Friday

The following morning we found the weather was uncooperative at best, and after trucking it over to Jekyll Island for what we hoped to be a day with our books and our toes in the sand, but were foiled by big ugly red blotches on the radar that were circling us like The Jets. Or The Sharks. Whichever ones were the complete bungholes.

The lack of sunshine lead us to a dockside bar just outside the Jekyll Island Club, becuase really: cocktails make everything better on a girlie vacation. Something else that make everything better? Snapping shots, which my lovlies were patient enough to tolerate.

I can’t say enough about traveling with people who have a similar mindset about what a vacation is. There was no pressure to stay at our table and sip my naughty frothy adult beverage when I wanted to be down the dock shooting the end of a frayed rope. I sipped, I talked, I wandered, I shot, I sipped more, and then My Aunt arrived. That bitch.

Eventually we decided we weren’t going to let Mother Nature and her menopausal episodes (this reference is actually about the weather, I’m not always talking about my uterus) foil our plans. We got back in the Griswold family truckster and headed for St. Simons, we found a tide that dampened our towels and our bottoms but not our spirits. Gwen broke out the limes, Kel broke out the beer, I broke out my leatherman and we made our own perfection.

When the water finally crept up on our toes and chased us away, we traveled back to Jekyll and a place I’d been with The Mc. Correction: a place we’d gone, then left, because the hostess seated a table of children next to us while their parents sat further away and I had a melt down. We never did eat there, but I remembered it so there we were…at Sea Jay’s.

There we were, on the porch, looking out over the water and the slips with boats tied up and the underbelly of the bridge. There we were, sipping our drinks and contemplating our meals when a raccoon walked across the lawn. I’m not sure if all raccoons walk like this guy, but he moved a little like Forest Gump when he had the leg braces on. Didn’t stop the little fella from climbing up the tree closest to the diners and giving us all a sweet faced silent plea for scraps, though.

Dinner was devoured and it was on to the one and only appointment we had during our vacay: a turtle walk. After those crushing blows were delivered last month and my attempts to swim with turtles were thwarted by the H1N1, Gwen quietly slipped into uber considerate friend mode and made arrangements for us – and for me – to have a possible turtle sighting.

While our walk was not fruitful, we had an hour long stroll on the shoreline under the stars (I’d nearly forgotten what they looked like) and a moon that lit up the night so well there wasn’t a need for any man-made interference. The cooling sand, the salty air, the friends nearby but doing their own thing, and that moon and those stars…it was like a big sloppy kiss from the heavens.

If there’s anything that fresh air does, it’s wear you out. We drove back to the hostel mostly in silence, grabbed everything we’d need that night and scurried to our treehouse, hoping we’d outrun the skeeters.

We didn’t.