Saturday's Big Adventure

Sunday was my son's birthday. He decided this year instead of a party, he'd like to go to a water park. He'd never been before. We drove to a water park that was about 1 1/2 hours from our home. We had a great time. As an added bonus, we ran into some friends there so my son and his friend had a good time playing together at the park. It started to storm while we were there and they shut down everything but lucky for us, it didn't get too bad and they opened everything back up after about 45 minutes and we were able to get back in the water. We arrived at the park at 10:30 a.m. when they opened and left about 5:30 p.m. Now, let me add a disclaimer in before I continue with my story. A.I have no sense of direction. B. I was very tired and C. I have no sense of direction. I do fine in the city I live in and neighboring cities where I am familiar, but if I get outside my comfort zone, I need a GPS. Now, with that being said, I used my GPS on my phone to get us to the park and we had no problems. I reset my GPS on my phone as we were headed out of the parking lot to go home. Once we got on the road I needed to be on, I said to my son, "I'll turn the GPS off and save my battery, I can get us home from here." He knows me well, because he said "Are you sure?" I said, "Sure, I'll just follow the signs home." Well all was going well, but we were really thirsty from the water park and refused to spend anymore money on their ridiculously priced drinks, so we stopped at a gas station to get a drink. As we were pulling out of the gas station, I said to my son, "Do you remember which way we came from?" He replied, "No, do you?" I said very confidently, "Yes, I'm sure we came from that way, so we'll get on right here." As soon I pulled on the ramp, I knew it was the wrong way. I said, "Oh no, this is wrong, but no big deal, we'll pull off and turn around at the next exit." We saw the sign that said waterpark, next exit, so we followed it because that's where we came from before. It wasn't an actual exit but another interstate. I didn't go all the way back to the waterpark, just turned around at the next exit and got back onto the interstate. Now, what I didn't do is realize that I still needed to get back onto the other road I had been on before, so when I turned around, I never got back on the correct one. My husband called to see where we were. It wasn't until then that I realized I hadn't really been paying attention. My son and I had been talking about the day and we were listening to the radio and I really didn't know where I was, so we looked for a sign. It was then that I realized, I wasn't going the right way. Panic set in. I pulled the car over, turned on my GPS and realized I was way out of the way. I went 20 miles down the wrong road. I was furious with myself for not paying more attention. I was so tired and just wanted to click my heals like Dorothy and get home. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." I called my husband back to tell him of my horrible mistake. Not only I had gone the wrong way once, but twice. Once we got back on the road with my GPS, who I call Betty, we were smooth sailing. It took us quite a long time to get home with our little detour. We were both so happy to be home. On the bright side though, we had a good time in the car together jamming to the radio and talking. Am I the only one that is directionally challenged?