Okay, as I mentioned in last weeks Shakespeare post, I was out of town on vacation this past week. As a bit of a background; my family goes on vacation for a week every year at my parents cabin in northern Minnesota. It’s my parents, my brother and his wife and son, and my sister and then me. It has always been something I’ve looked forward too every year, primarily because I don’t care for the city and I love the north woods and lake country.
Unfortunately the annual trip has never been perfect, and this year represented one of the less enjoyable vacations in recent memory. A nice part of it was that my brother was sick for a few days which I can’t blame him for, but there was also a lot that could have been improved on a great deal which I simply have to get off my chest. Now most of this happens every year, but it’s getting worse and worse every year and I’m running out of tolerance. I know some of it is ragging on others for how they spend their vacation, but it’s a family vacation and it effects us all, and I get a bit tired of wasting the bulk of my vacation days every year for a family vacation that is simply lacking.
Family? Vacation
My sister is a big part of my vacation woes, and a lot of that has to do with her rather backwards priorities. In spite of being in her upper twenties, she still acts like a 19 or 20 year old girl that is fresh out of the house. We already see her maybe once or twice a month, in spite of the fact she lives a mere 5 to 10 minutes away and works even closer. Her life revolves around her circle of friends, and every waking moment for her is spent either with them or communicating with them in one way or another.
Now family vacation is one single week out of the year, and that’s all we ask, but apparently the sacrifice is apparently more than she can handle. She starts the week by inviting a friend of hers up for the first weekend (in to Monday since it was a holiday weekend). So now family vacation now has people we haven’t met, but the limited sleeping quarters at the cabin basically meant I was stuck sleeping on the couch until Monday night. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask that family vacation be for family, and not be a time to meet and spend night and day with people you’ve never met in your life.
Now that part alone was tolerable, but she wasn’t done there. Of course she spent most of her time after her friend left on her cell phone texting with them. This is no surprise since she does this constantly anyways, even if she’s away from her group for no more than an hour. It’s like she’s stuck in the teen high school girl mode and never grew up and developed the sensibilities and priorities of a more well-rounded person. I’m not saying a person needs to abandon their friends outright, but there should be some level of restraint and flexibility, particularly when family is concerned. Of course, this is also the same sibling who once wanted to reschedule a family Christmas get together because she wanted to go out with one of her friends on the day it was scheduled.
Now it didn’t take long after her friend left at all for her to get convinced that she needed to go home early so she could be with her friends. Now it was somewhat of a blessing since it meant we didn’t have to hear her cell phone going off all day and find the phone in the morning because she was on the cabin phone constantly like some high school girl and couldn’t put it back on the charger when she was done. Still, it’s a telling sign when the one week a year she is asked to spend with her family is just too much for her to give before she has to run home to go hang out with friends.
The worst part is how she talks about all these things she likes to do and how active she is with her friends and how she always goes out with her friends. You get her up there on family vacation though and she isn’t willing to do a damn thing. She doesn’t even want to go out on the water or have a campfire or go in to town or to the neighboring tavern. No, when she’s not with her friends she’s a couch potato and has no interest in engaging in any kind of activity at all.
Frankly, I’m beginning to hope she just doesn’t go next year. She rarely stays up the whole week every year, and while she’s up there she’s either bringing a friend along and hanging out with them, or spending all her time on the phone chatting or texting with them anyways. She makes it clear that her priorities lie with her pack of friends and that family comes behind her friends and her job, so I’m happy to just concede and let her out of all family obligations because I’m tired of her being the anchor that drags the rest of us down. She works a typical work schedule and we still have to work hard to plan things around her schedule since she is unwilling and incapable of sacrificing a night with her friends to spend it with family regardless of the event that would bring us together. It’s aggravating and I’m simply getting tired of dealing with a perpetual 16 year old.
Turn off the TV
There was a time when my parents were unwilling to put a television up at their cabin. Ultimately my dad, who is a newsoholic, found he didn’t want to be away from the news for that long and he put one in. Of course, since reception in the middle of nowhere is virtually non-existent, basic cable was connected to the cabin as well. I have been cursing this decision since that day to be honest.
I’ll admit it is nice to have the TV there for the late nights when everyone else is heading to bed and I’ve got nothing else to do. Still, we used to have fires or go to the local tavern, which is literally on the next block over, we just cross our neighbors yard and we’re there. Unfortunately others do not share my view of the TV as a nice fallback when the weather is crappy or it’s late at night and there’s no other options, and instead many a day has been wasted because people couldn’t tear themselves away from some show to do anything outside.
