July 31, 2008
You know that when you buy a house everybody says, “Location, location, location.” I guess after my family vacation I might say that when you rent a place you might remember that same phrase, “Location, location, location.”
I had a great time at Okoboji, Iowa. . I even smile when I think of our cottages, but…
Back in January when I made our reservations, I thought … a group of 20 cottages close to the lakefront beach and a block or so from the amusement park. It sounds good to me.
I imagined cottages in a wooded area and across the street from an extremely large parking area, also wooded near a small amusement park.
Nobody told me that adjacent to the amusement park and right across the street from our cottages (with few trees) was a go-cart rental place that sounded like a race track from noon until eleven every night. They also didn’t tell us that the street between our cottages and the amusement park was one of these I’m-driving-around-showing-off-my- kick-it-engine-big- fixed- up car roads. Our twelve year old grandson Dylan whose favorite show is “Ice Road Truckers” was in heaven…
In January I imagined peaceful, summer evenings in Arnold’s Park, very close to Lake Okoboji…
We all got there without incident except one member of our family. He was stuck at home and his wife had the keys to their van (both sets) in her purse at Okoboji. The van was unfortunately parked in front of the garage that held another car. Finally, he got a forklift and moved the van a bit so that he could access the other car in the garage. Then he was on his way. Luckily, they live on a farm and happened to have an available forklift.
We all got used to the roaring noises of the amusement park that was really our next door neighbor. Every morning I’d think, “It must be 11 o’clock. I can hear the roller coaster.” Saturday night brought some new sounds. I first thought it was a storm and then I thought we were being bombed. The cottage shook like crazy for 30 or 40 minutes during the fireworks display.. The amusement park rocked on Sunday night with Willy Nelson and his fans. Many of them drove huge, loud cars with fancy accessories. We watched from our picnic table as drivers circled around the neighborhood, showing off their customized vehicles. Dylan, a fan of the TV show “Tricked Out” kept us informed on the special parts of each loud car.
So to put it mildly, our cottages were not quiet or calm. Dylan would get on his bicycle and tour the perimeter of the amusement park and the neighborhood. He’d report back, “There’s some guys being arrested down the street. Looks pretty calm though…only two police cars.” The other grandkids would race behind him on foot, followed by available adults. We watched while two guys were handcuffed and taken away.
The amusement park was like a constant magnet for the kids: “Can we go now, can we go now. Please, can we go??”
I figured that we needed to get it out of their systems. Of course Dylan’s reports, “The roller coaster is down and getting fixed. The guy says, ‘It’s nothing.’…Log ride is leaking..” didn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
But we went and we had fun. The rides were operated by Russian students who didn’t speak much English. Every ride had a list of instructions and requirements. Basically, we walked up to each ride and read the height requirements. The kiddy roller coaster (which looked scary to me) required all riders to be between 36” and 48”. This meant we had four kids under 7 who fit the requirements for a jerky, scary ride. After the four were strapped in, Polina announced, “If kids scream and cry, I will not stop ride. The ride make two circles, no matter what. “
The kids rode that coaster with no screams and no cries. The adults were not so lucky. My nine year old grand-daughter Taylor swore that she’d try every ride in the park. She and her mother Gina were hanging upside down and we could hear Gina’s voice (along with Taylor’s piercing screams), “Stop this ride. Let us out of here. We’re getting sick.” Another adult actually lost his lunch and went back to the cottages to lie down.
So I guess you’d say the amusement park was fun for all. We went there two days and all the kids from age 2 through 12 were well entertained.
On the other end of our cottages, the drama had already occurred. We were across the alley from the historic Gardner Cabin, built in l857. The entire Gardner family and other settlers had been wiped out by a Sioux raid, except for Abbie Gardner, a 13 year old girl, captured and later ransomed for two horses and lots of food. Eliot (6), Cal (4), Lucina (2) chased lightening bugs in the graveyard in the evenings and visited the museum daily. I think they were all a little mixed up by the juxtaposition of the amusement park, wild cottages, tricked out vehicles, and early American history.
