Mmmmm. Ice cream … who’s worried about hurricanes when we’ve got a double scoop of chocolate marshmallow?
Tag: vacation
I’m not one to simply serve up stories from other sources and to republish them here, but this article on our National Park system caught my attention. I love our National Parks. I really, really agree that they are our best idea – I only wish I had more time to visit more of them, more often.
Twenty years ago today, I took a Friday night flight from Newark to Las Vegas for the start of a week-long vacation – rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The time spent that week ranks as my most favorite trip; it was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I wish I could do it again. The photos we took that week capture the memories not only of a vacation, but of a time in my life when I was much less unencumbered and bound by work and family. The group of friends with whom I shared the trip have been long gone from my life for nearly 17 years, but I wonder if they reminisce about that trip and the time we spent camping along the banks of the river, the arrival at Phantom Ranch, sleeping in the bunkhouses and the long trek up the Bright Angel Trail to the Canyon’s South Rim.
Many years after the Grand Canyon, Edith and I vacationed at Acadia and the Outer Banks; we honeymooned in Hawaii and witnessed the sunrise over Haleakala, but there are so many more National Parks I long to discover: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Glacier, the Badlands, the Great Smoky Mountains. Someday, I will get to them all; someday.
Katie and Will waiting for takeoff from Newark Airport to Orlando.
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The view from the deck this past weekend at Long Beach Island; the in-laws have rented a house on 18th Street, in the block on the beach, for the week in Surf City, while my brothers-in-law have rented a house on the beach around the corner from the in-laws. We dropped in on Sunday morning, and spent the night before returning home late on Monday. These photos were taken while relaxing and sipping mojitos, late Sunday afternoon…
The house the in-laws are staying in is one that they’ve rented on many previous summer vacations; I distinctly remember being at the house some 16 years ago back in the early 90’s while the Missus and I were still dating, hanging out her then school-aged brothers and sisters, who are now grown, some married, with multiple kids of their own.
W. and K. both had a great, albeit too short, time. The shore was experiencing the effects of Hurricane Bill, and the surf was pretty rough with a wicked rip-tide, so there wasn’t much swimming going on. W.’s swimming had really progressed this past summer, thanks to his twice-weekly swimming lessons at the Princeton YWCA, but he settled for the chance to try out his new boogie board along the shoreline. W., his Grandfather and I spent a few hours fishing off the bulkhead at Barnegat lighthouse, but again Bill’s effects were too much to allow us even a nibble before we decided to pack it in. Later, he and Grandpa played mini-golf while K. played with her half-dozen or so girl cousins at her Uncles’ house on the beach. On Monday morning, we sipped coffee on the beach as the sun rose over the Atlantic, before we took the kids to see Old Barney, where W. and I climbed up all 217 steps to enjoy the view from the top of the lighthouse. The rest of the family established a compound on the beach, which we joined a little after lunch until late in the afternoon, spending time alternating between reading and collecting shells and starfish in the surf near the jetty.
All in all, it was a nice time, and as much as I’m not truly a beach-person, it was great for the kids to spend time with their cousins at the same beach where my wife spent endless summers with her brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends. I like the idea of our kids growing up and building some of those same sacred memories of summers with family at LBI, and we’re already looking at renting a place with the rest of the family for next summer’s vacation.
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