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Sometimes the memories from a trip are not the ones you expected.

In the summer of 2007 we took three grandsons to Camp-of-the-Woods in Speculator, New York. The boys’ parents were moving from central Virginia to another area but hadn’t located a house yet. The five of us—Monty, me, and the three boys—headed north to Pennsylvania, where we enjoyed a presentation at the Sights and Sound Theater in Lancaster and stayed at a dairy farm.

Then we drove to Camp-of-the-Woods, where for a week the boys safely rock-climbed inside under watchful eyes, learned how to use a Zip line, fished and cooked their fish over a fire, swam in the lake, and won a sand castle competition. Since their grandfather and I had recently returned from a week of white-water rafting through the Grand Canyon, we thought a beginner white-water experience would be good for the boys—so, through the camp, we included a very safe white-water rafting expedition in the Adirondack Mountains.

After our week at Camp-of-the-Woods, we headed to Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut so we could make a plaster-of-paris mold of a dinosaur track in one of the largest dinosaur-track sites in North America. We had brought cooking oil, rags, a five-gallon bucket, and ten pounds of plaster-of-paris, as instructed by the park.

Preparing dinosaur-track mold

We should have realized that the day wouldn’t go as planned when the fire alarm went off around 2:00 that morning in our hotel near Rocky Hill, Connecticut. We all smelled smoke, grabbed wet towels in the dark, felt the door for heat, and scrambled down the back stairs to the parking lot. The hotel belched out sleepy occupants in various stages of undress. We sat on the curb in the parking lot and waited for an hour until the firemen discovered that an employee had smoked a cigarette near the outside ventilation intake! Of course, the fire marshal wouldn’t let us back in until all was cleared and the terrible pulsating alarm was shut off.

Back in our room, the five of us were too wound up with adrenalin to sleep. The next morning we groggily celebrated Patrick’s tenth birthday by heading to the Dinosaur State Park. After lunch, we started home to Virginia with our precious dinosaur-track casting.

We knew that driving past New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington would take time, but we didn’t count on spending half the day stalled in the traffic of a slow-moving freeway. Finally, exhausted, frustrated, and hungry, we pulled off the road to a motel. Following a quick check-in, five hungry travelers scurried to the adjacent restaurant.

Afterwards, the three boys and I headed to the motel office to find a video to check out. Monty took a short cut to the room because he was in extreme pain, limping from his swollen injured ankle from playing dodgeball with the boys earlier. The oldest and youngest grandsons were anxious to get to the room, so they didn’t wait for Patrick and me to finish checking out a video.

Our room was just around the corner and down the hall, yet I had strong reservations about those two going on ahead; but I didn’t stop them because I knew Monty would already be in the room. Besides, I was only seconds away from checking out the videos and would be right behind them in the hallway.

When Patrick and I returned to the room, we found Grandpa but not Patrick’s two brothers. We retraced our steps, checking every place we could imagine. Security, motel staff, and others joined us. Soon the police arrived to help searching the grounds outside as well as going door-to-door searching on all floors.

One policeman trying to get a description of the boys from Patrick had a tough job. As the officer quizzed him, Patrick blurted, “This is the best and worst day of my life! I started with two brothers and now I’m an only child!” As the tears flowed down Patrick’s cheeks, the policeman—trying to change the subject—asked him for his home address. Patrick wailed, “I’m homeless!”

The policeman looked at me in wide-eyed horror. Wondering if he thought I had abducted homeless children, I quickly explained that the boys’ parents were moving. Although they didn’t have a new address yet, they were not homeless in the usual sense.

The motel was located beside a freeway and the restaurant was a popular truck stop, so the police were concerned that the two boys might have been abducted since there had been some cases of that happening. After a reasonable search didn’t locate them, an alert was broadcast. While everyone else renewed their search, I stood outside our door, scanning the area again. Suddenly a familiar little head peeked out of a doorway across the hall! I lunged to grab the door before it closed. Sure enough, the two children were in that room watching cartoons and somehow oblivious that anyone thought they were missing.

It turned out that several rooms adjacent to ours were being remodeled and the workers had left about the time we returned from dinner. The workmen accidentally left the door open to a room close to ours and the boys thought it was our room (just one number off). Being anxious to watch cartoons after a week and a half away from television, they became absorbed in the cartoons. For them, time stood still, and they were oblivious to everything else. Somehow in all the confusion, that particular room had never been checked since it was being remodeled.

Once the boys were found and we realized what had happened, all the rest of us had very mixed emotions—yes, even the police. We were grateful the boys hadn’t been harmed, yet angry at the childish thoughtlessness that had caused so many people anguish and distress for hours.

Yes, the unexpected can happen—but it builds memories and we grow. That trip definitely left memories different from the ones I expected. Now—years later—I can laugh about it, especially the part about them being “homeless.”