A road trip isn’t a road trip unless you’re forced to call a tow truck at least once.

After seven provinces and two territories of smooth car sailing, we finally had to call CAA and admit we were stuck. Stuck in PEI’s beautiful, rich, red mud. Stuck real good. Way, to go team!

What happened? A combo of factors, really, the first being our GPS. It led us down some back roads, all of which were totally manageable at first (and gave us the smug feeling that were 'off-roading'). They were leading us to “Bay Street.”

We made it to Bay Street, but it turned out to be less of a street and more an “Alley of Mud Through Which Dana and Lindsay, While Nervous, Ultimately Decided they Could Navigate Their Small Car.”

After getting (what I consider to be) impressively far, we steered left to avoid a lake-sized puddle, hit a rut, and that was it.

So what happened next? Well, I can honestly say that of every thing that went wrong on our trip, I am most of proud of how we handled this situation. There was no yelling, no blaming, no swearing.

(There was probably a little bit of swearing. I can almost guarantee I swore. But it was not at Dana).

The initial stress was significant, yes, but neither of us freaked out. We took it step by step. It went something like this:

1. Dana got out and pushed from the front while I put the car in reverse. No success. Dana was now covered in mud.

2. We thanked the stars for our excellent cell phone coverage, and called CAA. The lady on the line was delightful, and assured us there would be someone on the way within an hour.

3. With time to kill, we had to decide what to do. The obvious answer was…..

Put on Katy Perry and have a dance party.

And so.....we have just admitted we listen to Katy Perry. Moving along.

Next, we took pictures to congratulate ourselves on our accomplishment.

Finally, we celebrated when help finally arrived.

And just like that, two very kind men pulled the Yaris back onto stable ground. This was also the moment we discovered it’s (relatively?) common for men to refer to women as ‘fellas’ on the east cost. It was shocking, and awesome.

We had plans that evening in Charlottetown, so we hightailed it to our hotel. With pants and boots now covered in mud, we walked into the elegant hotel lobby, checked in, and sheepishly said to the valet who was parking our car:

“It’s the white one. Well, white....ish, red-y one. Sigh. You’ll know it when you see it.”

-LA