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One bathing suit, a couple of t-shirts, and a pair of sweatpants. This is all one needs for a weekend getaway to a cottage. Don’t worry, there will be spare sweatshirts from trips of yore to throw on when it inevitably gets cold at night. Whether you choose to stock up on beer and groceries before or after arriving at your final destination is up to you.
What you call a cottage – a cabin, summer home, beach house, etc. – doesn’t really concern me, either. In Michigan, we call heading to a cottage simply “going up north.” Maybe you go down south. Perhaps you travel east to Nantucket or The Hamptons. If you’re in the southwest, I believe you head to something called a “ranch.”
At the end of the day, that’s all merely semantics. What does matter, and what is undeniable, is that cottage life (or whatever your version of a cottage is) is the best life. It does not get any better than hopping in a car after taking a half day on Friday and traveling to a secluded home near a body of water and surrounded by a thick forest.
Worries about work and one’s personal life simply seem to fall by the wayside as soon as we arrive at our little cabin in the woods. Surrounded by close friends and/or family, the only thing we need to fret about is whether the cooler on the back porch has enough ice in it. Did someone remember to bring eggs for tomorrow morning? Worry about it when you wake up. There’s a mom-and-pop grocery store you can hit up if need be.
Do I have a meeting or deadline to meet next week? Who gives a fuck? There are more important things to think about like whether we should bring one case of beer or two onto the boat for the afternoon.
Cottage life is about water sports like wakeboarding, tubing, and sitting idly on a pontoon while the sun beats down on you. It’s about fireside chats that go until the wee hours of Saturday morning and shotgunning Michelob Ultras by the pale moonlight. It’s about playing Bob Seger and Kid Rock for the entirety of the trip and singing along even if you don’t know the lyrics.
If you’re lucky, you’ll talk your most conservative friend or relative into taking one too many shots and watching as they reluctantly take a drag from that spliff you rolled.
We’re different human beings once the Jeep is loaded up and traveling on back roads to the cottage. Somewhere between leaving your office for the weekend and the spot on the side of the driveway where you park your car upon arrival, you lose the ability to give a fuck.
Calories don’t count at the cottage. All of those filters we feel we need to have on at work or around our friends get taken off, and you’re left with the most stripped down version of yourself. There’s something about wearing a bathing suit for the duration of the weekend and maybe a t-shirt when the temp drops at night that is really liberating. Provided you are not a character in A Thud And A Splash, the vibe, for lack of a better term, is simply magical.
There’s hopefully no wi-fi at the place you’re staying at which renders your phone useless. Television? Forget about it. Bring a book if you don’t feel like talking to people for a few hours. Put the iPhone on airplane mode for the weekend and leave it in your suitcase upstairs. Better yet, turn the fucking thing off.
There’s no Instagram, no Snapchats of your trashy ex, or e-mails from work. There’s a townie bar down the street that you might terrorize on Friday night for a bit, but other than that there isn’t much of a reason to leave the cottage.
If you have the means I highly recommend getting to a cottage. It’ll be a highlight of your summer and something you’ll remember for a long time. .
Image via Unsplash
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jduda@grandex.co
Little cottage that sleeps 13 about a half mile off Lake Geneva. See you there, PGPers.
Stay off my lakes, FIBs.
You local folks should be relegated to Lake Delavan.
Lake Delavan can eat a massive dick. Lake Geneva and Lake Beulah might as well be the only choices
What a shit show that would be
Nice. I’m in
Can’t wait
Are we just going to overlook the fact that there has still been no follow up to A Thud And A Splash?! It’s been just over 10 months, Duda!
GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT DUDA!
Complete description of a perfect summer weekend in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Right down to the Kid Rock, water sports, townie bars, and conservatives puff, puff, passing. Ski-U-Mah.
Devils lake
I had the Pure Michigan theme playing the entire time I read this article.
This post made me feel things. Good, good things. One huge, unintended perk of friends getting married is the “hey, family has a cottage on the water that we have for the weekend – you in?” text. Shit yeah, I am. Can’t beat summertime in the mitten.
Duda can we work on your formatting? None of your articles work on the computer for me (they are all shifter left) and I can only take so many “shits” during the day to read on my phone. Full disclosure: I am using Internet Explorer because I got in trouble with the IT nerds for illegally downloading chrome.
I had that problem at work (with only Duda’s articles too) and I figured out that if you make the window smaller you can find a sweet spot where it will all fit. Hope that helps.
Maybe just don’t use IE?
Maybe read why I have to use it?
Perfect timing, I’m going to join my dad and his old college friends at a cottage in the North GA mountains this weekend and I’m psyched about it. Smoking clips and rippin lips, hard to beat.
I’m all about the lake house life. Sunburns come after you leave as punishment for leaving the lake.
The lakehouse/cottage is the one place where you can get extra fucked up (weed/alcohol) and still be the most sober one in your family
The lake house always has the perfect vibe. Fish in the morning, boat in the afternoon, grill at night; repeat.