This is a continuation of the story begun in a previous blog post, of a vacation misadventure in 1997.
Travel — August 1
I awoke at 10:30am, a bit bruised and stiff. If you are ever in a car accident, you discover that you tend to pull and strain muscles from the involuntary bracing. Once the adrenaline wears off, you discover you have sore spots where you didn’t even know you had spots. That was my state.
I got up, took some ibuprofin, and then typed a report about the accident into my laptop. I then faxed the whole thing, including the accident report case number and other information, to my insurance agent. I’ll let him worry about it from here. I’m on vacation. To relax. To reduce stress. Yeah, right.
We got packed up and loaded the car. We checked out at 1pm and went to a delayed brunch at a nearby restaurant that was not a pancake place. The only notable thing about this was that Elizabeth really had a nice lunch, and then a fantastic dessert: “Cup of Dirt.” This was a bowl of chocolate pudding, covered with a layer of crumbled oreo cookies (sans filling), with several big gummy worms intermixed. It looked disgusting, so she loved it.
After that, we drove south to Fort Myers Beach, where we have a suite in the Pink Shell Beach Resort, on Estero Island (near Sanibel and Captiva). We directly overlook a beautiful beach on the Gulf of Mexico. It was lovely.
After arriving, I crashed for 45 minutes and took a nap. Then we went in search of food. We ended up at a small restaurant in a marina. The place was called the “Rusty Pelican,” which I thought (and still think) is a great name for the beach, and had wonderful food. I had grouper and Kathy had mahi. Elizabeth said she wanted chicken, but then refused to eat any. In fact, she refused to eat anything. She dropped her napkin and silverware on the floor, spilled her water on the table and on Kathy, spit out some of her food on the plate, and started crying. Then she really began to misbehave. Clearly, the excitement of the past few days had caught up with her. We had to leave without dessert, but even with all that, we still had a table full of strangers come over and compliment us on how pretty and well-behaved Elizabeth was. They did not appear to be angry, sarcastic, psychotic people — they seemed quite sincere. I shudder to think about how their children must act!
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the grocery store and got some basic supplies for the kitchen in the suite.
August 2
Arose earlier than on previous days. Had breakfast in the room. Then, we applied lots of sunscreen (but later learned we missed some sensitive spots) and went down to the beach. This was Elizabeth’s first experience with the beach, but she loved it (after a few minutes). The Gulf has warm water, gentle waves, and nice sand. She enjoyed sitting at the edge of the surf. However, this necessitated me taking her out into deeper water every 10 minutes and shaking about 10 pounds of sand out of her suit, introduced through the surf dragging her bottom through the sand. We spent an hour on the beach, and then adjourned to the pool for a while.
We returned to the room to rinse off, give Elizabeth a snack, and sort through some items. We also called my Dad and found that we had a new nephew, Liam, born Tuesday. Apparently, the day we left (Monday), my sister went into labor. The next morning, she gave birth to my latest nephew, Liam. Everybody else in her family is ill at the moment, so it has been a somewhat trying time. My brother-in-law, trying to juggle everything else going on, couldn’t find my cell phone number, so he called and left a message on our answering machine back home. Of course, Kathy and I haven’t been checking that…because I’d been carrying the dang cell phone around for the past week, getting it caught in every ride at Disneyworld and restaurant chair I sat in as we awaited the news. (It was an age when cell phones were really large and bulky.)
After lunch and a nap, it was back to the beach at low tide. Elizabeth wanted to look for shells and swim again. However, her approach to gathering shells was to pick up every piece of shell she sees, whether it is whole, a fragment, a rock, seaweed, a bottle cap or whatever. As soon as her hands got full, she dumped the lot in the water, and started again. Needless to say, this is not terribly productive from the point of view of a discerning collector, but it is mildly interesting to watch. It actually is a metaphor for how some people live their lives, I guess (except for the bottle caps). At least she had more fun than searching for the “perfect” shells.
