Monday, October 31, 2011

Stonehenge Adventure

Yes, we went to Stonehenge. :)

Once Paul flew in to meet us we decided that since we were only an hour away from Stonehenge that we should all go and see it.

Sounds simple enough, but the GPS was out to get us.

A certain person, who was not me but will rename nameless, used the GPS a week earlier and set it to "avoid major roads" ...and you can guess what happened.


We drove for two hours on the backroads of England, through the tiniest of towns/villages... some towns were even just one lane and to drive through the "town" we had to wait for a traffic signal so we could take turns with the traffic going the other way.

After two hours of driving through lovely little meandering roads we not seen a single sign for Stonehenge. We just kept following that dumb GPS ...until it's battery died and we realized the car chargers didn't work. Now we were two hours into the middle of nowhere England... and without a GPS. See the excitement of the situation?


Oh, but it gets better because it always does...

Andrea throws up.

All over. We had a change of clothes and we get her cleaned up.

Ten minutes later Scotty throws up. No change of clothes though...

...and we are still in the middle of nowhere England and still without a GPS.


So we stopped at a roadside pub to get out of the puke-mobile and take a break. We ate some British food. I had a jacket potato (baked potato filled with stuff), Happy and Sierra had fish and chips, and Michaela had this... it was called yorkshire pudding. The yorkshire pudding Happy's mom makes is WAY better. :)


At least we were in a country that spoke English, so as we were leaving I asked the bartender guy how to get to Stonehenge. He looked confused and said we were an hour away. HA! I explained to him that we were an hour out when we started nearly three hours earlier!

As he was trying to give me directions a guy drinking a beer at the end of the bar said he was headed that way and that we could follow him... So we followed a toothless drunk man to Stonehenge. ...but the toothless drunk man was very nice and was sure to drive slow for me so I could keep up... and he wasn't really drunk. :)

Please keep in mind I'm still on the wrong side of the road and the only one authorized to drive the rental car. WHEEEEE.......

We followed him most of the way and then we used Happy's cell phone's map to get us the rest of the way there. What a mess, but by then we were pretty determined to get there.

We finally saw a sign and had a small little celebration in the car. Turns out Stonehenge is right next to a "Major Road", that we could have followed straight from Ingrid's house... for an hour.


But we made it and got to see The England Countryside too.... :)





On the way home I got on the freeway towards London and refused to leave it. After disregarding a couple GPS directions to get off the freeway we finally figured out the dumb thing was set to avoid the only road we needed.

We were home at Ingrid's house just an hour later... (PS...For the ride home the GPS was only working because we found a charger in the trunk that worked... we had charged it while driving with Happy's phone.)

The End!

3 comments:

C and H Romenesko said...

You, my friend, have some of the funniest stories...and some crazy luck...or perhaps *bad* luck!
Miss you!

franziengland said...

OMG you are an amazing writer!!! The photo of M & S in the car made me laugh SOOO much!! It says it all! Yorkshire pudding is not as good as its reputation. Totally agree! But it looked good :) .
Anyway, photos from Stonehenge are REALLY good! All of them! Like especially the last one with S and the one with P & M on the bench :) .
Miss you here!! Thanks for great descriptions!

Kelli Nørgaard said...

So glad that Dad was there for this part of the trip... because the pics of the whole family there are just priceless!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails