Island getaway

Yep, go ahead, be jealous

It’s March, and lots of folks are dreaming about taking their summer vacations to some distant island. They ponder pristine, sugar-sand beaches, palm trees arching across azure skies framing a flaming picture-postcard-perfect sunset, cute little drinky-poos with cute little umbrellas served by cute little barmaids as they share their remote paradise with one, maybe two other couples several hundred yards away from their private cabana.

That, at least, is the version that the travel-industry brochure barons would have us believe.

But in reality, the harried vacationers more often than not arrive at their destination after a grueling 17hour, weather-delayed, mechanical-problem-delayed, waiting-for-our-crew-delayed, overbooked, oversold and overpriced flight on Sardine-In-a-can Airlines, where they were wedged into a middle seat between some vacationing Sumo wrestler from Singapore and a John Candy-esque shower-curtain-ring salesman from Cleveland who provided them with the long version of his life story beginning with his traumatic, Freudian childhood.

After squeezing into the fifth round trip of the 1973 Ford Econoline hotel van-limo, retrofitted with bolted-down metal folding chairs, they finally arrive at their overbooked, oversold and overpriced “ocean view” hotel 14 blocks from the oil-scummed back bay, where some pimply faced high school hotel clerk dressed in a hotel-provided too-tight, tropical-flowered sarong informs them that due to a shortage of the overbooked, oversold and overpriced rooms, they will have to sleep on the floor in the recently converted housecleaning-services supply closet in the hotel basement adjacent to the employee shower room, which is lined with cheap metal lockers.

With no bags to unpack (since Sardine-in-a-can Airlines lost their luggage somewhere between Des Moines and Fargo with no hope of foreseeable recovery), they walk the 14 blistering-hot blocks to the beach, only to find every square millimeter of it packed with pink and red bodies, many of them from unpronounceable Balkan countries, displaying copious body hair in places where medical-school anatomy books deny the existence of hair follicles.

Abandoning all hope of staking a claim on the beach, they reluctantly spread their skimpy hotel towels on the asphalt parking lot next to the 55gallon garbage barrel overflowing with chicken bones and beer cans as they discreetly tug and pull on their newly purchased discount bathing suits.

After three years of falling victim to the scenario—no, that term is much too benevolent—the rip-off that I just described, Joanne and I decided that we were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.

So, last month, I dusted off the laptop, determined to find a friendlier, more remote, off-the-beaten-path island getaway. With my uncanny lightning-fast typing skills I entered “off the beaten path island getaway” and landed on some disturbing Czech website.

I re-entered “island vacations” (leaving off the beaten-path part) and immediately received 6.7 million hits of exciting vacation spots around the globe, the first one being the miserable place we—i mean the hypothetical couple above—visited just last year.

But then, there it was. Entry number 736. I found it. Located several miles off the coast from Marblehead, Ohio, out in the middle of Lake Erie, lies Kelleys Island.

The history of the island is much too extensive to explore here, but if I were Joanne’s mother, I would include all of it and bore you to tears with every inane detail, beginning with the island’s tumultuous formation from early glacial deposits, which predates Joanne’s mother by only a few months.

We’re sitting here on the deck behind the cabin that we rented for a week. The emerald-green lawn stretches down to the rocky shore of the world-class walleye-filled, clear blue lake waters. There are no noisy tourist-packed amusement parks, no unbridled, unregulated or unending condominium developments, no cars, trucks or motorcycles choking the quaint streets and back roads, which more resemble pathways than roadways.

And here’s the real beauty of the place: There is absolutely nothing, zero, nada for teenagers to exploit, experiment with or explode.

We while away our days on this island that has magically maintained its retro 1950s fishing-village ambiance. Joanne just jumped up to mix our next cute little drinky-poos with cute little umbrellas.

I’d better go empty our garbage barrel, overflowing with beer cans and chicken bones.