A vacation so close I can smell it!

I just have to make it through Monday.  That's what I keep telling myself.  Monday is the first day of my much needed vacation from reality.  Work, responsibilities, and life in general are getting me down (along with rainy days and most Mondays).  Thankfully, my yearly pilgrimage to NJ is quickly approaching.

New Jersey?!? Yes, New Jersey.  No, not "The Shore." Quite the opposite, actually.  Most people (wrongly) associate NJ with factories, Guidos with bad fake tans and low IQ's, and over-populated commercialized boardwalks.  Let me assure you, if all of NJ were like that, I would not choose it as my vacation destination.  The area of the state that I spent my summers as a kid (and a couple weeks every year as an adult) is located in the northwest corner near where Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York meet.  There's trees. There's birds. There's squirrels. Lets bless them all until we get farshikkert. Oops sorry, that was my token Robin Hood Men in Tights reference of the day.  

Anyway, in the mountains, on a lake, sits a little cottage.  Inside this cottage lives my mother, whose father lived in it before her.  The yard is filled with tiger lilies, hosta lilies, pines, and oaks. This little cottage is surrounded by other little cottages, that over the years have housed my childhood friends. The street is not paved, nor is the driveway.  The nearest mall is 45 minutes, and if you want a movie theater with more then 2 screens or a bowling alley you'll have to go to the next town over. 

I long to hear the rocks crunch under my feet, smell the clean fresh air through the trees, and the damp smell of the lake.  I want to pick wild raspberries and blue berries off their bushes and stuff them in my mouth without washing them or checking for bugs (mmm... protein).  I want to eat sweet Jersey corn and fresh Jersey tomatoes.  I can't wait to shop for nectarines, plums, and Rainier cherries at the corner fruit stand.

Like every year, I will spend the majority of my week off perched on the deck overlooking the lake.  I will hear the whispers of my childhood in the breeze.  I can already hear the Perry kids yell, "SPUD" and us all arguing over whose turn it is to trek through the swamp to find the baseball.  I will see ghosts of us jumping off the banana float into the water to chase away the horseflies and all of us eating peanut butter and fluff sandwiches at the picnic table in the Perry's yard.  Or perhaps I will see the Bell's and I tipping over a canoe so we can share secrets in the air pocketed underneath it.  The memories are almost haunting in a place like Lake Owassa.  So many generations of kids have come and gone and so little has changed.  

It's impossible not to feel the energy of nature when you are surrounded by the beauty of the lake.  It will, no doubt, be the ultimate hippie recharge that I so desperately need.  Pictures of this vacation will follow!