Summer Vacation Disasters

It's summer time and the season for that long awaited, anticipated vacation. Well, given the pandemic, maybe not so much this year, or you may be planning on doing short day trips rather than a road trip, cruise or flight to some exotic location.

My vacations pretty much are the same every year as I make the short journey to a campground where I have a seasonal site and my own travel trailer. Well, the bank actually owns the camper. I just make the monthly payments for the next several years until it is paid off.

I have been fortunate enough to have visited many places on vacation in the United States, Caribbean Islands, Mexico, England, Scotland and Wales. Of course the country that is the closest to us, Canada, is one place I have never spend a vacation. Maybe I should try it someday.

Most of my vacations have been fun, stress free adventures, but a few had their own disasters. One trip I took to California comes to mind. I spent some time in the Los Angeles area, and rented a car so I could visit some sites in Southern California. One of those trips was to the Mohave Desert.

At one point in the trip, I stopped to purchase some take out food for lunch. I ordered a turkey sub with mayo and headed out of one of the parks in the Mohave area to enjoy lunch. At the time, I didn't think much of it, but the sub shop apparently had some air-conditioning issues, and I'm guessing the heat spoiled either the meat of the mayo.

The next day, I ended up with food poisoning, but it wasn't until I made a two hour drive from my hotel in Hollywood to Disneyland in Anaheim. If you have driven the freeways in Southern California, you know how long it takes to get to any destination, even though it doesn't look that far away on a map.

I was feeling a little under the weather on the drive, but it wasn't until I got inside the park, did it really hit me. I ran to the nearest open garbage can and, well, you can imagine what happened next. So much for that adventure. I ended up going back to the car and taking the two hour drive back to Hollywood where I spent the next next two days holed up in the hotel.

Another vacation disaster happened while I was touring England. I was trying to park my rental car at a bed and breakfast driveway which was on an incline. Mind you, I'm driving from the right side of the car, shifting with my left hand (most rentals at that time were standard shift), and trying to eyeball the guardrail. Well, I missed and backed into a guardrail post, causing several hundred dollars damage to the car. And yes, that was even with car insurance.

Have you had any vacation disasters? I'd love to hear them.