Myrtle Beach, Day 7: The Road Trip Home

We left Myrtle Beach at a relatively late 7:30am, in the hope that Matt would stop vomiting. Unfortunately, this was not going to happen, so we loaded up the car and settled him into his booster seat with a blanket and the trusty plastic bowl. We didn't even make it out of the Wyndham parking lot before he vomited again.

Fortunately, we have a lot of extra equipment because of Nolan's random medical issues, so we had a gallon of distilled water in the back of the car. This came in very handy as we had to rinse things out on a regular basis. We stopped 8 times before we made it out of South Carolina, and another 3 times in North Carolina. Fortunately, by the time we made it to Virginia, Matt seemed to be a bit brighter.

By the time we arrived at the southern end of West Virginia, he was able to keep sips of water down. We decided to make a stop at the New River Gorge to stretch our legs and air out the car. There is a great visitor's center here, and the boys enjoyed looking at the bridge.

The boys loved driving over this bridge, though you can't really get a full sense of scale and height until you view it from afar. Matt was a little shaky, but seemed fairly recovered from the food poisoning.

We walked back from the observation deck platform, and Nolan decided to have a royal tantrum. Oh, the joys of long road trips with a four year old! Fortunately, Daddy was able to handle Nolan while I took Matt into the visitor's center.

The visitor's center was great, because it included a really neat museum and bridge-building information in addition to vending machines. We were really after the vending machines, to get some ginger ale for Matthew, but the museum was definitely an added bonus!

We headed out to the back deck, where Nolan was starting to calm down from his tantrum. We took one last look at the New River Gorge and headed back to the car.

We managed to drive the rest of the way home with almost no incident. We did run into a massive traffic jam at the top of West Virginia, heading into Pennsylvania. There was a lane closure and we were stuck in the rain for quite a long period of time. Matt had finished his ginger ale by this point in time, and we scrambled to find an exit with a bathroom for the little guy!

We were in Erie, PA by 9:45pm and we made it home at 10:30pm. A very long day in the car for two little boys and their parents. Fortunately, we had the entire next day to relax and recover from vacation!