My Last Family Vacation

Have I ever told you about the time I met my mother's online fling?

Long story short- I was not happy with her.

My parents were getting a divorce. I was 16 years old and angry at the world for creating me. I spent the entire time sulking. It was a fun vacation don't get me wrong. But a two week long road trip with your family takes it's tole on anyone.

To backtrack- my grandparents had just bought a camper and got the idea to take us to Yellowstone.

Well, little me was estatic. The only vacation I had ever really been on was to spend the night in a hotel room after school supply shopping.

So we began the drive, to Montana, U.S.A. I remember sleeping overnight in a Walmart parking lot because we had nowhere else to go. That was fun.

My breakfast that next morning at a cafe was equsite, I devoured almost all of it. My twerp brothers were nine and ten years old at the time and they fought the entire drive. To the point where we had to put them in separate vehicles.

JUST WAIT. It gets better.

I'm from the Praries. A Saskatchewan girl. I take it for granted I know I do. I get bored of seeing nothing but land. But when I seen my first mountain, I fell in love.

Absolutely beautiful scenery everywhere. I fell in LOVE with Montana. I wanted to move there actually.

I knew we were meeting some of their online friends in Montana- Boseman to be exact. What I was not expecting was my mother to be IN LOVE with this man, that she played online games with. 16-year old Chloe was NOT impressed to say the least.

I just listened to my angry teenage music and pouted the whole visit with them. We wound up camping in some Clash of Clan dude's yard and I was NOT happy. They were strangers to me but friends to my mom and grandma. I was just a kid, I didn't realize my mom had feelings for this guy. I mean she we going through a divorce so what could have I truly expected?

I WAS BEYOND PISSED OFF WHEN I REALIZED HE WAS ALSO GOING THROUGH A DIVORCE.

His damn daughter left my 3DS outside overnight too. It could have rained. I was so mad at her. How could have she done that to me? I mean she was only twelve so I couldn't have expected anything less from a child-but still she could have returned my property when she was done with it.

More fighting from my brothers. More pouting from me. It was a terrible trip. At least we got to go on a vacation though, right? Boezman is actually beautiful though. I would love to go river rafting sometime when my kids are older. I think that would be an experience.

Once we ditched online bozo and his clan of people, we got to the good part of the vacation and that was Yellowstone. I loved it. It was beautiful. We did almost die in the mountains because of my mom's driving but obviously it is fine because I wouldn't be writing this now if I was dead.

I loved every second of the experience that is Yellowstone. Three days was truly not enough time to explore it.

After Yellowstone, we went to North Dakota to visit our relatives from the States. On that journey of the drive, my grandpa had enough of everyone and decided to attempt to commit suicide in front of all of us. He struggles with bipolar disorder and I think the trip took a toll on his mental health. He tried to run across the highway in front of moving traffic, scared me and my two younger brothers and kind of ruined the trip for all of us. However, because it's my family, we just pretended like everything was normal and enjoyed quite a nice visit with our cousins.

Safe to say, that was a memorable family vacation.

Chloe Rose Violet 🌹