Holidays from Hell

A few weeks ago, I strapped my 3 daughters into their carseats, and set off on our way to drive down the coast. After 5 hours we ended up ......... 
back home.
 We got stuck in traffic chaos after some flash flooding and ended up turning back when a landslide closed all roads leading south. They cried, I cried, the car overheated and we officially had our first "holiday from hell" experience as a family. 

But it's still not the worst holiday I've ever had.  

For nearly 20 years now, my brother and I have been mercilessly guilting our Dad about "the trip from hell". It was a canoe trip. Look, for me, this post could end right there. A canoe trip, while all the other kids at school were going to the Gold Coast or Hamilton island to tear it up in the kids club, seemed a poor second. Let me also emphasize that this was a survivor style canoe trip which was to involve 5 nights, in the Winter holidays, at a campsite you had to canoe to, that would therefore have no toilets or ANY AMENITIES OF ANY KIND.
Right, so, already reluctant we set out from our house, collected by a slightly deranged guy with some canoes tenuously attached to a trailer. How tenuous became obvious as we wound our way down Cambewarra Mountain and the canoes disembarked. Have I mentioned that this was the man my parents had paid for canoe hire and drop-off and pick-up at Tallowa Dam?He wasn't a random guy off the street or anything, he even had an ad in the Yellow Pages, indicating that he normally did this sort of thing for a living.
So, canoes re-attached we arrived at the dam(n) and set out into what could only be described as the largest freak windstorm of the mid 90's. And I am not even exaggerating much. Waves were breaking over the side of the canoes. We were rocking, tipping and generally paddling as fast as we could to get nowhere, or at the very least to avoid getting closer to the dam wall. My brother and I were crying, Dad was yelling "JUST PADDLE!!!" and Mum was fence-sitting by alternating between the two. After literally hours of this we finally crossed the damn and managed to create a makeshift campsite just before dark. Everything was wet and several loose items of clothing and luggage had been lost. Miraculously though, we were all OK. At least until the return trip when crazy canoe man was UNCONTACTABLE when he was supposed to be collecting us. I have never been so glad to see the end of a holiday.

Even though Mum and Dad did compensate for this trip in later years by buying a holiday house at the coast that produced much less death defying mini- breaks, it's the trip from hell that we always talk about. There  must be a lesson in there somewhere. Something about family unity, teamwork in the face of adversity, yadda, yadda, yadda. Just don't tell Dad. We're still guilting him.