The McTodds: XMas Journey

So, as Diana has already alluded below (I still think it's weird that earlier stuff comes below in blogs, above in most anything else...), our return trip should have been about 9-9.5 hours, and ended up taking more like 11.5. Here's the interesting part of the story.
We said a tearful goodbye to my grandfather at his condo in Kent at about 10:30 and got on the road. Traffic was pretty steady down through New Jersey until we got about 1/2 way across the north-south traverse. Then it slowed down quite a bit. We briefly toyed with the idea of taking I-95:
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because it's about 1.5 hours shorter if there's no traffic, instead of the Eastern Shore:

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but changed our mind after the first 5 words we got from the Sirius Radio DC Traffic report was "heavy traffic all over DC". So we stuck with the route we had used on the way up, across the mind boggling 20 mile bridge/tunnel:

This initially seemed like the right decision as the traffic moved steadily. We got to the bridge/tunnel at about 8:45pm, thinking we were on the home stretch. We started through the toll, and were stopped by the gentleman in the tollbooth, which perplexed us since we have an EZPass and had been tollbooth-small-talk free for our entire trip. We were perplexed until the guy told us that we couldn't go across the bridge due to the fact that there was a wind advisory in place, and we had the rocket box on the top of our car. When there's a wind advisory no one with anything on the top of their vehicle, in the bed of their vehicle, or towing anything is allowed across the bridge. He kindly informed us that we could wait for the wind to subside, go around, or if we could unbolt the rocket box, we could put it in the "wind van, which comes around once in a while and will take stuff across for you". He then directed us to the rest area, where we could see LOTS of other vehicles in a similar predicament. We drove over there and quickly confirmed on the map that it would take about 5 hours of driving to go around (via Annapolis, MD and DC). I then used the little tape measure I got in my Christmas popper to confirm that while we had about 6 feet of cargo space in the back of the wagon, the box is about 7 feet long. So we got aggravated and were thinking we were kinda SOL. In the meantime we chatted with some nice folks that had just come across the bridge the other way, and were trying to find the leash in their car so they could walk their dog. We lent them ours while we scratched our heads. Then Diana had a clever idea. She suggested that she sit in the passenger seat with the dog on her lap, and I drive. This way we could move the passenger seat ALL the way forward, and maybe we could get the rocket box in the car. So I unbolted the box from the top, we talked the dog walking folks into giving us a hand, and we put the box into the back. We were still about 8 inches short. So Diana suggested cranking the seat back forward. Well, this got the box inside, and resulted in this:

We then jumped in the car, with Diana's head basically over the dashboard, and with the dog unhappily on her slanty lap. We drove through the same toll (unfortunately the guy didn't even notice it was the same car, so we didn't get to show off our big brains and willingness to drive in compromising positions). The ocean where we could sea it was gnarly! With good sized waves. I still don't think they should have kept us from going across with the rocket box on the top, but oh well.
When we got to the other side we stopped as soon as possible and took the box out and put it back on top: