Ohio:Spring-break captial of the world (Part I)

One week ago today, I was getting ready to leave for "spring break! woooooooooh!". Ok so it wasn't exactly spring break for me, as adults don't generally get a spring break. (Which I feel should definitely be a big discussion in Congress...you know along with rising gas prices, poverty in America, and the housing crisis.) But I did take a few days off of work to take a road-trip with Mom & Ryan through the great Midwest. It was a quick trip, only being gone from Friday-Tuesday, but being true Melsons, we made the best of it.

Mom & Ryan arrived in Norman Friday afternoon and we were in the car by 1pm. Ohio-bound! Mom & I were in the front and Ryan was in the back, crammed in with a giant cooler that Mom was convinced we needed. (Even though every time Ryan opened the cooler, it smelled faintly of DEATH.) We were not even out of Oklahoma City when Mom asked Ryan to look at the directions and see which direction we needed to head on some highway. (You know I'm not good with that stuff, apparently it runs in the family.) As we are coming to the split, we hear Ryan saying, "Uhhhh...west? East? East! Just go east!" as Mom yells, "WHERE AM I GOING?!!?!?!". I grabbed the directions from Ryan, only to see that we were supposed to head west, and yet there we were, stuck on the east-bound exit. Let the games begin... We corrected Ryan's directional mishap and I held onto the directions. Ryan continued to ask for them back, but received a firm "HECK NO" every time.

All seemed to be going well until evening began to approach. Ryan was getting increasingly moody from being crammed in the backseat with the ridiculously giant cooler. The smell wasn't helping matters either. Mom's solution? Ditch the cooler at a gas station in Sullivan, Missouri. The hitch? We had that cooler for thirteen years. Dad, in his very Steve way, had written "Melson" on the front of the cooler. We knew he'd be less than happy to hear that we'd dumped his precious cooler in Sullivan, Missouri.

Obviously this didn't stop us! We said our goodbye's to the Melson-family cooler and left it in the dust. And in case you're wondering, Dad definitely noticed the cooler-sized void in the garage when he got home from his own trip.

To be continued...