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Crazy Vacations...


Tetriona

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Crazy story time!!!

My family decided to get together for a big family reunion/vacation over Thanksgiving this year. We have eight kids in our family (I, being one of the youngest) so this was kind of a big deal for us! We hadn't gotten all of our families together all at the same time in a long while, so this was a very anticipated vacation...

Unfortunately, our vacation cabin just happened to be right outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee.... *sigh*

So, all thirty of us (eight of those being my nieces and nephews who are all under the age of five.) were trapped at the top of a mountain... at night... surrounded by wildfires....with 80 MPH winds blowing the flames right towards us.. and no electricity...:blink:

With what little cell service we had, we called the owner of the cabin that we were staying in and asked if it was safe to go down the mountain and she told us that a bunch of trees had fallen in the road, making it impassable. On top of that, the walls of the  cabin were bending inwards at least four inches because of the wind, knocking off the decorations and making a horrible shrieking sound all at the same time... My brothers kept calling the fire department and they said that they had all of their men putting out fires and that we were, essentially, on our own.

After two or three hours of desperate packing in the dark and staring at the flames inching towards us on the horizon, my dad finally just said, "We're leaving." Two of my brothers volunteered to try and make their way down the mountain and see how many trees had fallen. As they were driving out of the driveway, a huge tree fell right in front of the car!! As I was running out to help I looked at the mountain top right behind the house and saw flames no more than a mile away... So me, my five brothers, and my dad were breaking branches and pulling the tree out of the way, trying to make enough room for our cars to get by. 

Twenty minutes later, with a little help from a tow rope and a whole lot of muscle, we were finally able to start driving down the mountain. We made it safely down the mountain, (with a few scrapes and abrasions to both the cars and us), and promptly hit a downed power line.... *cue crazy laughter*

Thankfully it didn't do much damage and we were able to get past that as well. My dad made reservations at a hotel in a town nearby and, after what seemed like forever, we finally arrived there. It was jam packed with people on account of all the evacuations. We stayed there that night and then we all started back to our different home states the next morning. (Turns out, later that day the hotel we stayed at was also evacuated because of the wildfires) When we got home my brothers and I looked like we had just come from battle. We had scrapes, blood, and ash all over us...My brothers are all over 6'6" and most of them have beards so they looked like Spartans...  :P  Not to mention the smoke inhalation had made our voices much deeper.

Soooo... yeah! While I left out a lot of other insane details that happened, that was my crazy vacation this year!!! 

Anyone else got any crazy vacation stories?

 

 

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Wow. I hope none of you was seriously hurt. That's one heck of a vacation. Like, whoa! I hope someone else could top that, coz I certainly can't.

We've had several vacations that I thought would end in disaster (I can be a bit paranoid sometimes), but my fears have always been unfounded.

The craziest (as in crazy weird, not crazy dangerous) vacation I've ever been part of was five years ago. I have an uncle (actually my dad's cousin) who loves organizing family reunions. That year, he decided we'll have the grandest reunion ever by gathering as many descendants of my great-great-grandfather as he could find and sticking us all in an ancestral house in a rural province up north. There were so many of us that most had to sleep in tents outside of the house. I don't even know the names of some of my second cousins (several of whom flew all the way from other countries), and there I was seeing third cousins, their parents and uncles, and even some of their grandparents all for the first time. Each family was asked to introduce themselves in front of everyone, some of them showing pictures of long dead relatives I've never even heard of before. There was even a family that supposedly descended from my great-grandfather's cousin (they don't know which degree, but they showed a picture of the two together). I thought the whole thing was really weird at first. But somehow, the reunion turned out to be better than expected.

On our second day we had a sort of relay race that involved (among other things) running several kilometers around the town, crossing a rope bridge across a river, going back across via row boats, and catching milkfish barehanded. Later that night me and some of my younger relatives (i.e. less than 30 years old) explored a supposed haunted house, went stargazing (it's nice to see the Milky Way every now and then), then drank until we passed out. Good times.

The next day some of them (including my siblings) wanted to go island-hopping somewhere nearby, but I've already had my fill of socialization and excitement, so me and my parents decided to go home. Turns out I missed out on a lot of fun that day. Ah, well.

We never had another reunion quite like that again, which I think is just fine. I think it's better to experience something grand like that once and have fond memories of it, than to make it a tradition and get sick of it. What do you guys think?

Edited by skaa
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So last year, we were planning to go to Zion National Park for spring break. About half a week before the trip, we learned my grandma had fallen and had to undergo surgery she wasn't expected to survive. So we had to change plans and go to her. While we were on the way, a wheel of our car almost fell off on the highway, and we couldn't replace it for another week or so. So we had to rent a car and drive the rest of the way. Oh and my mom lost her wallet with her credit card along the way. So yeah. 

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