North East US Road Trip 2022 - Day 1 - Cape Cod #fiveexplore #northeastusa2022

Saturday 28th May – “Back to the future” (Excited but trepidation face)

We awoke to a dazzling blue sky piercing the sleepy heads of our groaning children. This time our US road trip began in a quiet village in Hertfordshire, England. International travel was back on the menu. With grandparents in tow, we crammed into a large taxi and headed for Heathrow. The driver complained that his car wasn’t large enough even though it comfortably fitted everyone in with their bags.

After the COVID test jeopardy of the night before (thankfully successful), Lyra cheerily informed me that “if you’d tested positive for COVID Daddy, we would have left you behind and gone anyway”. The strong family team spirit forged over weeks of road trips was as strong as ever.

Thankfully, most of the travelling today would be on a plane, and my daughters are OK with long plane journeys. Long car journeys not OK. More of that later, I’m sure. We sat all three girls together and hoped they would fend for themselves while we drink wine and

beer. This mostly worked although the girls seemed to panic whenever they had to use the toilet, treating it like a trip into the unknown. My 5-year-old Alaina was particularly alarmed by the loud rush of the flush.

A damp and dreary Boston greeted us, and the warm familiarity of American life felt instantly

nostalgic. Officious border control police with large guns intimidating travellers. Wildly fluctuating customer service experiences. Small additional dollar charges that eat away at your holiday budget like a thousand paper cuts.

The sickening horror showed on everyone’s face as they entered the car rental hall. “Is that really the queue for Avis?,” I asked like the 100 people who entered before me. A line of people snaked around endless security barriers into the distance. My parents landed 45 mins later in their first-class seats, cruised through the door, picked up their car instantly from Hertz and drove off. I tried not to be jealous of the gilded life of affluent baby boomers. Thankfully, they also took two of our children with them. Peace and quiet at last (almost).

An older American couple helped me pass the time as we reminisced about American road trips, the Jersey shore and how COVID messed everyone’s lives up for a couple of years. After queuing for over 2 hours at Avis we approached the desk to rent our car. A lady with intricately decorated fingernails so long, she typed like her hands were walking on

stilts, gave us a look of disdain. Sarah had lost/left/mislaid (the reason changed every 2 minutes) her driver’s license.

“I cannot give you the car sir.” Ah how I missed the direct, simple rude clarity of American customer service. At this point it was 13 hours since I left home and we had queued longer than you would for a star attraction at Disney world. After some passive aggressive British posturing she eventually called her “Bwaaas” and was told to let us have the car. Rather than be happy our problem was solved she let out a small snort and tersely replied. “That’s your choice. I’ll will make a note that it was your decision.” We picked up a seven-seater tank blasting icy air conditioning in my face and set off in the rain.

The drive took in the beautiful luminous countryside of green and brown trees via route 3 , then route 44 and onto route 6. We saw our first glimpse of rhododendrons and curved round the coast into South Yarmouth.

Small, cheesy signs such as “Howl-a-day inn” passed us by and eventually we alighted upon our mid-priced hotel. This is standard fare in America if you want to travel on the cheap with your family. Find the newest hotel in the town. Book a ‘family’ room where you can squeeze in your children without social services starting an investigation. Make sure there is a swimming pool and free breakfast. And Wi-Fi. If you don’t have wi-fi everything goes wrong (see my previous blogs). Drive to your next town then rinse and repeat.

We finished the day with swimming. I joked with the girls that I may avoid getting my hair wet when I go in the swimming pool (I went bald years ago). Lyra raised her eyebrow, “What are you going to wear a face mask then Dad?”

Flagging heavily and losing children to sleep/raging tantrums by the second we finished with a smorgasbord of cheeseburgers, chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, crisps, and salads. And beer and wine thankfully.

Lyra has also given me the suggestion of rating each day with an emoticon. What does an excited, tired, and moderately stressed face look like?

Tomorrow, we start exploring Cape Cod.