Quists Gone Wild: Spring Break Edition
Driving from Michigan to Florida during early April is like
driving through spring in fast forward. When we left on Friday morning, you
could see a crocus here and there, and the hyacinths were just beginning to
poke their heads out, checking to see if the coast was clear. The trees didn’t
show any signs of waking up yet, other than a bucket hanging from a random
tapped maple in town.
In southern Ohio, we noticed there were some small, white
flowering trees along the roadside, mixed in with larger trees that were
showing signs of budding. Kentucky and Tennessee were a time-lapse; first there
were the redbuds, then the hazy hues of gold, green, yellow, red and pink that
look like a rainbow-colored peach fuzz. Then we hit Georgia and Florida, and
the green leaves unfurled around us so that by the time we hit Bradenton, we
were into full-blown June.
Some of you know that my father-in-law had a ruptured brain
aneurysm in late February. I couldn’t help but think of him as I watched the
timid trees in the north make tentative motion toward life. That was Dad for
several weeks; then the next two weeks were a whirlwind of budding, blossoming
and then Phil in full bloom. I’m so grateful to witness both of these
transformations.
This trip I’m pretty much Google maps-dependent. I did not
spend any time poring over the atlas to burn into my brain the route I would be
taking. This has its pros and cons. On the first night, when we drove into
Atlanta in the dark and in the rain after about 14 hours in the car, it took us
on what seemed to be a very circuitous route to our hotel. I was at the end of
my rope and was not feeling kindly toward the big G. However, the next day it
took us on two different scenic routes to avoid very heavy traffic on 75, and I
think it saved us a lot of time. Plus you somehow feel superior, like you have
a leg up on the competition. Like you and the 10 cars ahead of you and the semi
behind you know something that no one else knows.
But here’s a drawback of the Google map experience. In the
old days, I would track how many miles we’d gone, how many we had to go. When
we drove slowly, I would know in my mind that, okay, those miles were going to
take a bit longer. But Google likes to offer me an estimated arrival time or
the time it expects the trip to take. Those times can change at any moment, or
they can just stay the same for long periods of time. So when you see the map
telling you that you have 4 hours and 6 minutes left, and you hit heavy
traffic, and you stay in that heavy traffic for half an hour, you get the joy
of looking at your map again and finding that you now have 4 hours and 5
minutes left. Hmph. Or even worse, 4 hours and 12 minutes left. It’s like you’ve
been separated from the usual time-space continuum and you are now stuck in the
black hole of time that is I-75.
We find that we are in good company in that black hole.
Rough estimates would put about a third of West Michigan’s population on the
same highway, judging by the license plates surrounding us. Yes, we’re smitten
with the Mitten, and I’m a Great Lakes Girl, and Michigan is “MI Happy Place,”
but dang. It’s snowing there. #puremichigan
My traveling companions are my three “children”—18, 17 and
12. Plus they each invited a friend. A family emergency took the eldest’s
friend out of the equation, so in the end there are six of us. As much as we
wish Kevin could come, it’s a lot easier to fit 5 teenagers in the van than 6.
So poor Andrew soldiers on, surrounded by females as usual.
Brian, on the other hand, is on his own for the week. His
business partner is gone, so Brian has to stay put. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t
envy the driving trip, but once we got here he sounded pretty wistful. I’m trying
to feel sorry for him, but I’m too excited that he is refinishing some floors
and renovating the bathroom while I’m gone!
So we are here. Here is Bradenton, a rented house that took
me a long time to find. I was looking for something that would comfortably
sleep 7 without having everyone trip over everyone else. The house I found came
on the market last minute—it is the vacation home for a family that has just
begun renting it out. Let’s just say we were unprepared for the niceness of our
place! It’s not on the beach or anywhere near it, or we wouldn’t have been able
to pay the price. But it has a pool, hot tub and numerous other amenities. I’m
pretty sure any one of the appliances in the kitchen cost more
than our entire
kitchen remodel! So we are quite spoiled.
The pool and back patio is covered by an enormous lanaii (I think
that’s what it’s called), a huge screened-in room that is two stories tall. If
Brian were here he’d be feeling some screen envy, but I don’t think the screen
structure would survive a decent snowfall. It’s very pleasant to be able to sit
outside in the tropical night air with zero bug count.
We haven’t really done anything much besides swim and go to
the grocery store twice, which has been entertaining in and of itself due to
the fact that the guy who stocks the produce department is a fan of the video
game Zelda, and when Natalie walked by with her Zelda t-shirt on, he began
whistling a song from the game loudly. Nothing fills my daughter with joy in
quite the same way as finding other people from her multiple fandoms.
Today we got up the motivation to drive to Coquina Beach on
Anna Maria Island, a gorgeous beach that feels strikingly similar to sitting at
Holland State Park on Lake Michigan, all salt aside. We are all sunburned on
various parts that were missed by sunscreen, but no one is completely fried. The
drive there isn’t far, maybe 20 minutes in moderately heavy traffic, but
apparently if you hit it wrong, getting onto the island can take an hour or
more. But hey, what’s a little more time in the car, right?
We’ve watched my dad-in-law come to life; we’ve watched the
landscape come to life. Now we are beginning to feel ourselves come to life.
Swimming, sleep, and southern skies are working their magic on us all.