My family loves to reminisce about vacations we took when I was a kid. A great many of those include memories of minor disasters that almost always seemed to accompany us. Take the time that my parents had tethered Sean's and my sleeping bags to the top of the car, and they rolled away into oblivion before we reached my grandpa's cabin in Drummond, WI. Or the time when we were driving home from Drummond and a garbage bag full of dirty laundry fell out of the car top carrier and my parents were pulled over for suspicion of improper disposal of garbage.
Of course anyone who knows my family knows that car troubles far and away made up most of our vacation maladies. Driving to my Grandma Flaherty's in Chicago or to Drummond, more often than not something went wrong. Legend has it that Sean was able to diagnose car troubles at the tender age of 8 ("Dad, I think we threw a rod again"). One memorable time the station wagon broke down in Merrill. We needed a mechanic to look at it, but we had to wait for some hours because he was at the Hodag festival along with everyone else in town. No lie.
For all of these reasons, it's ironic that I have any kind of expectations for vacation at all. My mom and I spent hours on the internet last winter searching for a vacation spot. It needed to be waterfront and able to accomodate our large group. Finally we settled on a pretty-looking place in Amery. It would be a long trip but worth it, we were sure. After visiting Mark's brother and sister-in-law in Minnesota, my family and I arrived first. It quickly became clear that the place was not exactly as advertised. The outside was decidedly not well-maintained. Soon we ventured down to the "water" and discovered that the lake actually was a weedy marsh. Despite some lacking qualities, the inside of the place, overall, turned out to be fairly nice, but the absence of water stung.
It didn't take long for hijinx to begin. Wednesday night Mark and I were cooking dinner. Mark went to start the grill and, no big surprise here, it was out of gas and home to some kind of nest. I sighed deeply and preheated the oven and returned to the basement. Twenty minutes later I went upstairs to put the food in the oven. Smoke and the smell of burning plastic were coming from a burner on the stove. Unbeknownst to me, in a bit of morning chaos, my mom had stuck a washer game (a kind of lawn game) in the oven to get it out of the way. Foolish me. I was laboring under the silly assumption that I would not find a lawn game in the oven. Miraculously, the game was only mildly charred, and dinner made it to the table without further incident.
Wednesday and Thursday were terrible weather days. Rain fell in sheets, and the sky stayed a depressing color of gray sun up to sun down. The kids were acting up, and I felt desperate to get out of the house. Friday started out the same way. However, when a break in the rain came, we decided to venture outside and hope for the best. I'm so happy we did. We headed to Interstate State Park. The weather turned warm and sunny, and Ben, Paul, Kelan and Gus finally got a chance to frolick in the water and play in the sand. Suddenly it all felt worth it.
We've vowed to start early to research and find an ideal place for next summer's vacation. No doubt it, too, will contain some unwanted surprises. No matter what happens, though, we'll always have our memories and funny stories.
Of course anyone who knows my family knows that car troubles far and away made up most of our vacation maladies. Driving to my Grandma Flaherty's in Chicago or to Drummond, more often than not something went wrong. Legend has it that Sean was able to diagnose car troubles at the tender age of 8 ("Dad, I think we threw a rod again"). One memorable time the station wagon broke down in Merrill. We needed a mechanic to look at it, but we had to wait for some hours because he was at the Hodag festival along with everyone else in town. No lie.
For all of these reasons, it's ironic that I have any kind of expectations for vacation at all. My mom and I spent hours on the internet last winter searching for a vacation spot. It needed to be waterfront and able to accomodate our large group. Finally we settled on a pretty-looking place in Amery. It would be a long trip but worth it, we were sure. After visiting Mark's brother and sister-in-law in Minnesota, my family and I arrived first. It quickly became clear that the place was not exactly as advertised. The outside was decidedly not well-maintained. Soon we ventured down to the "water" and discovered that the lake actually was a weedy marsh. Despite some lacking qualities, the inside of the place, overall, turned out to be fairly nice, but the absence of water stung.
It didn't take long for hijinx to begin. Wednesday night Mark and I were cooking dinner. Mark went to start the grill and, no big surprise here, it was out of gas and home to some kind of nest. I sighed deeply and preheated the oven and returned to the basement. Twenty minutes later I went upstairs to put the food in the oven. Smoke and the smell of burning plastic were coming from a burner on the stove. Unbeknownst to me, in a bit of morning chaos, my mom had stuck a washer game (a kind of lawn game) in the oven to get it out of the way. Foolish me. I was laboring under the silly assumption that I would not find a lawn game in the oven. Miraculously, the game was only mildly charred, and dinner made it to the table without further incident.
Wednesday and Thursday were terrible weather days. Rain fell in sheets, and the sky stayed a depressing color of gray sun up to sun down. The kids were acting up, and I felt desperate to get out of the house. Friday started out the same way. However, when a break in the rain came, we decided to venture outside and hope for the best. I'm so happy we did. We headed to Interstate State Park. The weather turned warm and sunny, and Ben, Paul, Kelan and Gus finally got a chance to frolick in the water and play in the sand. Suddenly it all felt worth it.
We've vowed to start early to research and find an ideal place for next summer's vacation. No doubt it, too, will contain some unwanted surprises. No matter what happens, though, we'll always have our memories and funny stories.
