On July 26th, our Caseville vacation began. Unlike at our earlier vacation near Harbor Springs, where there had been some confusion about check in times, the proprietor of the Caseville cottages we were staying at, Mrs. Crews, left nothing to chance about the check-in time at her place. There was also no ambiguity about any other aspect of the Crews cottage rental experience, as the Crews Cottages feature omnipresent rules and guidelines in kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, and any other space a human might inhabit. In keeping with the throwback furniture styles and wood paneling, the rules seem to have been printed using a dot-matrix printer and a font from the 90’s used to warn people of the impending Y2K crisis.

To keep Mrs. Crews happy, we aimed to abide by at least some of the rules, especially easy ones like arriving after 3pm, and we were aided in timing our arrival by a predictable development: the fourth torrential downpour we had driven through while traveling in the last ten days.

After checking in to the Crews Lakeside Resort after the rule-mandated check-in time, Mark preformed a public service for our family by documenting all of the rules posted throughout his cabin. Thankfully, his phone had enough storage space to tackle this task.

Like the font they were written in, some of the rules were charmingly outdated.

Our group has its own history of posting plastic protected rules, but we had mercifully gotten away from that. In fact, we had gotten so far away from the law-and-order regimes of the past, some of our group began to come up with a different kind of rules entirely: rules for recreational drug use. True to this subject matter, the rule-makers struggled to concentrate and to focus on just how many rules would be needed.

The 3 5 8 7 Self-Medicating Commandments

1. You must be in a safe, comfortable place
2. You must have nothing heavy weighing on your mind
3. There can be no judgement
4. All members of the party must be partaking of the same product
5. There can be no questions about, or planning for, future events
6. There can only planning for, and related questions about, the product being used
7. There can be no discussion of disturbing political developments

The first few days we were at Caseville, it was HOT. Fortunately, Laura and I were in an air conditioned house, but most of the houses did not have air conditioning. To cope with the heat in their Crew Cottage, Rebecca and Jeremy sat inside of a pentagram arrangement of window fans, using the five-pointed air flow in a ritual to appeal to any power that might be able to help them stay cool. Apparently this succeeded in summoning the forces of evil, as the Caseville vacation was to end in an apocalyptic coronovirus plague, with vacation homes abandoned and martyrs emerging to transport the stricken. A sign of the coming doom appeared to us early on the vacation, although we didn’t see it for what it was at the time, when an accident with macaroni and cheese branded Grace with this upside down cross.

As if the upside down cross and satanic fan arrangement were not dire enough, in yet another sign of the apocalypse, false prophets emerged, as Drew actually referenced scripture to mislead us in our interpretation of the branding.

Drew’s manipulation of scripture would later take on even greater meaning, as we would discover that Drew was the person who had brought Covid to the Caseville vacation, with Covid eventually infecting someone from almost every family in attendance. This was an amazing development given the fact that even during the peak of Covid, we had gone on vacations in the Outer Banks and Caseville, not socially distanced, and almost no one had caught Covid. Five years later, the Caseville vacation was destined to become the most super-spreader of all of our family vacations.

Revelations lists “scorching heat” as another sign of the end of days, and over the first few days the temperature was in the upper 80’s and even the nights weren’t that cool, so the heat from the day never really dissipated. When Laura and I left our haven of air conditioning to venture into this domain of heat, we came prepared.

We probably missed all of the apocalyptic signs of doom because, while the scorching heat might be a sign from Revelations or just a precursor to some kind of extinction-level weather event, the heat was convenient to us. And, really, isn’t that all that matters? The heat meant that Lake Huron was unusually warm, in the upper 70’s, and the shallow area near the beach was almost like bath water, at 80 degrees, which led all kinds of people to head into the water for beach fun.

We were reminded, though, by Mrs. Crews’ ubiquitous rules, not to let the beach fun go too far.

People were enjoying the water so much that it had an unprecedented effect on the scheduling of events, normally such a hallmark of Caseville vacations that for previous vacations, Zoom meetings to discuss the itinerary had been held SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE VACATION and children had been lectured for their failure to follow up on emails sent to plan the vacation. On this vacation, the water fun led to the postponement of a scheduled event, then another postponement, and ANOTHER postponement, and then the cancellation of the show due to unscheduled vacation relaxation.

In previous years, people were not trusted to enjoy the vacation on their own, and, when insufficient enjoyment was demonstrated by vacationers, speeches were made to compel people to display the appropriate amount of fun.

This year, people had frickin’ damn fun even when they were not instructed to do so. There was so much fun, that we even missed out on having the annual talent show. As was the case during the pandemic, we will have to settle for this virtual celebration of talent and fun. As with many of our in-person talent shows, Jesse provided the soundtrack.

Still, in the midst of all of this fun, if our 7 commandments had not mandated a no-judgement zone, we might wonder why Mark had chosen to fuse fashions from the Righteous Gemstones, combining Baby Billy’s glasses with Kelvin Gemstone’s hair.

In what was probably Michigan’s “Signs of the Apocalypse” equivalent to the Book of Revelations prediction that the Tigris River will dry up, water levels in Lake Huron were as low as we had seen them. The last time we had seen the water level at Caseville like this, sea life had committed suicide rather than conceding the lost swimming area, leading to this ritual burial ceremony. 

While there were no apocalyptic animal deaths that we saw this time, the receding waters had left the beaches as wide we had ever seen them. In some years, the water comes all the way up to the grasses on the beach, creating barriers that prevented walks on the beach. This year, the way was clear for long beach walks.

All of the extra space for activities somehow triggered in Finley the instinct to act like a dog. Normally when you play fetch with Finley, he grudgingly brings a stick back maybe two times; four is his absolute max for such foolishness. At Caseville, he shattered his former record.

We also had plenty of space for beach volleyball, which drew participants who were experienced and participants, like McKenna, who had less experience playing volleyball than Finley did fetching. There were players born in this century and some born back in the 1900’s.

Occasionally, we had to wonder if people knew which sport they were playing, a problem we had also experienced during our vacation at the Outer Banks.

Fortunately, the warm water meant that we could avoid some of that confusion by moving the volleyball net offshore, into water deep enough to prevent a soccer-volleyball fusion event.

Since the well-water at the cottages was hard, sometimes stinky, and often urine-colored, the warm lake water also seemed to be cleaner. Some people took this to mean that the lake was better for bathing.

Maybe they hadn’t noticed that the other family members swimming and floating around them had been enjoying the water so much that they had not gotten out for hours, all the while drinking and drinking and drinking. Or maybe they had forgotten about the ritually buried fish that had by now decomposed into their bathing water. Or maybe they had missed all of the birds that used the lake as a massive toilet. At any rate, they came out of the water “clean” and dried off.

We did see other groups using the lake as a bathtub, groups that had developed a workaround to using cottage blankets as beach coverings.

Each evening, the temperature cooled off, and the area by the Crews Cottages beach was ideal for seeing the setting sun.

What’s the old saying? Red sun at night, Covid’s delight? Red sky at dark, the future looks stark? Sky with red glow, Covid infections will grow?

Next up: Covid at Caseville: a Super-Spreader Story