After a quick dip in the pool, we returned to the room, shower, and dressed. Rather than tempt fate too much, we decided to play it safe and not go anywhere for dinner. Instead, we called a local pizza place with a good recommendation by the management. I ordered two salads, a small cheese pizza for Elizabeth, and a “deluxe” for Kathy & myself with green peppers on only half (of the pizza, not Kathy) — green peppers and Kathy don’t seem to get along very well. With that, we turned the TV on to Nickelodeon for Elizabeth.
A half hour later, there was a knock at the door. It was our pizzas. However, there were no salads. We pointed that out, and the delivery guy headed back to the store to fetch the salads. Elizabeth dived into her pizza and declared it “yum” — thankfully. Kathy and I opened our pizza to discover that they put green peppers everywhere. However, in a unique twist on this usual Murphy’s Law result, they have put only green peppers on half of the pizza — no cheese! The delivery man, when he returned, was as perplexed as we were. However, his manager was not on duty, so the best he could offer was to give us a coupon for half off our next pizza order…as if we were there at the beach to keep ordering pizza! Anyhow, Kathy proceeded to pick peppers placed on her pizza (tomorrow, she will sell seashells by the seashore). Then we all went to bed early. (And, to add that special touch to my vacation, Kathy has developed terribly sore bruises across her abdomen where the seat belt got her. She is unable to bend at the waist, or even tolerate even so much as a gentle hug from either Elizabeth or myself. Put your own punchlines here.)
August 3
Absolutely nothing terrible happened today — what a relief. We arose late, had breakfast, and played in the surf and then the pool for several hours. (Well, Kathy was too sore to play, actually, but she did wade.) We made up some lunch in the room (Elizabeth had more cheese pizza), then headed out to a nearby Walmart to get some sunburn lotion, some beach toys, and some additional grocery items. After that, and a short nap for Elizabeth, we headed back out to the beach while Kathy did some laundry. The tide was going out, so after a little swimming, Elizabeth and I walked down the beach a ways, picking up shells. Then we played some with her new beach toys. For her, this basically meant picking up sand and dumping it in the water, then filling her bucket with water and dumping it in the sand. She found it great fun.
Kathy finished the laundry and came out to join us. All three of us walked out through the water to a sandbar, now exposed by the low tide. On the way, the water never got above my waist, where earlier in the day the water was above my head; it was a considerable tide. On the sandbar, we joined lots of people (mostly kids — this is a popular family resort) looking for shells. I guess I’m particularly good at this — I dug up a clam, found over a dozen small hermit crabs and two blue crabs, several anemones, a jellyfish, and two sand dollars. (I released all of them afterwards.) One of the kids who was watching me pull these up found a brittle starfish. Elizabeth displayed her usual focus on such interesting things — by digging up sand and dumping it in the water.
Some of the older girls who were present were fascinated by the parade of sea creatures I came up with and one asked “Are you a scientist?” Afterwards, I realized I should have answered “Not simply a scientist — a mad scientist” and given my best maniacal laugh. However, Kathy quickly explained that I was not only a scientist, but basically a harmless old fart scientist. When I complained about this, she enjoyed pointing out that had the young lady been a few years older, she would have seen that for herself. Elizabeth’s only comment: “Look, Dad: sand!”
We then adjourned to the pool where Elizabeth had a great time with her new water wings. In fact, it took both Kathy & myself to drag her out and convince her it was time to leave (30 minutes after sunset!). By that time, she was exhausted and shivering from the cold. So, I ended up wrapping her in her towel and once again carrying her back to our room. This is why we got a 3rd floor room with no elevators, of course. A quick, warm shower, and we went out for a late dinner. We ended up, by accident, at a nearby restaurant somewhat off the beaten path. We had a great dinner, with Kathy & I each having scallops with crab stuffing. Elizabeth had most of a hotdog, then pushed her plate away and tried to go to sleep on the table. We took this as a broad hint, got our desserts to go, and headed back to the room.
