Hurricane season!

Growing up in Kansas City, I always loved tornado season… hot, lazy summer evenings with so much electricity in the air you could feel it in your stomach, the sky turning heavy, nauseated pastel oranges or greens…  And then, the sirens… that’s when the party really got started!   Mom went under the work bench in the basement and Dad wandered around the house, usually ending up in the middle of the back yard watching the lightning.  I always loved standing with him under the exploding sky, feeling dangerous, probably because you could hear Mom screaming how dangerous it was, from inside under the bench.  As an adult on my own, I still love the lightning and storms, I can watch them for hours, but the one time I actually saw funnel clouds trying to form, I spent the rest of the evening in the bottom-most place, screaming.  So brave I am…

Living in Kansas City (which is, by the way, 30 miles from the exact center of the country), my family was all about any kind of vacation that involved a beach, affordable, off-season pricing and as a bonus, Mom’s birthday!  Consequently, August was perfect, and also hurricane season… a factor that seemed to make it more fun for all of us!  After all, hurricanes were just wet tornados, and didn’t seem to bother Mom as much.  Hurricanes, like tornados, always seemed such predictable weather...  Really, if you just watch the radar, you can see it coming… Just take cover to be safe until the eye passes, and then hang out in the back yard watching the lightning.  We found that we preferred storms in the south of Florida, as they contributed to fabulous shell finds, versus the wild and beautiful North Carolina, where the storms really get scary. 

So my family would travel to Florida’s southern gulf side for hurricane season, on purpose.  Daddy would set his computer up on the breakfast bar with streaming weatherchannel.com so we could plan our day… or at least the next few hours.   One time we took earlier flights to beat the hurricane that was hammering our vacation house.  Poor sister didn’t get out early, got as far as Atlanta, and then drove the last 10 hours through the middle of the hurricane to get there.  So, yep, we ran straight in to it, on purpose.  Or at least as far as we could get… our island destination was essentially destroyed.  We stayed as close as we could, in a hotel full of electrical and construction workers.  We did at least have some great, tiny shell finds and cashed in on some great sales and lunch specials…

A couple years ago, sister and family, La and I went to Mexico and stayed just north of Tulum, in Akumal, for 8 days.  We just wanted more than a week… This all you could eat and drink resort was one giant Corona moment after another and so completely peaceful.  We all had most amazing spa services at the hut in the coconut grove before the volleyball net off the beach.  Our favorite palapa sat between the water’s edge and the bar equipped with swings and a ‘no shoes or shirts required’ policy.  Next to that was the ‘borrow a kayak’ hut.  At the end of the week, the moon was almost full, and you could actually see the turtles digging their nests and laying eggs.  Those suckers are huge!!  Go figure, as soon as we got back home, the hurricane hit. 

As summer and August approach, I get more excited about planning my vacation… gulf-side Florida or deep Mexico?  I can go either way, as long as there is thick, wet air, vibrating with electricity and the possibility of a storm.  Thank goodness I nap, because I spend most of these vacation nights watching the storms…  And now, turtles!