Meanwhile, Dylan came back with the news that someone was getting arrested in front of the amusement park. This was old hat so nobody bothered to follow him over there. Every day we had a routine where we hung around all morning and then went to the beach all afternoon. In the evenings we’d take walks on the lake, around the amusement park, or in the neighborhood. We saw the Russian workers going in and out of their rental house with a back yard full of trailers. Big R, the owner of the cottages informed us that the Russians were pretty quiet since the cops came last week when they had a party.
We came to Okoboji for the beaches, not for the cottage life. The beach one block away was more like a parking space so we skipped that one. The other four or five beaches each had their strengths and weaknesses. Emerson Bay had the best sand while Pike’s Point (although extremely rocky even with water shoes) had a great platform for jumping. The water was crystal clear everywhere. Two of the beaches were very near playgrounds. We spent many pleasant hours at the beaches and wore out several shovels. Finally we went to a garden store to buy Dylan a standard, short, heavy shovel for his epic lakes and waterways. I remember looking out at the water which got very choppy when there were lots of boats. This beach is kind of dinky, I thought. Then I realized that counting us (12 at one point), there were only 35 people there.
Meanwhile at the cottages, one day we came home from the beach and Zoey (age 2) found an adult head with long, black hair (it was fake!) in her doll stroller. Just as she started screaming and went to pick it up, we grabbed it away. I quickly told her, “That’s not a real head… just like a big doll head, only adult…It’s just a big joke.” We complained to Big R. We knew the teenagers in cottage #6 were at the bottom of it. Big R (6’10”, a former basketball player) apologized and went to yell at the teenagers. The next night they were kicked out of the cottages because the cops had come and they were too loud. Meanwhile Zooey was wandering around, “Where’s that head? Where’s the big joke? Why can’t I have my head back?”
Poor Big R. He had other problems besides unruly teens. He could reach all the gutters and swish the rain out of them, but the sewer was different. Of course, we liked R by this time. He opened and ran the above ground swimming pool. He’d lent us beach chairs. And he showed several outdoor movies including Nanny McPhee and The Jungle Book. So when he told us the street would be closed for sewage repairs, we were sympathetic.
For the next two days workmen came and drilled huge holes in the street to repair the sewer. The kids watched the process in all of their spare time. The smell was tolerable because our cabin was across the grass. Besides that, we discovered that we were only three hours from the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Who could resist that?
Location, location, location. We left at 7:00am and got back to our cottage at 11:30pm. I didn’t know that the mall also had a huge amusement park, with lots of wild rides. The noise at the Mall of America made our cottages seem like church. The road work was finished and we were in our last two days in Okoboji.
Friday afternoon suddenly every few minutes, three or four women in pink arrived on their motorcyles. Their t-shirts read, “Gone to the Motorcycles.” Finally it stopped.. I realized why Big R had to fix the sewage problem immediately. There were at least 40 bikes parked in front of the cottages. I thought we might be up all night. But the roar was limited to when they all left for the bars and when they all returned from the bars.
It had been two weeks. I felt like we lived in this cottage. It was convenient. We walked to piers, restaurants, junk stores, and a small grocery store. We walked to the cruise boat and rental boats. We all got used to the go-carts and the constant noise of the roller coaster (unless it was temporarily shut down). People came and went from the other cottages: a principal from an Omaha high school with his family, a lady from Texas, an older couple, many tattooed college students, and kids from all of the above who swam, rode bikes, and ran up to the historic cabin. We filled our cars with beach stuff and took off for hours. We cooked meat on the grill. We sat, we talked, and we waited for the amusement park to close at 11:00pm. The kids played, fought, argued over TV shows, built sand castles, and rode the rides. Okoboji, a good family vacation, but the cottages…much different from how I imagined on those cold winter nights.
Comments
Sunrise (anonymous) says...
What a hoot!...and what a grandma won't do to give her grandkids super memories.
August 8, 2008 at 10:04 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
dwightschrute (anonymous) says...
I have decided to shun Big R for the next three years. Which I'm looking forward to. It's an Amish technique. It's like slapping someone with silence. I was shunned from the age of four until my sixth birthday for not saving the excess oil from a can of tuna.
August 11, 2008 at 8:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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