occassions.

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That brings back awful memories. Our road trips to Grafton, WV, to visit family were awful. We had a Ford LTD and after the road twist and turns, my father would have to pull the car over, let me throw up and stick me in the front seat between my mother and father. If I was able to watch the road, I was fine, but no way in he!!, I could sit in the back seat around those twist and turns.

Road trips while young traumatized me because my parents would not stop so we could potty. We had this red and white striped bucket and my brother had a peanut butter jar. I'll never be the same
Road trips while older are not for print in a open forum

When I was a kid, we used to drive to Springfield, Illinois to visit the grandparents. We always started out by getting onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and not too long thereafter we'd stop at a Howard Johnson's restaurant for a meal. Then we'd go through the many, many toll booths. Dad was a pipe smoker, and my appointed seat assignment was directly behind him. He only opened the vent window in the Cadillac once in a while. Toll booths were often a relief for me, because he had to lower his window to pay toll.

One trip we stopped at the Howard Johnson's as usual, and I had a fishburger. Not long after that, we were on the road, going through the toll booth gauntlet, when the fish began to roll around in my stomach, wanting out. I broke out in a cold sweat, asked Dad to pull over because I was sick, etc. Dad refused to pull over.

I made it through a few toll booths. The diesel fumes were pouring in the window when Dad opened it to pay toll, and his pipe smoke was blowing in my face when the window was cold. The fish wanted out.

Shortly after one of the toll booths, either the diesel or the pipe smoke did me in.

I power-puked. I puked so hard that there was nothing on the floor of the car, or the back of the front seat.....

It was all on the back of Dad's head.

He pulled over.

My friend and I were returning from a day of classes up in La Plata in the early 80's via the old Route 6 - a twisty-turny mess at that time. I was driving my '66 Mustang and was rounding a curve cut into the hillside.

As I went around, I saw a very large buck heading across the road, but had absolutely NO time to react and brake. He saw us, jumped in a perfect arc over my hood and disappeared into the woods. My friend and I just looked at each other in total amazement. It was too cool.

Road trip from hell.

Pre-Boy ex and my 3 step kids were invited to go to Dewey Beach DE by my MIL. The only vehicle we had that would accommodate the crew was a 1987 Chevy Caprice Classic Station wagon with about 100,000 hard miles on it. Before the trip I changed the radiator and water pump because the thing ran hot most of the time.

We packed the thing full, cargo carrier on the top, bikes on a rack, kids in the back and off we went. I was sickened by how fast the gas gauge went to E because we were basically broke and had just enough money to make the trip with a teeny amount of spending cash. We actually made it to Dewey via the ferry at Lewes. The trip back is where it got ugly.

We always had to travel at night because the youngest step kid, we will call him
”Andrew” (because that is his name) got car sick unless he was sleeping. The day before we were coming back I did a quick check up of the car including under the hood. I noticed that the check valve that re-circulated exhaust gas had gotten stuck and the blow back from the cat-converter had melted the hose. Not a problem, I have tools I replace all that and load the family trickster to the gills. Midnight rolls around and we are off. We no more than make it out of Wilmington DE when the beast starts chugging and sputtering. I floor it attempting to blow out whatever is obstructing the fuel system and it seems to work…until that is the first toll booth. I slow down for the toll booth on the Garden State parkway and the beast dies. Pay the freaking 35 cents or whatever and try to get it started, to no avail. Now cars are piling up behind me. I wake the crew and we push the beast off the side of the road. I get back in and try everything to get it started …nothing. Except a dead battery. So here we are 1AM in New Jersey; call a tow truck, paid $35 to get towed off the Parkway to a hotel parking lot. The tow truck jumped us off and it started running the ex and I discuss it and since we are basically broke we have little option but to forge ahead, besides the thing seems to be running ok now. Off we go to the next toll booth about 10 miles up the road…….chuga chuga, OH CRAP, I decide to put it in neutral as I roll through the toll booth and race the engine to keep it going until we can toss the money at the woman and slip it in gear and go. Works like a dream until I slipped it back in “D” chuga chuga brrrrp the freaking thing dies. I wrestle it to the side of the parkway and it will not start again. So here we are again 1:30AM in New Jersey call another tow truck who tows us to another Hotel, this time the car will not start at all. The hotel was booked so they had no rooms but they found us a room at another hotel and called us a cab. In the meantime the truckster had a luggage rack full and bikes on the back. I have to unload all that crap and stuff it into the car to keep it from being stolen.

