Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is the ninth book in the series. It mainly focuses on the Heffley family going on a road trip. The book was released in the US on November 4th 2014, while released a day later in the UK and Ireland.

Main Characters

 * Greg Heffley (main character)
 * Susan Heffley
 * Manny Heffley
 * Rodrick Heffley
 * Frank Heffley
 * Beardo Family (main antagonists)
 * The Heffley's Pig

Synopsis
A family road trip is supposed to be a lot of fun... Unless of course, you're the Heffleys. The journey starts off full of promise, then quickly takes several wrong turns. Gas Station bathrooms, a fender-bender, crazed seagulls and a runaway pig - Not Greg Heffley's idea of a good time. But even the worst road trip can turn into an adventure - and this is one the Heffleys Will never forget.

June
The story begins with Greg, Rodrick and Manny relaxing in front of the TV since their summer break just started, when Susan comes to tell them that they are going on a road trip. Greg then talks about how his parents have made surprise trips before too often, and then talks about the "Family Frolic" magazine from which Susan gets all her ideas and explains how they don't turn out well for the family. He then talks about a boat which Frank bought a few years ago, but never used for years and staying there it developed cracks and soon became a store where raccoons started to live in. They then get the stuff they needed for the trip and started cutting what they don't want, but there was still too much of it, even after using the boat to put stuff in it.

On the first day of the road trip, Greg is forced to sit in the back with the stuff by Rodrick. Susan tells the family that there was a special visitor that is coming on the trip, which she takes out Flat Stanley from her purse. She hopes to take photos of him in front of various places on their trip. Susan then puts in a Spanish CD so that they can learn Spanish, but they don't pay attention. Susan later abandons this plan and started playing a game called "Alphabet Groceries", which Greg finds out that Manny can say whatever he wants with the letter instead of food from the grocery store since Susan states that Manny is trying to learn the Alphabet and they all have to encourage him. Susan also created "Mommy Meal", which was a healthier choice than what fast food restaurants have. When he and Rodrick finds out the "prize" is going to be a tutoring session, Greg changes the game by picking up a random game. The game is called "I must confess". During the game, Greg learns a lot of information about his parents that he never knew before. Rodrick actually won for getting a final point for toilet-papering a neighbor's house, but Susan has to give him the phone to apologize a neighbor.

Manny fells asleep, which when Susan finds out, they decided to stop for now. The family decided to pick their dinner up at the grocery store, but if they woke him up then he would have a fit. So, they have to drive slowly and Rodrick has to get out so that he can buy the things they need. After picking up the dinner, they searched through motels. Eventually, they found a motel with air-conditioning and a pool, which is very dirty. The family was forced to have the final room where there are cigarette burns and wet towels in their rooms. There was also 24-hour cancellation policy so they had to stay there. Since Rodrick bought snacks he actually like instead of buying stuff Susan tells him for dinner, they had to eat Sugar Wafers and breath mints for dinner.

Rodrick and Greg decided to go swimming to spend time since there is nothing they can have fun in the motel. However, there was no water at the pool, which hasn't been here for about 5 years. They tried the hot tub, but it was filled with a family, and the tub has a 15-minute policy. Bored, they go back to their room, only to find that everybody else's asleep. Rodrick easily went off to sleep by making a bed since he was one step ahead of Greg. Greg decided to sleep in the closet, but at first there was a smell that Greg can't stop it, and then was suddenly woken up by a loud noise from outside. There were a bunch of kids from the hot tub who got hold of a cleaning cart. He goes out to scold them, but the youngest one starts to cry and runs back into his room. The kid then brings out his father, who made an aggressive look towards Greg, who runs back into his room and they didn't notice which room he went to and went to a wrong one. Greg then places a "Do Not Disturb" key for anyone who tried getting in. He names the family "The Beardos".

After getting up, Greg finds out that the smell that distracted him the night before was Rodrick's shoes, and the "wet cloth" he tried to block of the smell was Rodrick's socks. After the rest of the family gets into the car, Susan decides to take the family to The Country Fair. While driving, they see the Beardos' van, who catch a glimpse of Greg, and they parked the car near the fair. Inside Greg, Rodrick and their father eat deep-fried butter on stick then Greg and Rodrick go for the foulest footwear contest, their entry was Rodrick's shoe which won and was sent for the national contest. There in the livestock area, Manny wins a contest where the person has to guess the closest to a hog's weight, which he guessed 243.1 which turned out to be the actual weight. The prize was a live baby pig and they couldn't return it back.

