Day 1

Our adventure began.  The ride was a little bumpy, but everything was going well.  Except for the fact we were all sad to be leaving our home and families...but that's a different story.  This one is about the trip.  At the end of our first day, we stopped close to midnight.  We were in Loxley, Alabama.  We saw a nice hotel, so we pulled over and started our parking nightmare.  Just as we finally got our huge truck (towing our car) parked, the hotel night manager came out and told us we couldn't park there.  So, we started our attempt at backing up to get out of the hotel parking lot.  If it weren't for another driver ignoring our backup lights, we would've made it.  He stopped behind us and waited for us to move.  Unfortunately, we couldn't go anywhere but forward.  At the end of a long parking lot, there was a curb.  With no where else to go, we jumped it and wound up on a service road.  We figured we would just drive down the service road and turn around our car to get back out.  Ha, boy were we wrong.  We wound up with our truck wedged between a fence post and a ditch.  As long as we tried to back up the truck, we were having no such luck.  Either take out a fence and damage the truck, or drive into a ditch and flip over.  Neither sounded like good options so I finally was able to convince Carl to call the police.  Surely they'd understand our predicament... not being too familiar with a big truck, being out of town in the night, and stressed and tired.  No such luck.  The cops were none too friendly.  


One cop (we'll call him Officer John-Boy) hopped in the truck with Austin and I and started backing out the truck while the other cop (we'll call him Scary Samuel L. Jackson with a nightstick...) directed us.  Belle was not at all having Officer John-Boy back up our car and take us anywhere.  She wanted her daddy to drive, end of story.  I struggled to hold her back, but I also knew that if I were to let go, she'd just jump on him and bark louder.  Teeth were not an option.  Officer John had to direct me to, and I quote.... "Lower your pup, ma'am."


Just as Belle started settling down and being okay with Officer John-Boy giving us a hand, Scary Samuel L Jackson with a nightstick appeared in our truck's headlights.  Um, horror movie, anyone?  I don't blame her for not liking him, he wouldn't smile.  He just stood in our lights and grimaced while making sure we didn't hit anything.  It was after the half hour of incessant barking that we diagnosed Belle as a racist.  You see, in her short life, the sheltered pup has only seen two black people... and both were women.  A black man, no matter how friendly he may look or be, was foreign to her.  Add that to the first one she sees being an angry, tall man carrying a weapon, and you can see why she she has become a racist.  (Side note- she's not racist because she's learned it from anyone in our family.  Some of our closest family friends are other skin colors than ours.  She's just developed a schema of what is okay and what is not.... apparently I need to work on broadening it a bit.)


Anyway, the officers successfully and safely got us out of our predicament.  We thanked both Officer John-Boy and Scary Samuel L. Jackson, and headed on about our night.  We were too embarrassed to stay in that hotel that yelled at us, so we went to a different hotel that Officer John-Boy deemed "trucker friendly."  We now know what to ask for when making reservations.  Lesson learned.


Stay tuned for day two.