well, our first day traveling back to grand rapids, michigan from downeast maine was almost uneventful.

once again we had packed a trailer that i hauled behind the 1965 galaxie 500 with mauja in the backseat while kris drove with odin in the jetta tdi.

for the most part we settled in for a long drive and set a goal to make it to albany, new york which is about 500 miles and based on our recent experience about as far as we can reasonably expect to travel in a single day with an infant and a dog.

a few weeks ago, i received an email from a guy who is making a documentary film about his cross-country trip from seattle to detroit in my 64 galaxie and as watched the the beautiful scenery fly by somewhere near augusta, maine i thought how it would be nice to someday take odin on travels around the country in the car, taking time to stop and meet folks, listening to their stories. i think it’d make a fine film, but maybe i’m a little biased 🙂

near the end of the day, somewhere on the new york toll road, during our long evening stop to let odin expend some energy before bedtime i decide that it’s the perfect time to enjoy some saltfish that’s been warming in the galaxie ( no air conditioning, of course ) as we drove for hours in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees F ( 32 degrees C ).

while i know that there’s no possibility of getting ill from eating warm, uncooked fish since that’s the whole point of curing it with salt, i decide that it might be best to still let mauja take the first bite.

he thought it tasted fine and we sat together and shared a snack of warm saltfish and water. mmmmmmmmmm. the perfect meal for the modern day adventurers.

as we played with odin the rest area we noticed that some somebody else had pulled in and parked a trailer hauling late 1960’s model galaxie 500.

of course, we all know that to be properly enjoyed a galaxie must be driven and not towed, even if you might occasionally run into a few problems ( yes, that is foreshadowing ) 🙂

we found during the day in order to keep odin in optimally happy that we could often get about 2 or 3 hours of driving in during the day before needing to stop for about an hour; except for right before his regular 6 p.m. bedtime, when odin seemed pleased if we took and extra long two and half hour break so he could eat and play at his leisure before settling in for bed.

while 2.5 hours at a toll road might seem like about two hours too long, we found that it made for much happier traveling once we got back on the road,

so we made the best of it and enjoyed the time doing fun little things like trying to teach odin how to drink bottled water.

during our stops it was far too hot to leave mauja in the car so odin and mauja had lots of lounging at the picnic tables, playing around without having to worry if we’d ever make it to albany at a sane hour.