It took us four years and 13 hours to get to the beach for spring break.
Here is a timeline:
Spring Break 2018: We did not take a spring break trip that year. Colleen had a conference paper deadline and spent the week holed up in her office to get it done. She was greatly displeased by this. We tried to salvage the week by driving up to Chicago on the weekend to hang with family and celebrate Easter. On the drive up, she turned to me and said, “From now on, we're going to actually take a trip every spring break.” It wasn’t a complaint or question or conversation starter, just a statement of fact, born of frustration.
Although Chicago is great, it is also cold and unpredictable. So much so that on our ~8-hour drive home, we got caught in a blizzard and had to stay at a hotel. (The date, I kid you not, was April 1.) The roads were undriveable. We barely made it off the highway and to some hotel in Lincoln, Illinois.
Stranded travelers like us filtered in. The place was short staffed because other hotel workers couldn’t get there. We got one of the last rooms available. Two women who were both traveling alone—an older woman and a younger gal—had to share a room. (I like to imagine they had a good laugh about it and remain great odd-couple friends to this day. It’s either that, or it’s a terrible story about That One Awful Night With a Strange Roommate.)
There was no food. The hotel wasn’t particularly close to restaurants, and deliveries were out of the question. Fortunately, my sister had packed us Easter leftovers, and there was a microwave in our room, so we made do by tearing up a large paper bag into “plates” and shoveling food into our mouths like cave people, because there were no utensils available.
We managed to chortle and maintain good humor. But the next day as we slowly made our way home, Leen turned to me and, modifying her previous statement, said: “From now on, we’re going to the beach for every spring break. Somewhere warm.” Just stating fact.
It took four years to make it happen.
Spring Break 2019: I am not proud to admit this, but we didn’t go to the beach, or do anything at all for spring break that year, actually…because of me. I was about to start a new job, and although I planned my start date for after spring break, they insisted that they needed me to start ASAP. (Why yes, that is a red flag. One of many with that company.)
So I abided, and instead of taking my wife to the beach somewhere warm, I started the job.
Spring Break 2020: We were not messing around for spring break 2020. We planned a week in Florida, in a huge beach house with a gaggle of close friends.
You know what happened instead: We went into COVID lockdown and spent spring break drowning in existential terror.
Spring Break 2021: Same song, second verse. COVID killed any chance of a long road trip to a beach town. We did manage to rent a huge house with that same gaggle of close friends (and had a marvelous time), but it was not warm and was not near a beach.
Spring Break 2022: Once again, I was starting a new job. This time, I told my new employer that I had to start *after our spring break beach vacation.* They were happy to oblige. The beach trip was on!
All that stood between us and paradise was a 13-hour drive to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We treated the road trip almost like a victory lap.
Not everyone associates Alabama with miles and miles and miles of white sandy beaches and pristine water. I certainly didn’t. But the Gulf Shores area is part of a long stretch of glorious beachfront that extends across the southern edge of the United States, hugging the Gulf of Mexico. The town of Gulf Shores is actually just a few miles from the Florida border, if that gives you some context on the location.
Down there, you can sense the ocean before you see it. The air feels and smells just a little different. The landscape slowly changes. It was dark by the time we were near, so it was a slow burn: The town of Gulf Shores is long and skinny, running perpendicular to the coastline, so you encounter its border several miles from the shore.
With no sunlight, we were left to intuit our proximity to the water based on the types of businesses we drove past. (Also, Google Maps told us, but that’s not as fun.) And so our excitement grew as we spotted more and more crab shacks, fried fish joints, and tourist shops.
We finally made it to the ocean edge of Gulf Shores. It was a Moment. Leen had waited four years, and we had made it to the last strip of asphalt before you bump into the beach. Our condo was literally across the street from the water.
The two of us dumped our stuff (and the kids) in the condo and hustled across the street to the beach. It was late—10pm or so—and it was surreal.
It’s quite a feeling to reach the actual end of the United States. The horizon just…goes flat. And at night, it’s a bluish, grayish inky black. Just off into nothing. The first humans to encounter this view must have thought they reached the end of the world. What was in the heads of those who first put a boat on the Gulf of Mexico and set out into the open water, hoping for the best?
The white caps of the small waves punctuated the darkness. The white sand reflected every drop of light it could find. Next to us to the west, a line of high rises reminded us that we were still here in civilization, even as their setting against an empty blackness underscored their Babylonian futility against the overwhelming scale of the deep water and heavy sky.
To the east…hardly anything at all. Just sand and water and blackness.
There is nothing like walking on sand for the first time in ages, and remembering the smell of the sea, the power of that water, the vastness of it all.
I peeled off my shirt to feel the wind on my skin. We stood on the beach there together in the dark exhaling. Leen wept for joy.
This was one of those snapshot moments, when you’re in between going somewhere and heading somewhere else. There is a glorious, powerful stasis to these moments—the sort of liminality that feels peaceful and fleeting and triumphant all at the same time. The swirl of emotions…can you simultaneously scream, whisper, and sing?
I jogged back to the condo to grab the kids and bring them over, too. They were blown away. Shrieking, cheering, dancing. Delighted, mystified. Feet in the water. A jackpot of shells.
Flashlights off in the distance told us other folks were headed our way down the sand. I was a little worried it was the beach no-fun police, but it turned out to be a couple of other families with nets and buckets, looking for crabs. They dug up some of the speedy little fellows and let us look, too.
Shells, shells, and more shells by smartphone light. The promise of more later. Kids feeling like they were getting away with something by staying out so late (which of course, they were).
Leen and I finally got us all to bed on the other side of midnight, eager to hit the beach during sunrise and beyond.
This piece is part of a series of pieces around our recent spring break trip. There’s more to come, but you can catch up to where we are so far by reading these. In chronological order: