Adventures of the Cousins: The Road Trip

Casual-seductive pose with a telescope at Meteor Crater.

10 years ago, my bestfriend cousin and I embarked on a road trip across America with a final destination of Key Largo. Take a moment to reread that sentence and absorb everything that is wrong with it. A 17-year old and a 19-year old drove nearly 3,000 miles across the country (including THE SOUTH) in a Pontiac Sunfire in the middle of July. The idea for this trip was based on the fact that our moms used to drive back and forth between Minnesota and California all of the time when they were young and if they did it so could we! 

Our first stop after a full day of driving was somewhere in New Mexico. Unremarkable, except for the time when Mandy lost the car keys and then thought she locked them in the car so we called Triple A to find out they were in fact not in the car but actually the front pocket of her suitcase the entire time. Our other nighttime sleeping stops included Oklahoma City, New Orleans, & Port St. Lucie, Florida. We made it a point to stop at any ridiculously cheesy roadside attraction that we passed. This led us to get lost in ghetto Jurassic Park in Arizona. And to Meteor Crater in Arizona which, as one other crater patron put it is "a big ass hole." But seriously, it really is kind of astonishing now that I think about it. In Oklahoma City we set aside time to stop at the memorial which is absolutely breathtaking. We spent quite a bit of time reflecting and reading the messages there until some asshole honked at Mandy because apparently she looked damn sexy being all emotional. In Texas we saw a lot of trees. Texas is stupid.


My favorite driving moment happened somewhere in the middle of Texas, I think. As we were driving down a seemingly endless highway, a bible camp van ended up next to us and oh my god if those boys weren't staring at us like they had never seen female flesh before. So we're laughing, which of course makes them stare more and little did they know we were approaching THE LARGEST CROSS IN THE COUNTRY (alledgedly). Which I suspect was the entire purpose of their bible camp. At this point, it's not funny anymore and they were legitimately going to miss the cross so Mandy yells, "Look at the fucking cross!" And because I was sure they heard us through the closed window, I sped away hoping they were not cursing our Pontiac Sunfire and that they would pray for our depraved souls. 

Former home of Ernest Hemingway.
He didn't have A/C. But I had a sarong so its cool.

Once we made finally made it to Key Largo, our first order of business was to go use Mandy's fake ID to buy alcohol, naturally. Of course a 17-year old would pass for a 26-year old. And of course she did! Our second liquor stop will go down in history as one of our favorite moments ever. The older gentlemen who probably owned the store asked to see both of our IDs and while I was stuttering and stammering for an excuse he starting cracking up and was like, "OF COURSE you guys are old enough! I'm just giving you a hard time." OF COURSE!

If you travel anywhere with Mandy, she makes friends (Her life quote, "Hi! My name is Mandy!"). Lucky for us, she made a friend that was a butcher (totally safe) at the Winn-Dixie and he was helpful in so many ways. He got us into Coco-Nuts Nightclub (AKA Coco-Sluts), got us into his brother's bar after hours so we could drink straight from a beer tap, and helped us fix the car when it suddenly died. He kindly told us, "Maybe y'all just got some bad gas"...to which we replied, "Were you following us? How do you know that?" He also taught us an important lesson about putting a vehicle in "park" while "parked" at a gas station. Do it, or else your car rolls backwards and hits some snotty family and the two underage drunk girls that you have with you will have to go hide in the liquor store and help the old man working there stock the shelves until the cops are gone.

And of course, we did all of the things that we told our mothers we were doing which was the purpose of our entire trip. We snorkeled. We saw Christ of the Abyss. We toured Key West (and vowed to one day go back when we were legitimately of age and that one day still hasn't happened!). We took one million and four pictures and learned as much as we could. More importantly, we laughed a hell of a lot and still do when we reflect on this trip. We strengthened an already 17-year old friendship that is bound to last a lifetime. And no, our children will absolutely NOT be able to replicate our journey.