(Family Vacation.)
Almost all of my favorite childhood memories happened in the summer. When I was a kid we would spend at least a whole month visiting family in the North. I thought that was how vacations were done. I thought that all parents had all summer off, and that at least half of it was spent in the most beautiful part of the country: Michigan.
Michigan is gorgeous.
While in the winter it is blanketed with misery and snow drifts, in the summertime, few places can rival her sandy beaches, her great lake, her towering lighthouses, her qauint townships, her majestic boardwalks, or her ridiculous "musical fountain" type activities at night.
Probably not all of Michigan is this way.
But Western Michigan, in Grand Haven and Holland, oh, that's where the dream is lived.
Almost all of my favorite childhood memories happened in the summer. When I was a kid we would spend at least a whole month visiting family in the North. I thought that was how vacations were done. I thought that all parents had all summer off, and that at least half of it was spent in the most beautiful part of the country: Michigan.
Michigan is gorgeous.
While in the winter it is blanketed with misery and snow drifts, in the summertime, few places can rival her sandy beaches, her great lake, her towering lighthouses, her qauint townships, her majestic boardwalks, or her ridiculous "musical fountain" type activities at night.
Probably not all of Michigan is this way.
But Western Michigan, in Grand Haven and Holland, oh, that's where the dream is lived.
Ah, I do love it up there.When I was a kid, my grandparents owned this log cabin that was snuggled into 100 acres of woodlands. My cousins and I would spend days building forts, playing endless games of "Tom and Huck," and exploring. I spent every July smelling of bug spray and sunblock.
These days they've moved into town, which puts us about five minutes from the beach, downtown, the boardwalk, the pier, and clover bar pizza. No complaints.
These days they've moved into town, which puts us about five minutes from the beach, downtown, the boardwalk, the pier, and clover bar pizza. No complaints.
As you can tell from the photos, we managed to have a good time, and that I wasn't lying about Michigan's beauty. The only real problem with this vacation spot is her remarkable distance from our home in Texas.
My mom, who has always been the brains of the outfit, bought herself a plane ticket from Dallas to Grand Rapids and encouraged all of us to do the same. But for whatever reason, Micah, Nicole, Gage and I figured we'd save money and partake in the 21 hour road trip across the country in my blue pt cruiser. Not only did we think that driving was the best decision, we also thought that leaving Dallas at 10pm on Friday night after everyone got off work was the best decision.
Nicole had been up since six am, Micah had been up since five am, and though I'd been sleeping for most of the day, it was drug induced because I was fighting a 104 degree fever, and the worst constipation of my entire life. It was as if my insides tied themselves up in knots and didn't allow anything but water to pass.
We loaded the car at quarter to ten, my sister called first shift driving, and off we sped into the night, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and ultimately Michigan bound.
The next thing I know I was waking up to chanting, "I-Have-ta-PEE, I-Have-ta-PEE!" and the lights of a gas station illuminating the car through the window. Micah's eyes were puffy like mine, apparently we'd all been sleeping except for Nicole. Of course, you can probably tell by the chanting that we all get a little delusional when we go too long without sleep, so she'd worked herself into a frenzy.
"There are no damn gas stations on this street!" She explained.
"What street?" Micah mumbled sleepily.
"Oklahoma turnpike. I've had to pee for like three hours, but there's literally been no where to stop. But now there is a place to stop. YES, I finally get to pee."
It was roughly four o'clock in the morning, and we were somewhere near the Oklahoma-Missouri state line. But that meant that Nicole had been driving in silence, with no sibling moral support, in the middle of the night for close to six hours, after having been awake for 22 hours straight and having a full work day and a four-year old.
My mouth hung open from exhaustion and sickness as I watched Nicole jump from the driver's seat and sprint up to the building only to find it locked.
You'd have thought it was the end of the world the way she screamed.
Tears were coming to her eyes, and panic crossed her tired face, and profanity was surely on the tip of her tongue, when my brother stepped in and said, "Don't worry. We'll just go around back."
But Nicole doesn't have much practice peeing outside, she was really, really tired, and there had to be the added pressure of knowing that at least 30 of the 50 truckers parked facing the building had woken from their slumber from her scream, only to watch the pee show.
Yeah, it turned out to be a show.
It takes talent to soak yourself like this woman did.
I'd go into further details, and trust me I could, but I'll spare you. We'll just say that now she's covered in her own urine and we still have no access to a bathroom to wipe it off.
At this point I'd gotten out of the car to try and walk around a little, all the while wondering if I was going to puke or not, Micah was laughing so hard that tears dripped from the end of his nose, Gage is still passed out in his car seat, and Nicole is problem solving and a giggley panic: Squeedgee.
You know, the thing that wipes dead bugs from windshields?
Now we've got blue shit running down her calves, Micah in fetal position, me hunched over a trash can and some 400lbs homeless looking lady laughing at us from over yander in the parking lot.
Nicole finally manages to get herself cleaned up, we rotate drivers, and off we go again onto the Oklahoma turnpike. About three miles down the road, though my eyes were closed, I heard my sister ask Micah, "if you were homeless, why would you choose to be homeless at a gas station in the middle of no where on a turnpike? Seems like you'd do better charity wise in a city under a bridge."
"That was the truck stop prostitute, not a homeless lady."
I smiled to myself in the back seat.
A 400 lbs. truck stop prostitute with a chilly bowl hair cut, and my family's road trip is the spectacle. We've just reached a new level of white trash, and it is nothing but awesome.
If and when you have the choice:
Buy the Plane Ticket.
