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.

I don’t have a lot to say about the traveling itself—yet another road trip in the blue minivan. Although next time I might switch up the meals—instead of lunch outdoors at a rest stop in Ohio and fast food for supper in Tennessee, I think I’d go for lunch inside in the colder states and dinner outside in the warmer ones! But all in all it worked out for the best, as I finally fulfilled the promise I made two years ago on spring break. We saw a Chik-fil-a in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but I bullied the kids into going to a  Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant there. I told them we’d get the Chik later in the trip, but it turns out there aren’t any in New York City. So. Finally got that monkey off my back outside Knoxville, Tennessee. And apparently it was worth the wait.

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.

We walked Bradenton’s Riverwalk last night, which runs along the Manatee River and offers a bunch of little stopping off points. There’s a great playground with a fountain/splash pad that made me nostalgic for the good old days when the kids would be overjoyed at such things. There’s a skate park, which I love to watch, and lots of people fishing along the way. Everyone is out with their dogs—we watched a Chihuahua go on the attack, trying to bite a couple of bigger dogs. Another Chihuahua, fat and elderly, was getting a ride in a wagon because he couldn’t keep walking after the first 100 yards. Somehow these two dogs have won Allison over and she now has her heart set on a Chihuahua. Not sure how those two experiences added up to love. We had sort of hoped to see a manatee in the Manatee River, but the best we could come up with was a lovely heron. Oh, there was also a rusting scooter at the bottom of the river near the skate park, so that was cool.

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.