The worst offender, by far, is once again my sister. As soon as she is up that TV was on, and she would maintain a constant vigil over it most of the day and in complete control. The problem I found with the TV is that it seems to be contagious. She would turn something on and next thing ya know others would be in there watching it as well. It would be a beautiful day outside, but it was a fight just to get people to even listen to the idea of going out and enjoying the weather. Now people would usually filter away after awhile except my sister, but the amount of wasted time due to attention given to that damned TV was still significant.
To make matters worse, my sister loves those crappy design shows on HGTV and those awful sitcoms with some of the worst acting ever known on the Disney Channel. It would have been at least more tolerable if the shows she selected were halfway decent, but we were instead often stuck subjected to some of the worst possible shows on TV whenever we set foot in the place. This particularly became a problem when night rolled in and the outdoor options began to dwindle but my sister would still maintain her control of the TV, and effectively the common area of the cabin as a result.
I guess I just don’t see the point of going up to the north woods of Minnesota in the middle of lake country and spending that time as a couch potato in front of a television. If you want to vacation by watching TV then stay at home and sit in front of your TV. There’s no reason anyone should spend 3 hours driving someplace to do the exact same thing they would be doing if they were sitting at home. TV is like a contagious disease as far as I’m concerned. One person flips it on and sits down and someone else will walk by and see what it’s about and then they’ll want to see what comes up next or what happens and before they know it they’ve spent the past hour watching an hour long special on the origins of wallpaper or some crap. You get one couch potato in a small cabin and that person will inevitably indirectly eat away the hours of others as well.
In the end there was probably quite a bit of time lost to the TV this past week, and a lot of that time was at hours that could have been better spent elsewhere or doing something. The problem with the Minnesota lake country is the activity day is not a very long one. Most places up there, aside from bars and restaurants, tend to be closed by 5pm, giving only a short span of the day that all of the options are really available. You have lunch by noon and get dragged in to some show or documentary until 1, and suddenly you’re very near the closing time of most places one can go up there. When you add in the time it takes to get anywhere since the area is very rural, and suddenly any try or activity becomes a rush.
I guess it just disappoints me that we’ve become such a society of couch potatoes that people can sit in the midst of vacation country in Minnesota and spend that time watching TV. I could hop in my car and head out and do things on my own, but it’s not nearly as fun to go out and alone and do stuff. There are many things I’d love to do up there and I always have these ideas when I go up, and every year it seems I go home with most of them still undone. This year was probably the worst in that regard as I didn’t get to do even one thing I wanted to do; not a single freaking one.
Vacation Work?
I understand my parents only spend weekends up there for most of the year, and since this is the only time they spend a significant chunk of time up there they are going to have projects and things they want to get done during that time. Heck, they have us there to help out, and I don’t even mind helping out either. When these projects start to take up most of the vacation though, it might be time to rethink things just a bit.
This year we spent 5 afternoons doing various projects around the place. Since these were afternoons, that meant that all the time that could have been spent elsewhere had been wasted. By the time we were done everything was closed or closing and it was almost dinner. The free time we then had was after dinner, which was when there was a whole lot less you could go out and really do. I will admit that one of those 5 afternoons was ultimately my choice, so it’s probably more accurate to say only 4 days were eaten up by projects. That 5th day I chose to help and didn’t have to, but there really wasn’t much else to do anyways since it was the last full day and my brother was napping because he was sick and my sister and sister-in-law had already gone home.
I’m happy to help, but can’t these projects occur after dinner or less often? It just seems we lost way too much time to landscaping or dropping dead timber or trips to pick up blocks for landscaping and so on. I think a number of these could have occurred before lunch and after supper, but unfortunately they actually just ended up biting far too much out of the very valuable afternoon hours.
Budget your Vacations
When I do bring up how little we’re doing on vacation, I’m often met with comments about how broke people are. I’m sorry, but that excuse is just getting very very old. You know a year ahead of time that family vacation is going to occur in July and that it is likely going to require some funds to really get the most out of it. Is it really so hard to have money set aside and budgeted for that week long vacation every year? I do it, but why am I the only one planning ahead like this? It’s just frustrating when you arrive on vacation with your family only to find that you can’t do much of anything because no one bothered to save any money for it.
