We came, we saw, we conquered

 The backseat of the car pinched the backs of my legs as I shifted them toward the window. The exposed flesh below my shorts had adhered to the pleather by a thin layer of perspiration. 

The pain momentarily diverted my attention from the annoyance of the wind lashing my hair around my face. I want to crank the window all the way up, but the car isn't air-conditioned. We would suffocate. 

I would have asked my parents the most pressing question of all for any under-12-year-old traveler ... but I could tell from my mother's expression in the rearview mirror that we were nowhere near there yet. 

It's been 120 hours since we left New York and I know the reason my childhood memories have come flooding back is that I've spent ALL of them in the backseat as my car-sick-prone kids take turns riding "shotgun."

The designation, however, comes with the responsibilities of navigator, which attaches some degree of skill and the near-constant hazard of failure. 

Let's just say I am content to slouch down in the back, where I can try to nap while the front seat passengers bicker between themselves about whether we are traveling north or south, and which exit is the one we should take: this one or the next?

I don't know how people do this. Go into a new place acting like it's no big deal. It seems we go from one hotel and its swimming spot to another hotel and swimming spot.

When we can't agree on things to do. The oldest wants to get dragged behind a boat as an already open parachute flings her into the air, while the youngest non-adventure seeker shames us with logic: "Who wants to go to an Adventure Park in 98-degree heat?" 

The Para-Sailing's sign seeking Experienced Help Wanted kinda puts the pandemic pause into perspective. "Maybe next year."

Instead, we will find the thing we could have done at home (movies, bowling, shopping) and do that for a few hours before we argue over where to go for dinner.

I have wondered if inconvenience is the thing that kills a vacation more completely than indecision.

"We might have gone to see Wilber and Orville's miracle ... but making a left is just so difficult there."

There is also the failure of research. 

For instance, had the roadside billboard not spelled out "APPLES AND CARROTS KILL WILD HORSES" as we sped past, my brain might not have pulled up a vague recollection of reading something somewhere about the famous Spanish Mustangs of the Corolla.

I could barely Google before I realized we were moving farther and farther away from this colonial-era wonder.

And that momentary sadness of not having seen a thing the place is known for was just as quickly replaced by the relief of knowing that at least we didn't screw up its very existence. Taking home a printed memento of the conservation's educational efforts (a lunch counter impulse purchase) was enough to reestablish my tourist's sense of fortitude via retail therapy. 

We came to the Hotels and Swim Spots, we saw the guidebooks, and we conquered the trinket shops. 

We have finally traveled.