Connecticut road-trip with Joan: Celebrating "Fun"-tober

 My friend, Joan and I have traveled quite a bit together and, as a result, have been through a lot. We have committed bizarre children's audio stories to memory... "It's a very good game"..."Play it again, Mom!"...have been yelled at by a pastor for being too loud at bedtime and consequently almost decapitated a big toe as we attempted to stifle our giggles over being yelled at by a pastor and, have been irrevocably scarred during the great string cheese carsick caper of ought two.  So naturally, I was looking forward to our week-end roadtrip to Connecticut to visit my oldest daughter, Savannah.

"Amy, would you like some cheese," Joan asked, rummaging through her magical cooler of snacks as we hit the open road. Would I? I lit up like a Christmas tree. "Oh," said Joan, after a moment of searching, "I must have forgotten to pack it." We might as well have turned the truck around right there...I was devastated.

I managed to soldier on...past the gas station where I inadvertently tried to put fifty dollars into someone else's gas tank..."No," I yelled, racing back into the store, "Not pump 5...pump 3!"...past the murky mist of Witch Meadow..."Forget looking for Connecticut deer--they're the size of cats...watch out for witches," I told Joan as she peered diligently into the darkness...until we finally reached the safe harbor of Savannah's apartment.

The highlight of the trip (other than seeing Savannah, of course) was witnessing the christening of the USS Illinois so what were we going to do after that? My impromptu purchase of a children's book answered that question as we raced around Connecticut, visiting the places mentioned in the story.

Getting to Gillette Castle turned out to be almost as much fun as the actual castle as we had to be ferried across the imaginatively-named "Deep River." I was immediately transported to the epic ferry scene in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and began to whistle "Dixie." We leaf-peeped and frog-spotted as we toured the park grounds, defying the laws of probability by eventually finding sixteen acorns with intact lids for my 4th graders.

We awoke each morning, bright-eyes and bushy-tailed (Thanks to my cell phone alarm that I kept forgetting to turn off so a happy little song blared out of it at 6 am), ready to take on new adventures. Our children's book mentioned the Mark Twain House, so we headed over to Hartford. "Hartford," Joan shivered, remembering our perilous ride through Connecticut's capital where I kept repeating, "Hartford is bad," as we waited for a sudden left exit that would appear out of nowhere. "There!  There!  There!" Joan yelled as I screamingly careened across two lanes of traffic to enter an exit with a 90 degree turn.

We ate ice-cream (with candied pecans) at a sidewalk cafe, collected sixteen sea shells, visited Mystic Pizza (again) and were horrified that Savannah has never actually seen the movie and tortured my daughter by forcing her to Google every little wonderment that popped into our heads. "Savannah...look that up" became our catchphrase. She was horrified when she fell asleep, leaving us to watch Judy Garland in "A Star is Born," as we quickly filled up her search history with movie-related trivia questions that we simply had to know.

Our time with Savannah went by, as usual, too quickly and it was time to go. We said a fond farewell to her and her "wish-you-would-just-get-it-over-with-and-adopt-me" cat, Little Buddy and started for home. "Would you like some cheese," Joan asked, rummaging through her cooler. I glared at her suspiciously before she brandished a cheese stick at me like a magic wand. I was entertained for several minutes as I watched her futile attempts to wrestle it open. "Like you're counting money," I finally advised. She handed me my snack..."Remember the cheese string carsick caper of ought two," she smiled evilly. We recounted the ruined remnants of Savannah's poor pillow and how it took our combined efforts to get the regurgitated remains of Sydney's cheese string out of her hair. "That memory just gets better with time," I thought, swallowing my last, delicious bite of cheese, "Just like my friendship with Joan."