Like me, this is the big vacation for the year for my other family members as well. So why is this vacation continuously being wasted because no one wants to plan ahead and budget for it? I have money set aside for this vacation so I can go out and do things and have fun, but when I get up there I often find that if I can get people from the TV and the work that I’m still stuck with limited options because I’m the only one who budgeted money so that I could afford to go out and do something. The lake country is a great place to be, but a lot of what makes it great isn’t free. I’m not saying we need to go out and spend hundreds every day, but it would be nice if we weren’t restricted to doing things that cost little or nothing on a daily basis because no one planned ahead.
It’s not just activities either, but also just general expenses around the cabin as well. I drop a decent chunk of change in to the cabin every year to try and provide more things to do and just make it a funner place in general. It gets a bit frustrating when I’m the only person contributing though. My parents do their place since they own it and furnish it and such, but what about the littler things? People are more than happy to make use of them, but I’m the only one contributing to them.
For instance, there is a bar at the cabin. We have booze of all shapes and sizes and flavors, and almost every bottle of it is mine. Not only did I purchase most of the alcohol we have there, but almost all the bar glassware is also mine. I’ve got wine glasses and snifters and shot glasses and beer glasses and mixers and a decanter and tumblers and so on, and I paid for all of them. My sister did buy some of the booze, but a lot of her additions was cheap low end liquer’s and wines. I’m a casual drinker, so when I do drink I want it to be the good stuff. I figure when it takes us so long to go through the booze since we’re only up there now and then, it doesn’t hurt to splurge a bit on it. It’s a bit of a bummer when people go cheap the few times they do decide to contribute.
There are also horseshoe pits at the cabin, which I have pretty much funded entirely. My brother and sister did get me the set for my birthday because they know I wanted to have some up there, but then so did they. Unfortunately to make a proper horseshoe setup costs money. You need cement for the stakes and wood for the pits and backing and bags of mulch or sand. All in all it actually cost me over a hundred dollars, all my money, and that’s not even including the horseshoe set itself.
Awhile back we also had an ATV, which was also my ATV. Four wheelers are all over the place up there and considered to be something standard everyone has at least one of, but the only reason we ever had one was because I bought one. Ultimately I was in a bad financial situation and that was some time ago, so I ended up selling it since everyone else got to use it far more than I ever did anyways. Unfortunately it kind of set the bar early and clearly defined things to come. There’s also a number of little things from kitchen utensils that no one was willing to buy but me, even to small decorative items that just kind of lend themselves to the places atmosphere. I’m happy to add these things, but I get tired of being the only one aside from my parents that does.
This trend isn’t going to go away anytime soon either unfortunately. I know everyone wants kayaks or a canoe, unfortunately it has been made clear that if there is ever to be one then it’s going to be because of me. Sadly while I know there is a want, I am the only one that has expressed any interest in making it happen. Unfortunately a bar over time or a hundred bucks for a horseshoe pit is quite a bit different from the $500 for a decent canoe or $300 for a single kayak. These are simply expenses I’m not willing to take on alone just so I can leave them someplace where I only have access to them now and again and for others who had no part in their purchase to enjoy.
I will give my brother some credit in that he helped me with the work part of a lot of things, like the horseshoe pit. He did more work for their construction than I did, so he did pay me back in labor at least, so it’s not all bad. It’s still frustrating that I’m the only person contributing financially, but I’ll take help with the labor over nothing at all.
Timing
The timing of a vacation seems pretty crucial to me. For some reason my family has decided that bordering vacation on the 4th of July every year is a good idea. This doesn’t work so hot for a number of reasons, and I’ve still yet to get a good answer as to why we pick these dates all the time.
The first major reason this time doesn’t work very well is because a lot of other people are also taking off then as well. It makes it harder to actually even get the days off to begin with since many co-workers are trying to get those days off. Then you have to deal with heavier than normal vacation traffic to get there, and bigger crowds once you get up there.
The heat is also another factor. This is pretty much the hottest and most humid time of the year, and also pretty much the buggiest time of year as well. We lucked out with the heat aspect for the most part, but the humidity was there and the bugs were definitely there in force. If we went in June it wouldn’t be nearly as bad, and August is usually more comfortable than July as well. I don’t get why we pick the hottest, muggiest time of year when the lake is full of algae and the woods are full of bugs.
