Road Trip with Dad Part 1

My dad and I started our road trip Friday evening at 6pm. The plan was to drive over the George Washington Bridge, a bit through New Jersey, and then back into New York. We were to arrive at approximately 9:30pm, and then wake up bright and early Saturday morning to explore this wilderness part of New York and then go into Pennsylvania.

At least... that was the plan.

Step 1: Drive over the George Washington Bridge.

Step 2: We're lost already??????

Apparently I'm not a very good direction giver.

We were heading south.

We were supposed to be heading north.

Finally my dad just took the directions from me.

After about 30 minutes of driving south (there were no exits to the road we accidentally got on!), we were stuck in traffic.

This sign wasn't so cute when we were at a dead stop. And do you see the sign next to it? The Holland Tunnel is on the south side of Manhattan!!! What did we do??

OOh, look--another bridge. Too bad we had to stay on that road--still going SOUTH--for another HOUR!!!!!!!!

Yup. Still south...

We're not in the city anymore.

Now we're in SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY!!!

Finally we could turn around.

Back through all the toll roads...

Look. There's Manhattan again.

Wait, it's already 8:30pm.

Through the Holland Tunnel.

Funny, didn't we pass this OVER AN HOUR AGO?!?!

By the time we even started heading north (with the rest of the Manhattan island to go before even getting back to our starting point) it was 9pm.

We hit a rain storm that made it nearly impossible to see the road. And driving in New York is tough enough without this added mess. I loved the rain though, and it almost made coming back to the city after getting lost worth it. The video is a bit long, but I was trying to capture the lightning bursts. You can see them about 40 sec. in.

After that it was too dark and we were too frustrated to take pictures.

Eventually we got back to the bridge, and guess what?

We somehow got off at the wrong place again!

Lost.

Again.

In the dark.

In the rain.

At 9:30pm.

Lost.

AGAIN.

Oh, aren't we supposed to be pulling in by now?

Eventually we jumped on some random high way, with my mother's expert help (on the phone describing Googlemaps to us), a little luck, and a lot of blessings, (and no help from me) my dad managed to figure things out.

At 1am we arrived.

Honestly, in spite of getting lost and being tired, my dad and I had a wonderful adventure in getting there--and we hadn't even started the adventure of our exploration yet.

We had wonderful conversation and made lasting memories.

Besides, this is a much better story than "and we went to the motel," right?