Some months ago, my mother changed her mind about having a family reunion in Sweden when she found that my aunt, who is Vietnamese and married to my mom’s brother, couldn’t get a visa to go over there with her kids. Instead, she booked five cabins at Douthat State Park in central Virginia, a place I’d never heard of but which has been rated (apparently) in the top ten of all state parks in the country.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of my work at the moment, I was only able to make it down there by midday on Friday - and the reservation was up Saturday at 10am. So I hightailed it down to northern Virginia Thursday night, woke up bright and early to a phone call from our CEO (thankfully my alarm was set to go off five minutes later - all part of the job, anyway), and grabbed my cousin for the 200-mile drive down to Millboro.

I spent all the rest of the day swimming, canoeing, and acquiring a rather painful sunburn on my back. We completed the evening with a campfire and s’mores, and you know what? It was perfect. Especially because absolutely no one there got cell reception.

I love stuff like this. It reminds me of my youth, when, every year for ten years, we would spend at least a month of the summer at our family house in Sweden. Even without indoor plumbing, it was an unbelievable experience with swimming, fishing, boating, eating crayfish, and playing guitar and singing late into the night - after all, it’s Sweden in the summertime. It doesn’t get dark, and that’s just cool.