Ten on Tuesday

Ten Memorable Vacation Moments

1. When I was twelve my family stayed on Cape Cod for a month in a cottage on the bay (inner) side. My most vivid memory is of a day we drove over to the ocean side. We had a little styrofoam surfboard, and most of the waves were maybe five feet high (on the bay side there are no waves to speak of), so I had a great time riding them until I tried to catch an extra-big one and it separated me from the surfboard and rolled me briskly right at the pebbly shoreline. When it receded I got up, retrieved the surfboard a few feet away, decided I wasn't hurt and went back in — but I left the bigger waves alone after that.
   
2. The summer I was 18 my family spent ten days camping in Nova Scotia. I went swimming in the Bay of Fundy. C-O-L-D. (This might explain why I don't find Miss B's willingness to fling herself into the briny off Yarmouth, Maine, especially noteworthy.)
   
3. On that same Nova Scotia trip, our last night there, I found the most amazing blueberry patch I have ever seen. Seriously, the ground looked blue from a distance. I went and grabbed the crew and all the empty containers we could find, and I think we picked a gallon in the half hour of daylight that remained. The next day we smuggled them across the border (you're not allowed to bring pretty much anything alive across for fear that you will accidentally import the next gypsy moth caterpillar) and back to my stepgrandmother's house in Portland; pie was forthcoming.
   
4. Grant and I honeymooned in Montreal, where I ate rabbit for the first time. It was cooked in a light cream sauce, and it was yummy. Since then I've eaten rabbit at every opportunity, despite Grant's tendency to refer to it as "le Thumpeur."
   
5. I visited my oldest friend in San Francisco about 25 years ago. We hung out in the city for a few days, and then we headed north with her boyfriend, Kevin, and a friend of his, Ron, to camp at a clothing-optional resort in Napa County. There were maybe 50 people there, of whom I was one of two who opted to wear clothing. This decision did not sit well with Ron, who was on the rebound. He kept telling me I was making a spectacle of myself. Finally I asked him, "The whole point of vacationing in California is to feel free to do your own thing, right?" He agreed. "All right, then," I said, "my thing is being an uptight New England Puritan." I may not have convinced him, but I did shut him up.
   
6. Some cousins of mine used to rent a campsite by Cupsuptic Lake, one of the Rangeley Lakes, and invite my parents, Grant and me to camp with them for a weekend. (This was how Grant and I got acquainted with Rangeley and environs.) About six one morning Grant and I found ourselves the only ones awake and went canoeing in the fog. It was otherworldly peaceful.
   
7. When I was expecting Taz Grant and I took what we knew would be our last chance for a good while to vacation in France. We mostly stayed in fairly low-budget hotels, but we did spend one night in a castle and eat in the restaurant there. I think there were seven courses. Grant still raves about the lobster-and-sweetbread salad. It was the most expensive meal we've ever eaten, costing a good deal more than the room, and we didn't even have wine because I was pregnant.
   
8. My oldest friend got married five years ago in a beautiful park in Sonoma County whose name unfortunately escapes me. (T, if you're reading this, help me out here.) The dancing afterward was terrific fun, and the food was the best I've ever eaten at a wedding.
   
9. Remember the Rangeley rainbows? Not only had we never seen any up there before, but that one with the dark clouds behind it stayed brilliantly photogenic for about 20 minutes.
   
10. On our Mexico trip a year ago we could always see mountains wherever we went, raw, jagged spikes rising abruptly from the plain, completely unlike the hunched New England hills.