Nevertheless, I do love me a good road trip. We only stopped twice, but we struck out both times. The first time, I really, really had to go to the bathroom and of course I realized the urgency of the situation only after we passed half a dozen brightly lit, conveniently located travel plazas. No, I had to choose the next exit, the one where we had to drive three miles from the freeway on winding, fast-darkening country roads to use the gross bathroom at some grimy gas station.
Our next pit stop was just before we crossed the New York/Massachusetts border. We were kind of in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't want to make the same mistake, so I made an executive decision to pull off at a gas station right off the freeway. It was brightly lit, but it was also one of the scariest gas stations I've ever been to. There were sloppy handwritten signs everywhere saying things like "the bathroom is for PAYING customers ONLY" and "do NOT touch the maps unless you plan to BUY them" and also, we bought a bottle of water and it was leaking so I'm not sure it was legitimate. And there was the small matter of the porn magazines in plain view by the checkout counter. Oh well.
Of course, a few miles later there were the clean, brightly lit travel plazas again, mocking us. Nigel the GPS needs to have a bathroom proximity vs. urgency to pee calculator.
So yes, we're in Boston now. The girls woke up way too early, of course, so I took advantage of the novelty of having a TV and turned on Sesame Street for them. That's when our vacation started feeling really exotic, because I realized we were watching Sesame Street on the actual WGBH Boston channel. Anyone who was a fan of anything worth watching on PBS during the 80s knows that distribution channel well.
Our trip is off to a great start!