Thanksgiving road-trip: SF to Harstine Is.

Steve Martin and John Candy taught us in the 1987 movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that Thanksgiving travel isn’t easy. Martin plays a tightly wound advertising exec, Neal Page, who is on a business trip in New York and trying to get home to his family in Chicago. He ends up traveling with Candy, who plays shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith, when their plane is diverted to Wichita, Kansas, due to a blizzard in Chicago. A trip that should have taken an hour and forty-five minutes turns into a three-day error-prone journey. But in the end their pain and persistence pays off when they gather with Martin’s family for a memorable meal.

I approached our Thanksgiving road trip with this film in mind. I knew that the 22-hour drive from our house in San Francisco to my aunt and uncle’s house on Harstine Island on Washington's Puget Sound wasn’t going to be easy.

First of all, my 5-year-old daughter made it very clear that she didn't want to go on a road trip: "Why do we have to drive again? Why can't we fly? Driving is so boring!"

My husband wasn't to keen about the trip either: "The timing of this trip couldn't be worse. I'm busy at work. I still have to bill 40 hours this week so you need to find time for me to work on the trip."

I also had to work so I knew we would be trading off at the wheel so we could log some hours on our laptops and Blackberries in the passenger seat. And then there was the sheer fact that we were driving at Thanksgiving, the busiest travel time of the year.

"You know that there will be lots of traffic," my husband told me.

"There's not going to be traffic. Don't worry about it. We'll be out in rural areas most of the time. No traffic there," I replied.

Famous last words.