We Took the Dog to the Beach

My partner and I are planning a big trip to meet up with our older kid in New Zealand this winter after her study-abroad program ends, so that's where our discretionary budget and disposable income are both going for the next few months. But still, I wanted to take some kind of trip this summer, because at this point, and especially with the older kid griping about how she'd missed the deadline for summer internships this year and plans to not make that mistake next year, every summer together could be our last summer all together. 

So what might my darling children want to do for a summer vacation that's possibly our last summer vacation for who knows when? Not express their gratitude that their parent wants to plan a vacation based on their preferences when nobody ever planned a vacation with her preferences in mind when she was a kid, that's for sure! Kids these days, am I right? Anyway, they mostly wanted to fight about it. The older kid really wanted a beach vacation that included her dog, but the younger kid hates beaches the most and would never willingly step onto a beach and do we not know that she is allergic to the sun and of course she does not need Vitamin D because she is "built different," etc. The younger kid wanted to go to a concert in Chicago but concerts, you may know, are not typically dog-friendly and so the older kid would like to understand how could we possibly be so cold-hearted as to so much as consider a vacation that did not include THE DOG.

Fortunately, after 15 years of this kind of crap, I can easily slash my way through these disagreements using my favorite go-to technique, fittingly entitled Please Neither of Them. In this case, Pleasing Neither of Them consisted of a couple of days at the Indiana Dunes National Park, during which the younger kid mostly hung out in the AirBnb or wandered around doing her own thing while the rest of us played at the beach with the dog, followed by a couple of days in Chicago, where the older kid and the dog mostly hung out in the hotel or walked around doing their own thing while the rest of us went to the Cavetown/Mother Mother concert.

The secret to Pleasing Neither of Them is that I personally LOVE both vacation ideas, so a Win/Lose for each of the brats is always a Win/Win for me!

On the way up north, I even got us to stop off for a long detour in Lafayette so we could check a few spots off in our Indiana Culinary Trails passports--I am grinding for that wine tumbler! 

Check out those clouds!

I'm a little mad that I ended up forgetting to order the Famous Fruit Drink from The Igloo on account of 1) the clouds were GLORIOUS that day, thanks to Hurricane Beryl remnants, 2) one of the kids is obsessed with clouds, and 3) the Igloo's parking lot had a tree blocking the "best" cloud so while my partner ordered and waited for our food I walked with the kids down the street to a better spot, thus forgetting to order the fancy juice I'd wanted to bring with us to our AirBnb. 

Ah, well, at least the kid has a dozen more beautiful cloud photos on her ipod to show for our efforts, and we did not forget the most important order, a pup cup for Luna!

We hit up a little more Lafayette local color--

--then finished up the rest of our drive to the lake. 

When my older kid and I took Luna to Indiana Dunes for the first time a few years ago, I LOVED the AirBnb we'd stayed at, so much so that I literally planned this vacation around its open dates. It's centrally located, sure, just minutes from all the beaches, includes ample parking, two bedrooms, and a complimentary bottle of wine, has a fenced-in backyard, and is comfortable and safe, but most importantly, especially to the younger kid, whose Netflix watchlist is longer than mine, it includes Netflix and Disney+, and y'all KNOW how we feel about streaming services! So the younger kid hardly acted put-upon at all during this leg of our trip, not when she could settle in to binge the entirety of Dead Boy Detectives while the rest of us hit up the Indiana Dunes National Park Visitor Center for parking passes and passport stamps and then took Luna to the beach:

She still loves it!

This trip, she discovered the additional joy of chasing seagulls--they just keep coming back for more!--and with three of us to take turns running her to exhaustion, there was also plenty of time for everyone else to do their lovely beach lounging:

Don't you love her doggy life jacket? It's a Ruffwear Float Coat, size medium. 

Below is the face of a dog who woke up from a nap to find themselves buried to the neck in sand! Somehow we got ourselves the world's most patient dog...

Both days at the beach, Luna was so exhausted that she kept trying to lie down during the long walk back to the car, and then she slept like a rock all evening while the rest of us ate take-out pizza and binged Netflix. I feel like I have taken most of my interior design ideas from the AirBnbs I've visited--that's how I learned about the joys of a ridiculously giant couch!--and from this one, I've sort of come away with the idea that wouldn't it be nice to have a TV in the family room. It was so cozy to all hang out on the couch and watch TV together in this AirBnb. But we also don't have anywhere in the family room at home to PUT a TV, if I'm being honest, nor anything to watch on it other than YouTube and library DVDs, sooo...

It WAS super cozy, though!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!