Our Most Expensive Vacation EVER

We went on vacation this week to get away before Ben starts his new job.

It ended up being our most expensive vacation to date.

We didn't stay at a luxurious resort

We didn't eat at any fancy restaurants.

We didn't even fly there.

We went to Rocky Point, Mexico.

Normally an inexpensive way to get to the closest beach we have.

We were planning to leave Monday at about noon when Hazel usually goes down for her second nap of the day. I was doing a bunch of last minute errands and borrowing travel supplies from family. I stopped at Danny and Lindsi's for a beach umbrella and then my car wouldn't start. 

I dropped Hazel off at Abbie's for a nap (which is when we should have been leaving) and got my car to a mechanic. He told us it was the starter that was giving us trouble.

So 5 hours and $400 later we were off.

That's not even the expensive part.

A few hours into the trip I hopped in back to feed Hazel some jar food and snacks.

It was 8pm and pitch black out.

We were just a few miles away from the border.

From the back seat I look up out the front window and scream

OH MY GOSH!!!!

and

BAM!!!

We hit a deer!

Ben said he barely saw it out of the corner of his eye.

I'm almost positive the deer and I made eye contact a split second before impact.

The car was running fine and we decided it was too dangerous to pull over.

Remember its dark outside and we probably just made a very large animal very mad.

We didn't hit it head on, just from the passenger side of the car.

The next few minutes were followed my these questions and comments.

"We just hit a deer!"

"Where did that deer even come from?"

"What the heck is a DEER doing in the desert?"

"What should we do?"

And many other things of that nature.

We could see the lights from the gas stations at the border so we waited until then to asses the damage.

The next few minutes were in silence.

And then, what's the most natural human response to a traumatic event?

Hysterical laughter.

Yep, that was me.

I started laughing really hard and I couldn't help it.

Ben turns to me super confused and asks me why I was laughing.

The only thing I could get out was,

"I don't know"

I think I just replayed the whole thing in my head and then asked myself,

"Did that really just happen?"

I think it lightened the mood a bit cause then we just laughed for a long time.

The following picture shows exhibits A through E on the damage to my car.

Exhibit A is where I'm guessing the shoulder of the deer hit.

Exhibit B is showing the fact that I don't have a side mirror.

Exhibit C must have been the back end crushing the door to the point where it no longer opens.

Exhibit D If you look closely it looks like the outline of a deer head

Exhibit E needs a closer look.

Yep, that's fur coming out of my tail light.

I don't know what happened to that deer, or to my mirror 

(we looked for both on the way back)

We still went on our trip and despite the rocky start we had a lovely time.

More on that to come.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to call my insurance company.