Have you ever gone on a beach vacation where you got temporarily locked out of the condo you were staying at, jellyfish were literally swimming beside you, the waves were so intense that you could get sucked out in an instant, the people weren’t any friendlier than a grizzly bear, there was a tornado just down the beach from you, you got completely covered in ticks from going on a nature walk, and the town you were staying at got flooded? Well, let me just say, you are one lucky duck. If I were to take the time and give a recount of the entire vacation, you’d practically be reading a novel. For your sake, however, I decided to take a small snippet of my vacation to tell you about. I decided that I will tell you about our lovely nature walk. If you aren’t a fan of ticks, this horrific recount of events that I went through might not be for you… However, if you’re in for an interesting story that will make you appreciate every single vacation you’ve ever gone on, no matter how bad they may seem at the time, stay tuned.

It all started after a long day at the beach. We had just gotten back from the beach, it wasn’t too late, the sun was setting, and we all wanted to check out the surrounding environment. Lucky for us, there was a nature trail that was just down the road from where we were staying. So my family and I, being the adventure-seeking people that we are, decided to hike on that trail. We hit the paths, enjoying the scenery and picking other paths to follow as we wound around a cute little pond. We kept going, but as we got deeper into the woods, we saw Brown Recluse spider webs covering the entire ground up to the trail. If that freaked you out (like it did to me) then hold on to your hats, because that’s just the start. After continuing down the path, we took a less spider-populated area. Halfway around one of the many turns we saw a skeleton on the ground. It was very old, and had been there a while, but it definitely freaked me out. My dad whipped out his phone after seeing it, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to my uncle (who was a police officer). As he sent it he said, “…looks kinda like a human skull and ribcage to me…” That sent us kids over the edge and we speed-walked right out of that path and onto the main trail out. We wanted nothing to do with whatever/whoever that skeleton belonged to or how it ended up there. We continued our walk at a brisk pace and came across a man alone, sitting on his motor bike. We waved hello, gave a smile, and kept going. But, when we turned around, we could see him staring at us. Even my dad, who doesn’t get weirded out by things, mentioned how creepy that man was. As well as mentioning that he thought it was “a good time to head back to the place.” (As in our condo.)

After a while of nothing crazy happening, my sister stopped in her tracks, let out a yelp, and started smacking things off of her leg. “What’s wrong?” my mom asked as she walked over to her.

“There’s tiny baby spiders all over me!!” My sister screamed, starting to cry.

“Honey, you need to calm down,” consoled my mother. “Show me where they are.”

“They’re gone now,” my sister sniffled and stopped smacking her legs like a crazy person.

“See? Everything is fine!” With that, we continued our journey out of the woods and onto the sidewalk. Just as we were about to come into view of our condo, my brother noticed something on him too. He brushed it off, but then noticed another, and another. He pulled up his pant leg and came across 30 baby ticks running across his leg. You would’ve thought it was something out of a horror movie. He screamed and sprinted down the sidewalk, trying to shake everything off. Following in pursuit, we all checked our legs, and to our utter shock, we all had them on us. My mom, dad, and I were the lucky ones of the family: we only had three or four. My other three siblings, however, were not so fortunate. As we all sprinted for the condo to pick/brush them off of us, we came to the realization that those “baby spiders” that my sister was talking about weren’t spiders at all… they were ticks. We soon learned, after getting off every last one, that we had indeed trekked across a tick nest. We threw the shoes we were wearing on the walk into a bag, and the bag got thrown out onto the back deck…we never wore those shoes again. Thankfully, no one got a tick embedded in them, and no one got bit by a Brown Recluse (phew). We went to sleep that night all on different levels of “shaken up,” remembering the bones, the ticks, and the creepy old dude who was on his motorbike.

If you enjoyed hearing that little piece of my entire vacation, you’d have a great time hearing about the rest of my experience. As it all basically went like that the whole week we were there. As bad as I may make it sound, it was actually a great time. We learned to laugh, smile, and make jokes about the unfortunate events that we can’t control. Not only that, but I am now able to cherish those memories for the rest of my life.

Stay tuned for future articles! I might start to reveal the other experiences that happened on our “Dismaying Delaware trip.”