Elizabeth went right to bed. Kathy & I had key lime pie, watched some TV, followed by news & weather, and we also turned in. I had trouble getting to sleep. For some reason, I kept having dreams of being abducted and held for ransom. Each time, the kidnappers couldn’t find anyone to pay the ransom. This kept waking me up. I didn’t get much sleep.
August 4
Elizabeth arose early, so we did too. After breakfast, she and Kathy went out to play in the surf and the pool. I stayed inside and did the dishes (lots of small ants had found the few dirty dishes we had left out the day before), cleaned up some of the things we had been accumulating over the last few days, and read some e-mail.
At noon I went out and joined Elizabeth & Kathy. Elizabeth was having great fun in the pool. When I got there, we decided to go back to the ocean. We had been there about 3 minutes when a thunderstorm blew in and we had to get out. Thus, I got a long, relaxing swim — not.
The storm blew in some cool weather, so after lunch we shut off the A/C and opened the windows. I decided to catch a nap, and Elizabeth decided she wanted one too, but it had to be with Daddy. So, she grabbed her blanket and stuffed animal, and climbed on the bed where I was trying to nap. She was asleep in about 30 seconds but kept moving about, keeping me awake. Sigh. She’s so cute, and she’s growing up so quickly. She looked so peaceful, asleep with her stuffed doggie. It was a magical moment, but a full bladder trumps magic, so I had to get up.
After E’s nap, we drove to Sanibel and Captiva Islands to look around. Some of the houses were absolutely amazing — similar houses in the Indianapolis area run for $1.5 million (that’s in 1997 dollars). I’m sure the real estate on these small islands is considerably more expensive; some of those waterfront lots probably cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the beaches there didn’t look any nicer than the one in front of our hotel. In fact, some of them looked rougher. The residents probably can afford to hire professionals to do their swimming for them, so it doesn’t matter.
Interestingly, we first noted at Sanibel and Captiva that many of the street signs are in English, Spanish, and … German? Then we realized that the hotel staff here on Estero Island is bilingual in German, our room has a Yellow Pages book in German, all the hotel literature is in German as well as English, and so on. I stopped by the children’s rec room, and the staff is also bilingual in German, and several of the signs on the wall were in German. There must be some logical explanation for this, but I am unable to come up with it, unless there is a secret base nearby with black helicopters and these folks are somehow related. I don’t think it would be wise for me to investigate further, and besides, it probably means the local beer is worth investigating!
We returned to the restaurant we had visited the night before. This was largely prompted by Elizabeth telling us every 30 seconds that she was hungry. So, we got our menus, Elizabeth said she wanted a hamburger, and Kathy & I ordered seafood. So, what happened? Elizabeth ate one bite and proclaimed herself “full.” Despite all our entreaties, she refused to eat any more, pronouncing it as “yucky.” She then had a meltdown in the restaurant when we told her no swimming unless she ate some of her food. So, we returned to the hotel, put Elizabeth to bed early, and watched TV for the rest of the evening.
I think we’re all ready to head home — I know I need a rest from this vacation. I also think Elizabeth has had too much excitement and isn’t sleeping well. Kathy isn’t sleeping well either, and we’re all sporting significant sunburns in patches where the sun block was put on unevenly or washed off. We don’t need heat exhaustion and car accidents — the dreaded vacation attrition effect is doing us in. Another 3 days and I either explode from boredom, or else give up my university position, learn German, and get a job here on the beach. As we must leave for my uncle’s tomorrow, I think the matter is decided.
Postscript
We visited my uncle & aunt, then got back home again with no further incidents, other than some additional sunburn. Nothing worth mentioning happened at all, except we had a relaxing and pleasant last few days. I totally burned out on keeping up my vacation diary, so this is the only text about it. But as it was really uneventful, that’s just as well.
Despite the lack of more adventure, I still didn’t get much sleep and returned much the worse for wear. Clearly, the only reason to go on a family vacation is to amuse Elizabeth, because I sure didn’t get anything out of it, and Kathy is still complaining about the bruises and the accumulated laundry. And we are continuing to find sand everywhere.
Looking back, this was a typical vacation for us. Sigh.