They had to empty a cooler to but the pig inside it, as it tried to escape.It grew a loving bond with Manny and ate their left-over food. Then later they book a room at a hotel, but it has a no pets rule.They hide the pig and then take it out in the room.The pig went crazy and opened the minibar and ate everything and also drank some of the drinks of both the rooms of Frank, Susan and Manny and that of Rodrick and Greg.They later keep it inside to visit some places. Frank gets a call from an international client and asks the family to be silent, but the pig then starts to suck on Manny's Pacifier until Greg tries to take it out, when it bites him and starts squealing, then a tractor starts honking on them, and Frank finds that his call wasn't cut and his client was still on the other side. They later give the pig to a petting-zoo which makes Manny upset and he gets tempted to run away.

Greg needed to get to a doctor because his finger wasn't well, but they couldn't find a hospital nearby, so they go to a veterinarian hospital instead, where Greg is registered as a pet "Human". A doctor gives him an anti-bacterial ointment and lets him go, while Manny tries to escape again, but they buy a leash so that he doesn't run away. They later arrive at a town where they go to a restaurant, which has the best apple pie Greg had tasted in his life. During that time, Manny runs away for the fourth time but is caught by Frank. After freaking their lives out in a pet cemetery (which they were forced by a funeral van), they pull over at a hotel, and has a room at the seventh floor. But, since the sunroof was broken and they were worried that somebody will sneak in and take all of their stuff, they had to bring in everything they had packed.

After a debate on where they should go to the next morning, Susan thinks that they should go to the beach. After reaching the bridge with a large traffic jam, Frank and Rodrick switch spots. Greg sees a seagull staring at him, and thinking that he kind of felt sorry about it, he threw a cheese curl to the seagull. When he is about to throw another cheese curl, Susan stopped him, saying that seagulls are aggressive, and to never give them "people food". But, the seagull came to the sunroof, saying that he wants more, which got pretty bad when more seagulls came and was fighting over the curls. It got even worse when their van crashes into a car which breaks their radiator. However, Greg sees that the Soak Central waterpark was a few blocks away, and begs Susan to go. Susan wants to do something "wholesome" like going to a library, but is outvoted 4-1.

In the water park, they find only one seat available and pile up their stuff there. Rodrick and Greg go to play hide-and-seek, then to make sure that the seeker doesn't go underwater he has a paper in his hand so that if he goes underwater it would get wet, but Rodrick writes "I'm not waring a bathing suit" which embarrasses Greg and makes people run away from him. Later. he goes on the slide but gets in a fight with a woman and her boyfriend in a line. Greg has enough with the water after that and decided to go home. He finds that the Beardos had taken the chair, and their stuff was piled up somewhere else. Greg thinks he doesn't have the locker key, and told his parents about it. They have to ask a worker about it. Greg kinda remembers the locker number, but when the worker opens the locker, there was no stuff in it. Greg then thinks the Beardos was the thieves, but when they got back, the chair was gone and the Beardos' van drove away when Greg got to the exit. *PART NOT DONE YET* They go to their hotel room and Frank is embarrassed by Mr. Beardo once he was caught using the bathroom. Manny tries to run away again, but is quickly stopped. They then encounter Spanish speaking people helping them in a purple van, where Manny gets his pig back and they go home and it takes a while for things to get back to normal for the Heffley family, but things ultimately do.

At the very end, Greg finds the locker number key in his shorts while he's going through his laundry, and realizes that he got the number wrong. Greg says he has four options: 1.) Simply tell his parents the truth and face the consequences, 2.) Frame Roderick by stashing the key in his laundry, 3.) Flush the key down the toilet, or 4.) Something involving the family's now-pet pig, but Greg doesn't want to risk getting bit by the pig. It's hard for Greg to find out what do next, leaving a cliffhanger ending for this book.

Trivia

 * This is the second book in the series to not have the word "Jeff Kinney" in the middle, the first being the UK version of Cabin Fever.
 * This is the first book where Rowley Jefferson makes a minor appearance, in only one page (were he was lying in bed and Greg was on the floor). This is also the first book where Rowley is not seen on the title page. This is also the first book where Westmore Middle School has no appearances, except for the bathroom shown in a flashback.
 * This is one of the few books where we see branded things mentioned on some pages.
 * This book is the first which covers only one month, which is June, the least of the series.
 * This is the second book that Fregley makes no appearances. The first was Rodrick Rules.
 * This is the first time since Rodrick Rules that there are missing months from the previous book, Rodrick Rules misses July and August from the previous book since it starts from September and the original ends at June, May is missed from Hard Luck in this book.
 * This is the second book where blood is shown in the series, the first being Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck.
 * The scene when the family is helped by two Spanish-speaking men on page 212 is the only time in the book series where the whole Heffley family is shown to be happy.
 * In the scene where Greg's mom accidentally turns on the Spanish CD on page 121, the words coming out of the speakers mean to " Please speak more slowly." This could be a reference to the fact that Greg's dad is trying to talk on a phone, but since everything in the car is going wrong, he would be speaking very quickly to try to cover up everything around him.

Errors

 * Some of the pages shows Greg is taller than Rodrick, however Rodrick is shown taller in rest of the pages.