Traveling with grown ups is the worst. These people never stopped for anything! Well, yeah, they did stop, but it was for gas or bathroom breaks, never for the important things. Even as a teddy bear, strapped into the backseat where the view is mainly black upholstery, you notice those kinds of things.
“I’m hungry!” I complained. It was nearly 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We’d been driving since 10, and I was ready to get out for a while.
“Honey, we really should stop.” Mom suggested to Dad.
He nodded. “Ok. There’s an exit coming up.”
My heart went pitter pat! Finally! I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the road sign, expecting to see restaurant insignia to showing the different possibilities. Instead, there were only two words: Rest Stop.
What?
The Equinox came to a stop. Mom jumped out and headed for the building and Dad pulled out the cooler.
WHAT?
He got out a loaf of gluten free bread, a regular loaf of wheat, a package of lunch meat and another of sliced cheese. This was joined by a bunch of bananas and some granola bars.
WHAT!?!?!?
That was our lunch, and it was eaten on the road, in a moving vehicle. Dinner that night had the very same quality to it.
Man, these people are nuts!
Meanwhile, Mom was playing a book-on-tape from her phone. It was nice that the ‘Nox had a place you could plug in your phone and play audio from it. Of course, it took Mom five minutes to figure out how to do it, and every time we stopped it was another five minutes getting it to play right again.
I had expected Mom to pick out a stupid romance novel from the library’s app, but instead she’d gotten a sci-fi novel, the second in the series. The family had listened to the first book on their trip to Washington DC that summer (which they had left me out of. Sheesh!), and now Dad wanted to hear the second one.
“Hey!” I protested. “I didn’t get to read the first one! I won’t know what’s going on!”
No one cared. They were going to listen to it anyway. Bears get no say in what they have to listen to.
It turns out, the story was cool. The book was The Prince Warriors: The Unseen Invasion. https://theprincewarriors.com/books/ It’s a lot like the Narnia books: these kids are transported to a different world (Ahoratos) that is cared for by a mysterious creature named Ruwach. In the series, the children are sent on missions to collect pieces of armor which protects them from the enemy. In the first story, the children were given a breastplate
which shines to help guide them and shoes that have properties to get over hurdles and traps. In The Unseen Invasion, they are given seed that are to be their shields (I won’t spoil it by telling you how it works, but it’s really cool!) Two of the kids bring objects back from Ahoratos (a real no-no) and that transgression allows the enemy to open a portal between Ahoratos and the real world. Only Prince Warriors can see the enemy approaching, and it’s up to them to close the portal and make things right again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPVvlkjZ-HU
The book is over seven hours long, so it lasted for most of the trip. By the time it finished it was dark and raining, and we still had a long way to go. Mom knows she sees better at night than Dad so she took over driving. Even so, she seemed to spend as much time glancing at the navigator as she did the road. She had it zoomed in to a couple hundred feet, so it was showing the turns better than she could see it through the windshield.
It was nearly 10 pm when we got to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I watched out the window, mesmerized, as we drove though town. It was all lit up and glitzy, like Las Vegas! I saw a building built upside down, and another built laying on it’s side! King Kong was climbing up a miniature skyscaper, and a bus gusted up like an old time trolley was shuttling down the main drag. There were stores that had the entry ways shaped like giant sharks and bears, and one where the doorway was in the lens of a ginormous camera! Wow! Was I gonna have fun in this town!
We finally got to the hotel. Mom and Dad trudged back and forth between the ‘Nox and their room on the second floor, hauling up their suitcases, the cooler and backpacks.
Then they locked up the car with me still in it.
Hello? Hey! I’m still here.
But they didn’t come back, and they didn’t even leave the keys so I could listen to the radio.
Sheesh! The nerve of some humans! I was left to stare at the back of the passenger seat all night.
Sigh.
Such is the life of a Traveling, Forgotten, Bear.