Journal #4: Traveling

My family travels a lot. We go on maybe two big vacations each year. We usually like to go to Florida because we used to live there, so we have friends that we can visit. We drive everywhere we go. I have a lot of people in my family, so flying would cost a fortune.

I actually really like to go on long car rides. I like to look out the window and see things that I do no see every day. My family goes to Maryland a lot because my oldest sister and her husband lives there. The drive to Maryland is one of my favorites because we go through the Appalachian Mountains which are so beautiful.

Besides Maryland, my family likes to go to a lot of other states on the east coast. We have been to almost every state there. My favorite states to go to on the east coast are South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and New York.

Driving to New York for the first time was a great experience for me. Once we got to New York, it was awesome because New York is so different from Illinois.

Usually I really like to go on long car rides, but there has been one car ride in particular that was absolutely terrible.

My family and I were driving down to Texas for Christmas to visit a bunch of aunts and uncles that live down there. In a mini van, we had my mom, dad, Laura, Robert, me, Emily, and my little brother Matthew. So yes, it was pretty packed. When we got to Texas everyone in my family started to get sick one at a time. We had all caught some nasty stomach bug, and we were all throwing up. When we finally left to go home after Christmas was over, we thought we were all healthy again. We were wrong. For dinner we pulled over to a buffet, but a lot of us younger kids did not eat a lot because our stomachs were still hurting a little. After eating for a little bit, my little sister Emily started to throw up. She vomited right into a bowl from the buffet. All of the rest of us kids started to freak out because vomit is nasty (obviously). We pretty much made a huge scene, and after Emily settled down a bit, we left. For the rest of the car ride home, Emily was throwing up the whole time. I felt so bad for her. We had to pull over several times so that she could go out of the car and relax. We also had to air out the car a bit. It was one of the worst car rides I have ever been on in my life.