We left from my parents’ house around 12:45 in the afternoon. Dad, Mom, and Mary (friend of the family) were in my Dad’s truck; Jen, Grace, and I were in the Saturn wagon. Shortly after we got into Delaware, my Dad stopped at some tiny grocery store/body shop (I kid you not) to buy some soda he thought he could only get there. He had stopped there some time before on his way back from a hunting trip and bought some Stewart’s Orange Cream Soda. Good stuff, I must say. He was a bit surprised when I told him that you could buy it at any grocery store at home. We stopped for lunch around 3:00 at the rest stop near Dover, DE, and ate sandwiches we had purchased from Trailer Village that morning. Grace convinced most of us to ride on the see saw with her.
We weren’t planning on driving all the way to North Carolina in one shot; we had reserved two motel rooms in Pocomoke City, MD. Before going to the motel, we headed into Ocean City, MD, for a few hours. Grace wanted to go on rides. She rode little boats and a little carousel. We all had dinner together at Dough Roller (best pizza on the MD boardwalk). The only bad part about dinner was the theme from Spongebob Squarepants playing incessantly from a game booth nearby. And I mean incessantly. As soon as it stopped, it started within two seconds. It was maddening. Now, my boss thinks that Spongebob is brilliant. I think it’s frickin’ annoying. My Dad thinks his name is Spongehead.
From there, we drove just under an hour to Pocomoke City. The motel had mosquitos the size of Mack trucks. Each one could easily draw a pint of blood from you in one shot. There were some French Canadians up the row from us, also commenting on the mosquitos. My Dad said to be careful, because there’s a lot of SPARS up there. I later found out that he meant SARS. The night passed quickly, marred only by a weird dream I had that involved me being blacklisted from a donut shop in Florida. That’s all I remember about that.