Summer Lovin' - Part 3

I promise this is the last leg of the vacation anthology. If you can't get enough you can buy my Guide to Wisconsin Vacation Hotspots: Putting the "Pen" in Peninsula later this year.

Another family activity we planned was going out into the picturesque orchards to pick cherries. Emily has fond memories of doing the same thing with her family as a kid (they vacationed at Door County too). Her version has vague similarities to various Disney musicals.

So she was wanting to forge those memories with us. You get spoiled by the mild weather by the water (80 degrees with a breeze), no such luck in the landlocked orchards. It was h-o-t and we were out there doing manual labor in pants wearing pickin' buckets around your waist. A terrible day to wear leather pants.

It was a bit of a hunt to even find an orchard that still had trees with cherries (early harvest I'm told), but we found one 40 miles away. It was definitely a pretty sight to see, row after row of trees with little red fruit dangling from the limbs.

Something comes over you there, you see tons of cherries and you have the urge to...pick...them...all. Each time you spy a hidden bunch tucked under a limb you get a punch of excitement. I wondered if there was a correlation to using cherries on slot machines; if there is something engrained in our being that gets us giddy at the sight of a pretty cherry.

Five pounds of picked cherries later we had a good time and quite the haul of inedible fruit. Yep, these were canning/pie cherries. It was a big downer thinking you just beat the system by paying $7 for 5lbs of cherries and every one you put in your mouth tastes like tart potpourri. Next year we plan on picking champagne grapes.

Vacation is also a fun time for eating. I try and eat pretty well as a lifestyle, but I am human. The smell of a Chicago dog or the sweet and salty taste of a fry dipped in ketchup have their way with me when I let my defenses down. And they were down brother - to the delight of Emily and Benjamin.

Rarely were the words "no" or "grilled chicken" used when we went out to eat. In fact, please sit down, I have something to tell you - I had ice cream four days in a row. That news is such an anomaly for me that the stock market may have just dipped.

The one exception is eating at the famous Al Johnson's Swedish restaurant. Everyone gets Swedish pancakes when we go there, I do not. I have never cared for this nordic take on pancakes so I always order the oatmeal, which has a record-scratch effect on the waitress and nearby patrons. The waitress sometimes has a look on her face like, "we have oatmeal?" They do and it is delicious, so stop hassling me.

In fact, I seriously doubt Leif Ericson downed a tall stack of Swedish pancakes before allegedly discovering North America. And he definitely didn't pay $11 for them (sheesh). I was pleased to discover that Benjamin didn't love Swedish pancakes either (take that ABBA!), but he would eat an entire pig's worth of bacon if he could. This also pleases Leif.

The rest of the Wisconsin vacation was filled with nothing, the good kind of nothing. I was able to decompress, read for pleasure, take a nap during the day (wha!?) and hang out with Benjamin and Emily during the sweetspot of the day versus my usual dregs of early morning and late evening. It is neat seeing Benjamin interact and feel like a part of a bigger extended family, and I love seeing that he is embraced by them too. Maybe embraced too hard by some of his cousins as a matter of fact.

I wish we could vacation more. Europe has it figured out, they take 8 weeks of sometimes mandatory vacation. It makes sense, because most of the time you need that 1st week to slowly unbind yourself from work (maybe it's me) and then you can kick up your heels and be more carefree.

But like I said earlier, little kids are the ones that REALLY have it figured out. They are on vacation for 52 weeks a year, don't pay for anything AND have a staff of people bathe and dress them. The only other person that gets that treatment is (insert US politician that your political affiliation detests here)! Sorry, I just wanted to see what having a political blog felt like. See you next summer!