Some of the best adventures are the ones that don’t really need much of a plan.
Labor Day took us down to Lake Rathbun and Stephanie and Rob’s lake house for one of those days that had a little bit of everything we like: good friends, people we hadn’t seen in a while, a few new faces, plenty of stories, good margaritas, and a Cajun boil that gave everybody a pretty good reason to stay gathered around.
The food was absolutely part of the day, but the people were really the point. There was time to catch up, time to reminisce, and time to just sit around and enjoy being with people we genuinely like. Old friends and new friends mixed together pretty easily, and before long it felt less like an event and more like exactly where we were supposed to be for the afternoon.
The boil
And then there was the Cajun boil.
This is one of those meals that is almost better as an experience than it is as a plate of food. It isn’t precious and it isn’t supposed to be. You get everybody around it, dig in, pass things around, talk over one another, laugh, make a mess and keep eating.
The pictures only tell part of it. The videos are what really bring this part back — the food, the steam, the pile coming together, the serving, and everybody standing around waiting to get after it.
Add a couple of good margaritas and nobody was in much of a hurry to leave.
Topless seemed like a good idea
Of course, we had taken the Jeep with the top off, because that is exactly the kind of decision that seems brilliant when the weather is cooperating.
Then the rain started circling.
So part of the late afternoon became watching the sky and watching the radar, trying to figure out when Mother Nature was going to give us enough of a hole to make the roughly hour-and-a-half drive home without turning the topless Jeep into a mobile bathtub.
Eventually we got our break and went for it.
That ride home is one of the pieces we’ll probably remember just as much as the food. Top off, watching the weather, knowing more rain was out there somewhere and trying to thread the needle between it. Nothing dramatic happened — which was definitely the preferred outcome — but it turned a normal drive home into one more part of the adventure.
One of those days
There wasn’t one giant moment that made the day. That was kind of the beauty of it.
It was the lake. The patio. The food. Margaritas. Stories we had heard before and some we hadn’t. Friends we’ve known a long time, friends we’re still getting to know, and enough time together to remember why we keep saying yes to days like this.
Thanks to Stephanie and Rob for opening up the lake house and giving all of us a place to gather. We came home full, happy, dry enough, and with another really good Labor Day memory in the books.