Wasting Away Again in Kelleys Island-ville
Since the summer after I was in seventh grade, my family has vacationed on Kelleys Island during the last week of July every summertime. If you ask me what my favorite place is, I say Kelleys Island. If you ask me where I feel the happiest, I say Kelleys Island. If you ask me where I fantasize getting proposed to, or where I want to take my future kids when I have a family of my own, the answer is, and always will be, Kelleys Island.
With a circumference of approximately thirteen miles, the tiny floating mass off of Marblehead, Ohio is a haven for people who don’t want to go too far, but just far enough, out of their comfort zones. There’s a campsite for the rough and ready, various rentable houses for those who have planned ahead, and a resort for the faint of heart. Over half of my years there have been spent in beach houses there with family, reading on rainy days and sitting at the beach on sunny ones. The past two summers have been spent in tents, enduring rain both times, with boyfriends and best friends in tow.
I ride my bike down the touristy streets, admiring old homes that were built when Kelleys was a residential area. I visit the Historical Museum each time I visit to relive the island’s glory days of quarries and fisheries and wine. I go for long runs in the mornings to smell the lake water and explore new expanses of land I’ve never seen — I surprise myself on these routes each time. I play mini golf on the aging course, remembering past games with siblings and cousins, and top the nights off with an ice cream from one of the four stands on the island (our favorite one burnt down the third year we were there). I only ask my closest friends to vacation with me on Kelleys Island.
One year the parents put on a scavenger hunt and watched as the kids (who had mostly free rein) biked all over the island following clues, only to return to a chest full of chocolates. Another year my brother displayed how frugal he actually was by refusing to order anything at the cheapest joint “in town” — The Casino. He wouldn’t even get a water. I took my boyfriend on a run this past year through the woods. We found an abandoned shack that he swore was haunted, and as we ran away from it we felt as though something was watching us. Before I started dating him, my friend Bekah and I would go to the quarry at sunset, taking pictures of the romantic colors and admiring the view. We imagined the day that we could bring someone we loved to the island and show them how much it truly meant to us.
Occasionally there would be an uncomfortable encounter on vacation, but it could never spoil the whole trip. One year my friend Caroline and I rode our bikes by the airport and a man jumped out of his stalled car to flip us off. Another year my aunt got so drunk she started a fight with my mom, and my father swore he’d never bring us back there to endure such treatment. Last year my boyfriend had to leave a few days early to get called into work, and I was left alone with an old friend who didn’t seem to share anything in common with me anymore.
Kelleys gets more magical each time I visit it. I ride in and out on the ferry, and the view is bittersweet on the way back to the mainland because I know I’m leaving my island. Few other places have called to me like Kelleys for years and never lost their touch. I get older and so does the shore, so do the waves that bring me back for another year’s adventures.
