I spent the weekend in South Haven, MI with five of my best friends from high school, two friends we've made since who could come, one significant other, and eight children between the ages of one and twelve. This could have been a disaster, and I think at least a few of us were worried that it might turn out that way, but it was great. A couple months ago, some of those friends were talking and decided we should get everyone together, and found a house I think off of Home Away. I'm sure you've heard of AirBnB or seen this sort of thing on HGTV, and it's the same sort of thing: people rent out their vacation homes to people for income, so instead of having to get a bunch of people together in a hotel, you get one big place for everyone to gather, and if you get enough people together it's a lot more cost effective. There was a $1000 security deposit, with the rest being paid a month out. We paid about $150 per person for both the house and for food and supplies, sent roughly 435 texts going "Going to the store, need anything?" and then on Friday we packed it up and drove two and a half hours north.
I worked that day (and accidentally left my office in a bit of chaos due to email not syncing, sorry to any coworkers who might be lurking) and left at 3, getting to the house around 6 pm with a time change to Eastern. I was the last to arrive, and everyone had set up in the house already. And the house was legitimately great. There were five bedrooms, two on the lower level and three on the upper, but the master had enough room for an air mattress, there was a great room downstairs that had two sets of bunk beds plus a twin bed, there was a futon in the pool table room, there was a small bed off the sunroom and a large area there where another air mattress could go, and the too-comfortable couch could sleep four. There were four bathrooms, including one that you had to go through when you used the back door to go to the yard, which was awkward, but these things happen when you have house additions. They provided us with supplies and toys and kitchen gadgets that I was still discovering on the way out. There was a fire pit, picnic tables, a deck, a playground that had two playsets for the kids, basketball hoops, a volleyball net, a pool table, foosball table, air hockey table, and ping pong table. No one could ever say they were bored.
We got to have dinner around a big table with all of us, and then moved outside for the world's most disorganized volleyball game. The house is surrounded by woods, so we had to send someone in there quite a bit to go get the volleyball, until we started hearing a raccoon get very upset with us. As a bonus, we kept saying things like "Does anyone know what poison oak looks like?" only to find out today that there actually is poison ivy in there. Soooo we should probably watch for sign of that for a couple days. We let the kids hang out on the playground and made our way to the firepit, having drinks and watching the kids roll down the hill until they had to go to bed. Once everyone else retired, it was down to four of us, playing pool (very carefully; scratching the felt would cost us $400) and talking until we were tired, too.
When you have a house full of people, especially with kids, it doesn't matter how much room you have; you will most likely wake up early. I'd wake up to go to the bathroom and hear people in the kitchen and there was no going back to bed after that. It didn't matter if it was 6:30 am our time, it's time to put the contacts in and join everybody. The second day I was the second awake. My friend's boyfriend was up at like 5, and he was already dressed, putting things in the dishwasher and taking out the trash, and I was a tired lump on the bench around the dining room table, blearily playing with my phone until other people woke up. The first day we cooked way too much food for breakfast and put the rest in giant ziplock bags and then took our time getting ready because the baby was sleeping, and we had more time to talk before the beach.
In California I spent most of my years living in Long Beach, which is named because it's a long beach. That's what I'm used to. My first beach after moving back to the Midwest was in Lake Geneva, which was a designated area that had been blocked off that you could see the end of from anywhere you stood. It was disappointing. I was actually happy with South Beach here. There are seven, and we picked this one because there was a lighthouse that we didn't have to climb anywhere to see. The websites also told us we didn't have to pay to go there, but the parking closer to the beach is paid and metered parking, so that was a surprise expense. The beach itself though was a pleasant surprise. It's on Lake Michigan, so it doesn't have the salt smell I love, but it was a huge beach, not too busy even though after all the worry about the weather it turned out to be a beautiful day. The lake water was cold, though. I think it was 59 degrees? So people wading in would quickly chicken out and walk back, and the kids would start shivering when they were out too long. It was also good that the water didn't get too deep. I swam out with one of the kids pretty far (there was a lot of "You're obviously cold, let's go back," and then she'd say "Nope, I'm fine," and swim out further) and the water was still up to my hips. There were some good waves, but I didn't get too nervous to see some of the older kids hanging out in the lake by themselves. You could see the lighthouse from the beach, and if you look at maps of South Haven, the Black River has very definite markers that run into the lake, and I was curious about that and will show you by hyperlinking a picture. Turns out that the boats from the marina use that to go into the lake, so you could watch as a line of sailboats and speedboats and small cruise boats made their way into Lake Michigan in a single file line. We did run into one problem, though. We made sure all the kids were slathered with sunscreen, but all the adults forgot our backs, so we're all red now. Oops.
Most of us went back to the house, though one car went to find a Meijer, and one person took her son to go explore the downtown area that I didn't get to see except while driving through it. It's small, but there was a little market happening, and they had ice cream shops and restaurants and shopping. The rest of us wanted to shower off the sand, and we thought that we'd overestimated the water heater and that was why four of us were taking freezing cold showers at once, but no, the water heater had just gone out. We didn't realize that's what it was till late, though, and left a message then that they didn't get until 6:30 am, at which point they sent someone over to fix it and we had hot water in time for showers before we left. I also think all of the adults were pretty well exhausted, but we had dinner and let the kids play and went back out to the firepit to make s'mores. Which, by the way, I'd only ever had on a campfire on retreats in high school when all we had to use were sticks to put marshmallows on. All this time I thought I didn't like s'mores when in fact I just didn't like bark in my food. They're way better with metal utensils that were handily provided by the owners.
And then this morning we had to go. After having coffee and talking on the deck, when people started getting up we had to start getting things ready. We had to pack ourselves up, empty out the fridge and distribute the extra ziplock bags full of food and give away alcohol that went amazingly unused and eat up whatever we could so no one had to take it home. Our carbon footprint this weekend was massive. Sorry, environment. There were also instructions from the owner on how to leave the house, so furniture had to be returned to its rightful place. Dishes had to be done and the dishwasher had to be run. We had to strip the beds to get them ready for laundry, even though we didn't have to get it all done. We still made sure that and towels were at least started before we left. We found all the things that had been misplaced over the weekend, cleaned up messes, and made sure everything was the way it was when we got there. It seems like a lot, but when you have a house full of people helping and you can tell the little kids to watch TV till you're done, it's easier than it sounds.
As vacations go, this has to be in my top five. I had a great time with friends and did a lot of laughing. I'm bruised all to hell from volleyball and am burnt and don't necessarily like the way I look in the photos, but none of that matters. What matters is finding a weekend to do this again next year.
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