I used the last $50 on my nearly MAX’ed out VISA to get a room, I am honestly surprised it was approved as I nervously awaited the clerk to tell me it was denied.. Pile everyone in the one room and wait til morning. We are desperately broke now, might not even have enough gas money to get home. Called my folks; as luck would have it my mom had a friend she dealt with from her company who lived in the same town we were broke down in. She called him, he called us a few minutes later and had the truckster

towed to a garage. They said it was going to need the carburetor rebuilt because it was packed full of grime; they had to order the parts and they would not be in until the next day. Now I am nearly totally broke, another night in the hotel will not fit on my over the limit VISA card. The dude said not to worry, he put us in a hotel that he used for out of town clients. The Hilton I called mom and told her what was up and she said she would pay the garage bill and the hotel. Whew. So the next day the car is done, the dude delivered it to us at the hotel, paid for the car to be fixed and the hotel as a favor to my mother and told us to eat dinner in the main dinning room on him. : (We had gotten PB&J at a store across the street and ate that for 3 meals that day) Unfortunately it took so long to fix the car we stayed past checkout time and had to pay for another night so we stayed until midnight and took off for Maine. All is going well until we cross the Mass. State line. I pulled into a rest area to make a head call and I rolled down the window to toss out a butt and I heard a crink crink crink noise I went to the bathroom and came back (it is about 4AM) and start investigating the noise. I found it……the lug nuts had worked lose on the left rear wheel and the lugs had wallowed out the holes on the rim so bad it was barely on the car. I tightened them up the best I could and we drove to a Waffle house down the road because the phone book was missing from the phone booth at the rest area. I talked to the cashier while the crew split a Danish and a pint of milk and she said there was a junkyard at the next exit. Off we went, found the junkyard and the sign said they opened at 7. Slept in the car until the dude showed up and opened the place. I told him what we needed and he took off on a ATV and came back with a rim. He swapped the tire over and I paid him $20, I think I now had $15 in my pocket to make it the rest of the way to Maine.

Now it is 8AM and we take off, all systems go. We make it across Mass. And into Maine when Andrew wakes up. He says he does not feel good (car sick) so I tell him to climb up front so he can look out the windshield, hoping that will keep him from hurling. The ex in her infinite wisdom thinks if he eats some potato chips he will feel better. Against my better judgment she gives him some. Big mistake, he turns green and starts to blow, right into the bag of chips. So now it smells like vomit, it is hot, the 7 hour trip from Wilmington DE to Maine has taken 3 days and I am not stopping for anything. The poor kid gets the dry heaves and I am not stopping. Finally we make it to Brunswick, only 25 more miles so I stop and let him get a soda and relax. We get back in the car and he blows again, this time on the ex’s feet. I am not stopping, we pull into the driveway with a $1.25 in my pocket, the car on E and I get out, collapse on the ground and kiss it and vowed NEVER to leave home again.

WOW!!! Pete, that's definitely the trip from he11!

Pete as horrifying as all of that sounds, still I'm

Poor Pete!

Sorry to bump but I didn't see this the first time around.

My worst trip was a 3-hour drive from Jacksonville to Disney World in my wife's 1977 Toyota station wagon. We were going to take my Starsky & Hutch Torino, but figured the 460 would eat up too much gas, so we went for fuel efficiency. My wife had owned the car since new, so I figured we would be good to go. We left at about 8:00 at night.

We got about 30 miles into the trip when I noticed the top-end speed strated dropping on I-95. By the time we reached St. Augustine the car wouldn't go faster than 45 MPH, so we bailed out stopped at a gas station. I checked the oil and found nothing but some baked-on sludge on the dipstick. I looked at my wife and said "when was the last time you checked the oil?", and her reply was She had owned the car for SIX YEARS and had never checked the oil!!! I added oil and we went back out on the highway, and now it's about 11:00 but the car is running better.

A few miles later the car starts to die again, and we're going down I-94 to I-4 at just below the legal speed limit for slowness (45 MPH). Fortunately there's no cops and little traffic. We get to Disney just as the sun is coming up, and the car dies on the Disney access road. I get it started, then it dies again. A Disney cop drives by, and I tell him that we're meeting her parents at Fort Wilderness, and if he can clear the way for us we can make it. He radios ahead and tells us to just blow through the gates, which we do. Unfortunately, we go through the gate at the opposite end of the gates from the Fort Wilderness turn-off and can't make the exit without making a very illegal u-turn on the other side of the gates while the cop shakes his head and laughs.

We get to the trailer, and I ask my wife "when was the last time you had a tune-up done?", and her answer is I pull the sparkplugs and find that two of the resistors are gone, and the other two fly off when I touch them with my finger. We're lucky, and the Disney service station has a set of plugs that'll fit, but now the rings are shot from lack of oil over the years, and the car looks like a smoke machine everytime we hit the gas. I've never seen a car smoke that much.

After two stops for oil we finally make it back and the car sat until we towed it away to have it crushed.

aps45819 said:

Was hitch hiking between Fairfax and Charlottesville VA, and a car with two girls pulls over. I run up to the car and they're sitting there with the windows rolled up argueing about something. After a few minutes, one roles down her window and asks "Are you going to rape us?"

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What was the RIGHT answer??

itsbob said:

What was the RIGHT answer??

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Told them I wouldn't unless they were into that sort of thing.

aps45819 said:

Told them I wouldn't unless they were into that sort of thing.

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Everyone knows a Rainbow Boy is ####less and poses no threat. Those girls probably kicked your ass and sent you whimpering off into the sunset.

404 said:

Everyone knows a Rainbow Boy is ####less and poses no threat. Those girls probably kicked your ass and sent you whimpering off into the sunset.

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You really come across as a jerk.