On a more personal note this is also the peak time of year for my allergies, which are at their worst when around the cabin. It’s no secret that my allergies are bad in that area, and are at their worst in July, but that hasn’t had any effect on the plans unfortunately. I keep myself well medicated with Claritin to keep it in check which works pretty well, but I still find myself heavily stuffed up and sneezing in the mornings.
I really pushed for June this year, but for reasons that were never explained to me, that never happened and it was planned for July 4th again.
Closing Rant
I’m just getting frustrated, and it seems to be getting worse every year, and not better. I still enjoy the time off and just being up there when all is said and done, but I still feel like it’s a week full of missed opportunities and far too much wasted time when all is said and done. Compared to what other families do, I really don’t think I’m asking for all that much. Some families fly across the country or hop on cruise ships that cost thousands per person. To really make more of our vacation would take so much less than even that, so I don’t know why this vacation becomes less and less every year.
Northern Minnesota is a lush forested area full of lakes and rivers and tons of activities, but yet watching TV and doing work seems to be the norm while we’re up there. Essentially our vacation is like a week long extension of our home lives that is mirrored 3 hours north of our regular homes, and occurs in the company of our family. It could and should be more than that, but it isn’t.
There’s so much to do up there and I want to do so much of it, but we do none of it. Within a stones throw of the cabin are a number of state forests with many hiking trails and geocaches. I’d love to head out in to the woods and take these trails on, but every year it becomes clear that it’d be a solo trek if I ever went. Hiking and Geocaching can be a lot of fun, but it’s yet another activity that loses some of its luster when you’re always heading out alone.
Along with the trails are horse trails and ranches in the area. Year after year I’ve been interested in going horseback riding, but this is one of those activities that’d require planning and isn’t free, so it’s basically out of the question. Heck, most of those places won’t even take a reservation for one, so I couldn’t solo it even if I wanted to. It’s just another fun and interesting activity that I’m stuck only thinking about doing.
My parents cabin is also on a lake, and they have a nice fast speedboat and a small catamaran sailboat as well. On average we take one trip on the boat these days, and they’ve yet to ever use the catamaran and are now talking about selling it. I love sailing and have always wanted to sail, but that is yet another activity that you simply can’t do alone. The speedboat has a tube and ski’s and a kneeboard and it’s been years since we’ve made use of any of these things, and the most I can get anyone to agree to even do with the boat now is take it for a spin around the lake for a short while. I’d love to take the sailboat out but my parents have to run some new lines on it and never do, and I don’t have the expertise because I’ve never sailed, in spite of the fact we’ve had a sailboat at the cabin for years now. It sucks that they’re going to sell something I’d love to use simply because no one else ever wants to.
Spotted across the northern landscape are many small and interesting shops, including a few towns that are just loaded with these unique and interesting places. For the past few years it has been a challenge just to get anyone to agree to go to these shops with me, and often times it’s a rush to get out of there when I do convince people to go. This year I couldn’t even get that far, and this is the first year that I can remember where I didn’t even get to go to any of the towns or shops I normally like to go to. This one frustrates me to no end since it doesn’t even cost anyone more than time to go and look around with me, and I couldn’t even get that from them.
Then there’s also many museums and wildlife areas up there and I no one wanted to go to these. There’s cart tracks and mini-golf courses and larger golf courses and more and these also managed to evade any interest this year as well. I could go on with other interesting places and things I’d like to do but I think I’ve made my point. Usually we at least have a day or maybe even two where we’ll fit in at least one of these things. This year, for the first time ever, I didn’t even get to do so much as a single one of the things I would have liked or wanted to do. Not one, zip, zilch, absolutely zero. To say this years vacation was a disappointment would be an understatement to be perfectly honest.
I’m hoping next years vacation will be better, I really am, but I’m not holding my breath to be honest. If I go through one more year or absolute disappointment instead of the usual minor disappointment, then I may just start skipping this time and money sink. I don’t want to spend my week of vacation and good money if I’m not going to get a single thing out of it, and if the money I do spend is usually just to try and make others happy and effectively bribe them to do something aside from sitting around. If they want to sit around and do at the cabin what they’d be doing if they were at home, then so be it, but I’m done spending my vacation watching them do it. I’ve long held out hope that things will improve year after year, but after this year full of wasted time I’m honestly losing my enthusiasm.
At this point I’m simply trying to find a time or a way to at least salvage something out of this summer. I figure I can maybe go up to Duluth or the cabin by myself for a few days and maybe get something out of it even if I have to fly solo.
© 2010, Keonyn. All rights reserved.
