“Mon-te-rey,” I stretched each syllable out slowly; “The aquarium. Seals. Watching waves crash against the rocks. What better way to recharge for the new year? And it’s only an hour and a half from our home.”
“Zachary hasn’t seen snow,” my wife persisted; “We’ll bring a sled. It’ll be fun.” I had my doubts. The snow might hold a one-year-old’s attention for maybe fifteen minutes. Then what? Not wanting to stand in the way of expanding his horizons though, I gave in.
The sled hadn’t arrived when we left for our “adventure,” but she was confident we could rent one at the park. Three hours later, at the entrance to Sequoia National Park, the ranger informed us the road to our lodge was closed from that gate. He directed us to an alternate entrance, which was over an hour away.
There wouldn’t be snow on the detour, I thought, watching grimy, salt-streaked slush drip from the chains on our Camry. I’d just put them on because they were required inside the park. Great. Now I had to crawl back under the car and undo them—just to put them back on again.
How is it you only notice the warning signs when it’s too late?
Google Maps presented my wife with a short-cut—an unnamed road. It was winding, single-laned, occasional swirls of fog–and descending. Always descending. Between dodging oncoming cars and fighting gravity, I was regretting the money we’d just sunk into that brake job.
Finally, the paved road to hell dumped us into a semblance of civilization. My wife checked her phone. “Over an hour away” was still over an hour away—so much for technology in remote locations! We debated stopping for the night, but we’d already paid for the lodge. And Zachary was asleep. So, we pressed on.
A fateful decision.
When we reached that other entrance, signs warned that chains were required ahead. There was no snow on the road yet, so when I showed the Park Ranger our pass, I asked when we’d need to put them on. “Eleven miles in,” she answered; “There’ll be signs.”
Eleven miles doesn’t sound far, but on a winding mountain road in the dark, with a now awake and restless one-year-old, it was an eternity. At mile nine the road looked wet. Water? Ice? We slowed to a crawl. Then fog rolled in. The temperature gauge dropped steadily while the tachometer barely budged.
When we reached the chain-up area, visibility had shrunk to less than one hundred feet. I sat there for a long moment. My usually overly cautious wife urged me to keep going. But I couldn’t shake the image of us driving off the edge of a cliff we couldn’t see. So, we turned back.
That’s when we discovered Zachary’s motion sickness. Because he was afraid to sit by himself, my wife sat in the back with him, which meant she caught more than her fair share of the deluge.
We were now desperate for an alternate place to stay, the closer the better. Once out of the park, we pulled into the first motel we saw, not caring what it looked like. Closed! The next one—also closed. My wife began to whimper. A few miles later, I spotted signs for cabins, but it was so dark I couldn’t tell where the entrance was. We circled around a few times before pulling into what I guessed might be the office. I hurried to the door and knocked.
The mustached man who answered looked suspicious until I explained our situation. He invited me into a room cluttered with laundry and the steady drum of machines. In the adjacent room, a sleepy family glanced up from the couch and then returned to the TV. I was in the laundry room of their house. He grabbed an invoice book, and I signed for the cabin, surrounded by piles of clothing.
Since they hadn’t expected us, the cabin hadn’t been swept and pine needles covered the floor, but it had clean sheets and towels. More importantly, it offered a place for my wife and son to get cleaned up and finally sleep for the night.
The following morning, we drove into the park and checked in. Zachary, stir-crazy from the long drives, ran wild through the lobby and cafeteria. Little did we know this would be one of the highlights of the trip. We asked about sleds and were told to check the store. They were out. They pointed us to another place–same result. No one had sleds.
My wife had talked up the trip for weeks, and at first Zachary was excited to be in the snow. But the snow was as deep as he was tall. We managed to find a shallow spot, but after a snowball or two, he simply stopped. His cheeks red, bewilderment spread across his face as if to say, “This isn’t fun. It’s cold!”
We tried our best to make it entertaining. There was a beautiful walk on a path among the snow-covered trees. But one-year-olds don’t walk. They run, burn out quickly, and then want to be carried.
Zachary did like the stairs, but they were outdoors, and there were only so many in a three-story lodge. With no sled, snow too deep, and freezing temperatures, we spent most of the trip indoors. After two nights, we were all ready to leave. On the long drive back, Google Maps helped us find a park. It was huge: swings, tunnels, kids everywhere–and most importantly—no snow. Zachary was ecstatic. He laughed the entire time.
Eventually we had to leave. At the car, Zachary simply pointed at the park, as if to say, “That’s where I wanted to spend Christmas vacation.”
With the park stop, the trip home took over five hours. Our pet sitter had already brought most of the mail inside, but a single Amazon box sat waiting on the porch.
Perfect! It was the sled.
Damon has published numerous short stories, both fictional and non-fictional. He lives in Livermore, California with his wife, son, two cats, and a dog. They now own several sleds. You can read or listen to other published stories of his at https://fictionalfuel.com
