The most popular travel days in the United States are around the Thanksgiving holiday, hence, those dates in late November are among the most stressful. Nevertheless, we load up our cars, board the trains, or grimly prepare to fly to meet family for Thanksgiving, year after year, horror show of travel experience after horror show of travel experience.
Some readers out there are probably familiar with Twittermoms, a fun new site where mamas from across the globe who use Twitter, come together to chat, promote their blogs, and generally have a good Web 2.0 time. We asked members about their worst Thanksgivings. I summed up a few here; but for lack of space, there were many more than I couldn’t list! Some were disasters, some were sad, some were… Well, decide for yourself.
Kipling wrote, “Our worst Thanksgiving nightmare was last year. We live in CT and traveled to PA to my in-laws, and my poor 7-year old got car sick for the whole trip. The 4 1/2 hour drive with no stops turned into over 6 hours with multiple stops, so I called my mother-in law and told her to start serving without us. Then, when we got there, we just walked in and my poor son threw up in the dining room!”
Kidsrtc wrote, “My 15-year old son was living out of state in a treatment center. He had been there for about
- You eat WHAT for Thanksgiving?! (Guy Reynolds)
5 weeks. We were planning to drive out and spend Thanksgiving with him so that we could all be together as a family. Well, when you are at a treatment center you have to earn your privileges and he lost his the day we were going to drive out. We received a phone call from the school not to come. That was the doom and gloom phone call and there we are with NO plans for Thanksgiving, no turkey ordered, no family visiting and we can’t talk to our son.
Luckily, you can order a turkey dinner from Safeway without advance notice, and that is what we did. Kind of sad, BUT with all the extra time on my hands, that was also the weekend that I started my blog.
Jennifer Ditty wrote, “Boyfriend at the time (now husband), and I decided to go to a waffle house in Southern California for Thanksgiving. We got some funky food poisoning and spent the weekend hugging the toilet. We will never ‘go out’ for Turkey Day ever again.”
Connie Brown wrote: “We were suppose to head out to our family beach house but the roads were closing due to flooding. Our in-laws were already at the beach house and told us to come anyways. We ended up in traffic sitting for about 4 hours with our kids in the car before we turned around. When we got back to our house we called out to the beach house to find out it had been hit bad in the storm blowing out all the front windows, leveling several trees on the property and there was no electricity or water…Our in-laws tried to come back from the beach house and meet us in town. It took another 4 hours waiting for them. So we ended up doing Thanksgiving very late in the day and impromtu at our house. While it was the worst we’ve had, it was still great to be together safe and sound.”
SValleydiva wrote: “By far, the worst Thanksgiving I experienced was the first time I flew from San Jose, CA
- Flying Over the Thanksgiving Holiday is a Recipe for Disaster (Comic Sailors)
out to Pittsburgh, PA to be with my then boyfriend. I had a layover in St. Louis but the fog was so thick that day they had to delay all flights. So I was stuck in the St. Louis airport for like eight hours, AND, I started getting the flu. So, I was stuck there, miserable, and they only thing the air line offered me was a free meal voucher. By the time I got to Pittsburgh I was so worn out and exhausted I didn’t want to be around anyone. And the best part? Well, he was living with his parents so of course I had to meet his entire family.”
From a carsick child to a painful airplane delay, Thanksgiving travel disasters are practically par for the course these days. What they all have in common is the evidenced desire to be with our families for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving travel nightmares also, eventually, make for pretty good stories to tell, once the initial aggravation wears off. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone – may your travels be easy and fast.
