Fast, er, Speedy Women

[If the line spacing is a little funky, I apologize. I tried to fix it . . . many times]

The tent's packed away, the volleyball's back in the garage, the air mattresses are all deflated. Our clothes, sandy and wrinkled, await the wash. Only the memories are fresh. We did miss the dogs. My nephew mentioned particularly missing his old sleeping buddy who kept him warm.

Camping sure doesn't get easier when you're fifty-something. We added an extra night to our usual two-night stay at the Silver Lake State Park near Lake Michigan this year. More time for the joints to heal between activities. Even the walk to the bathrooms seemed awfully far for some reason.

I declared that I wanted at least one break from the usual routine that we've been practicing for the past dozens years or better. Something new, something other than the dune scooter, go-carts, miniature golf, beach volleyball, swimming and card games at the picnic table.

How about walking the dunes at night by flashlight? C'mon, it'd be fun, I said. One by one, my family and extended family took a pass. They would rather stay behind and toast marshmallows instead. Da cream puffs. Finally, my wife agreed to cross the one-mile stretch of dunes to watch the sunset on Lake Michigan, then return in the fading light, only because she worried that I would get lost or worse.

At the last minute, she got a repreive when my nephew Billy agreed to go instead. So the two of us struck our across the seemingly endless expanse of sand that began at the Silver Lake State Park pedestrian entrance to the dunes. Along the way we passed a couple of college age girls kicking a volleyball around.

We continued on, our feet sinking sometimes ankle deep, worried thqat we might step into one of those sinkholes a park ranger warned us about earlier, where you can find yourself suddenly buried up to your chest and in need of a rescue. But my enthusiasm to see a Lake Michigan sunset carried me on. We also noticed the girls had begun following us at a distance.

Then Billy and I hit the dead dunes area, where trees and grasses had moved in to reclaim the sandy shoreline, preventing the restless sands there from moving farther inland. There was a maze of paths this way, that way, but eventually we navigated to a ridge overlooking the big lake--a simply gorgeous view with the sun hanging low in the sky.

A few minutes later I noticed those girls appeared on a hill behind us. Somehow among the labyrinth of paths through the forest, they had come upon the one that led to where we were. Were they stalkers or something? They passed us with a quick, "Hello", then ran down the hill to the beach, shedding shirts and shorts to go swimming in Lake Michigan.

Wow. Such energy, such spunk! The water temperature at mid-afternoon in Lake Michigan only rose to about 70 degrees. That may be comfortable to some polar bears but I prefer my swimming hole to be more tropical.

After enjoying the sunset, we hustled back, hoping to make it through the forest before the flashlight really became necessary. We did find a short cut but I felt bad for the two girls we left swimming by themselves with nobody else within sight or earshot.

Retracing our steps quickly, it was still light enough to see under the purple skies, the sand being almost luminiscent in contrast. We had made it about halfway back to the park entrance when I heard voices atop a dune behind us. Those girls were back. How'd they find their way back so quickly?

By the time we reached the car, they were ahead of us. I had to repeat the story of the quickfooted women a couple times at the camp afterwards, though the others didn't find the tale as fascinating as I did. Hea, when you're my age, any time women are following you for more than 30 steps it's an event.

Somewhat on a related note, the next day Wendy and I drove down to another beach along Lake Michigan to see a para-skier zipping across the rough waves along the shoreline. "Boy, he's good," I said, as the skier looped out towards the horizon through the murky, choppy waters before steering back to shore, landing his boogie board gently on the beach. Then I discovered that 'he' was a 'she.'

That exercise seemed to take a lot of arm strength to steer through the heavy winds and surf. Suffice it to say that after this latest trip, I have a lot more respect for the strength and endurance of the fairer sex. The pictures I'm posting show the sunset over Lake Michigan (embiggen the picture to see the aforementioned young lady swimmers), Billy walking the dunes with me, the paraskier on Lake Michigan and on the shore helping another para-skier get ready to go.