A Tropical Stormy Getaway

Denisa and I generally go away with the family for the long Indigenous Peoples Day weekend. We rent a house somewhere a couple of hours away and just try to reset for a few days. The start of the semester can often be really stressful, so it’s nice to take those three days and catch our collective breath. This weekend was no different, or at least that was the plan.

To mix things up a bit, we decided to get a place on the ocean over near Acadia. (Not the popular side of Acadia, as we didn’t want all the crowds. We went for the Schoodic Peninsula.) A small cabin with three bedrooms, so everyone would have their own space, if they wanted it. We loaded the car with board games and snacks, and even brought along Ferris this time. His first real family vacation.

We got off to a later start on Friday than we would have liked, so we didn’t get to the house until well after dark, but Saturday went pretty well, all things considered. The weather had said the remnants of tropical storm Philippe would dump around three inches of rain that day, but the rain didn’t really start until 3 o’clock, giving us time to get out, look at the ocean, go for a long walk, and make sure Ferris didn’t have too much energy in him. Once the rain started, we broke out the board games and the movies, and we had a very nice time. (Even though the board game the girls wanted to play was Monopoly . . .)

At 11:30, the power went out.

We’re used to having some power outages, but our home is right by Walmart and the hospital, which means that the power gets restored in a few hours, almost always. This rental was on the coast in a very remote part of the area, and 16,000 other people had lost power around us. It didn’t come back over night, and when we checked in the morning, it wasn’t supposed to be restored until 10pm. Having no power at home isn’t all that fun. Having no power on vacation, when you know you’ve got power at home?

Yeah. No.

We stayed the day. The girls went for a bike ride. We played some more games. But by 4:30, it was getting dark in the house. (The trees all around it were beautiful, but they blocked what little light we had.) And we still had no running water. So we packed up the car and headed home. We got there in time for another movie, and we focused on ignoring chores yesterday so it still felt at least a little vacationy.

Was it perfect? No. This wasn’t a vacation that will go down in the record books. But it was definitely memorable. Ferris thought the whole thing was the Best Thing Ever. It took him a day to calm down enough in the cabin to be bearable. He just wanted to run all over the place nonstop, and Lick All the Things. But by the end, even he seemed to be relaxing.

Vacation’s done now. I’m back at work. But I do feel a little more centered, and here’s hoping the semester continues smoothly.