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.

Characters

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, 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.

Plot

JuneGreg, Rodrick and Manny are 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 a lot of space left, even after using the boat to put stuff in it, Greg is forced to sit in the back with the stuff.

Later, Susan takes out Flat Stanley from her purse, which she hopes to take photos of 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 games. During this, Greg also learns a lot of information about his parents that he never knew before. Manny later falls asleep, if they woke him up then he would have a fit so they kept quiet and even drive slow so that Rodrick can go and get food for dinner. They stop at a cheap motel, which is very dirty and there are cigarette burns and wet towels in their rooms, but there was a 24-hour cancellation 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.

Later, Rodrick and Greg go swimming but there is no water at the pool, which hasn't been here for about 5 years. They tried going in the hot tub, but it was filled with people and there is a 15-minute policy. Bored, they went back to their room, only to find out everybody was asleep. Rodrick easily went off to sleep by making a bed since he was one step ahead of Greg. Greg goes to sleep in the closet, but is suddenly woken up by a loud noise from outside, a bunch of kids 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, 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 "wetcloth" he tried to block of the smell was Rodrick's socks. Susan wanted to get the family going and go 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 wearing a bathing suit" which embarrases 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.

They decide to go home, but they can't find their seat, Greg finds that the Beardos had taken the chair, and their stuff was piled up somewhere else but didn't tell his parents, they didn't find the key and forgot the locker number but Greg remembering it told a worker to open that locker but it turns out its empty. Greg then thinks the Beardos might be the thieves and they go to their hotel room and Frank is embarrassed by Mr. Beardo.

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 them a while to get back to normal. Greg finds the locker number in his shorts and got the number wrong. He then has options to deal with consequences, pawn it off on Rodrick, or flush the key down the toilet. He has a fourth option that involves with the pig, but didn't work out it yet. 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. 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.
• If you notice carefully, on page 48 you can see an illuminati symbol on one of the Underpants Bandits book's cover. It seems to be because there is a pyramid with a dot on top of it. The dot represents an eye in the books.
• The scene when the family is helped by 2 spanish-speaking men on page 212 is the only time in the book series where the whole Heffley family is shown to be happy.

Errors

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

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