Memorial Day weekend. To myself and most of my extended family, it means making the annual trek down to Glencoe, MO. What’s in Glencoe you ask? Well, it’s always hard to describe in one or two sentences. So I’m not going to bother explaining at all. Let’s just say that the weekend consists of a lot of time eating, drinking, and spending time outside.

            I drove down there this year with Colleen in the Prius. This was the first year in quite some time that I didn’t have a 3^rd passenger. This allowed me for more cargo space to fit some extra items like my homemade baggo boards, a badminton net, and a fold up canopy for when it rains. With the 2 coolers, box of food, and both our bags of clothes, we had a pretty packed car.

            The Glencoe pavilion (which covers all the picnic tables that we all populate with endless amounts of food and drink) is quite old and has definitely seen better days. There are several spots in the corrugated metal roof that have rusted through, and thus always leak water when it rains. You may be lucky enough to claim the one picnic table that is beneath no holes. Otherwise you’ll have to come prepared to defend your paper plates and box of cereal against a constant drip of water when it rains. I have learned to store everything in plastic containers. Nobody likes soggy hot dog buns.

            This year I decided to take it a step further and bring my folding canopy. My plan was to set it up underneath the pavilion to stop the torrential waterfall when it inevitably rains. Of course, the year I come prepared, it doesn’t rain at all. I can’t recall a Glencoe in the past 10 years in which it hasn’t rained at least one of the days down there. It was quite nice actually.

            It seems like a lot of the time down at Glencoe is spent prepping and grilling food. But we managed to fit some other activities throughout the weekend. Something new this year was an afternoon of canoeing. On Saturday, we rented 7 or 8 canoes and took a 6 miles trek down a nearby river. Before we left, the canoes were claimed, one by one. The last canoe that was left had an ant infestation. Sarah, of course, was the only person left to claim a canoe and the most likely person to complain about the ants, so it was kinda funny. The canoe people dunked the canoe under the water, and then dumped the water out, drowning all the ants.

            Colleen, who was in my canoe, was worried about not being strong enough to row the whole way. However, I thought she did surprisingly well. It was quite sunny out too and we were sure to load up with plenty of sun block. A similar length canoe trip with some friends 10 years ago, we didn’t have any sunblock. And that resulted in the worst sun burn that I’ve ever had. I didn’t want a repeat incident.

            Part way through the canoe trek, there was a cool rocky cliff off the side of the river. Brian expressed his interest in jumping off the cliff, as he went to shore to look for a way up. Before we let Brian jump, we had Jonah get out of his canoe and check the depth of the water where Brian would be jumping. It was actually pretty deep.

            Brian jumped, and Jeremiah followed. I joked with Colleen, saying, “So are you going next?” I really had no intention of either of us jumping, but Colleen thought otherwise. She actually convinced me to climb up the cliff! This involved climbing up an extremely steep and extremely muddy slope.

Colleen was grossed out by all the mud, but made it up there eventually. While on top of the cliff, various people in the river below egged us on, but we were both extremely nervous about jumping. We compromised by jumping from a slightly lower ledge (about 4 feet lower). It was still pretty high, probably about as high as a high jump diving board. I went first and Colleen followed, screaming the whole way down before she hit the water.

Sometimes I am amazed by Colleen’s adventurousness. This was definitely one of those days. I would never have jumped off the cliff if it wasn’t for her. I’m glad that we did, and it was something that we shared together.

Our caravan of canoes made one more pit stop along the river to eat our lunches and to swim for a bit. But once we got to the second half of the trip, I think a lot of us were starting to get worn out. I know Colleen and I were.

All in all, it was a very fun trip, and I think it just might be a new Glencoe tradition.

The canoeing was definitely the highlight of the trip, but we also had fun doing other things as well. On Sunday, Sarah, John, Colleen and I went to the zoo in St. Louis. We got to pet sting rays, which was pretty cool.

Back at the pavilion, it seemed like all the kids (Isaac, Caden, and Ava) always wanted me to play with them. I guess I made the mistake of letting them “beat me up” once and then for the rest of the weekend, they wanted to hang from my neck, grab my ankles, tackle me to the ground, etc. It was fun, yet exhausting. Luckily, Lizzie is still a toddler and didn’t join in the fun. She did enjoy eating our tomatoes, though.

In a rare moment, the last night there, Colleen and I probably had a 30 minute conversation with Isaac, who’s just finishing 2^nd grade. He talked about everything from the sports teams he is on, to his Justin Bieber style haircut.

Another memorable Glencoe moment this year was when Colleen found a HUGE spider in the women’s bathroom. A few of us guys went to investigate. It was, in fact, pretty freakin’ huge. It was in the process of swallowing a cricket. Russell identified it as a Brown Recluse spider, but I’ll have to take a closer look at the picture to be sure. After photographing it, we decided it was in everyone’s best interest to kill the thing. Russell gave it a swift stomp against the wall, killing it instantly, but leaving its guts splattered for all to see.

The weekend at Glencoe always seems to go by so quickly. When we woke up Monday morning, just about everyone had already hit the road. We didn’t leave til about noon or so. We did make several stops on the way home, including an antique store in Eureka, Bob Evans for breakfast / lunch, Dixie Truck Stop to go to the bathroom, Funk’s Grove for syrup, and last but not least, Coal City for pizza. We arrived home around 9, unpacked our stuff, and returned to our normal schedule on Tuesday.