How to (Really) Enjoy Your Trip to Keuka Lake

The First step in your Keuka Lake visit is setting up camp. You must tuck towels into unclaimed sand and use your cooler as a national flag to secure your spot.

You'd better show up early, so your family doesn't get stuck with a slice of land covered in gravel or discarded cigarette butts. If you show up late, don't fret too much. Your daughter will collect them in her cracked bucket and use them as decorations for her sandcastles. But that's alright. Just be sure to watch her from the corner of your eye, so none of the burnt tobacco kisses her lips.

As the sun settles, the town folks and tourists will arive, dressed in their sticky bathing suits. You’ll peel skin slowly off the pleather of your car seat and roll out into the cool wind. The first thing you’ll notice from the gravel parking lot is the sour smell of freshwater fish intermingling with the bitterness of charcoal grills cooking hashbrowns and sausages over coals. As you make your way toward the grass patches covered with a sprinkling of sand, you’ll notice other tourists shyly removing their outerwear and covering quickly with towels, while village mothers stretch out, barely covered, in ill-fitting bikinis, on their scratchy, pale towels decorated with faded, nineties cartoon characters. You must match their audacious energy if you are to blend in and assert dominance. Your daughter will follow your lead.

You’ll watch as the children of other tourists attempt to touch or climb the empty lifeguard chair. You should be sure to warn your daughter with your limited knowledge of tetanus. The villagers will shout about splinters or unkept wood that’ll surely punish and puncture through tender tourist palms. This, the locals' warnings, is your daughter's opportunity to make connections.

While they have your attention, and as your daughter runs off after another pigtailed girl, the villagers will also warn you about the park. (If one is liberal enough to call a bronzed swing set and a half-hung tire swing a park.) You’ll find it’s best to avoid the swing set altogether. Not only for the possibility of disrupting the wasp nest inside, but because here is where the villagers trade goods and services. You'll find Heroin the most frequent good and sex the most popular service.

Be sure to keep eye on your daughter, don't let her get too close to other children. Especially those with bruises running down their legs. As long as you focus your energy on the lake beach, your tourist children will be safe from the dangers of wood and hooligans.

When in doubt, stick to cigerrate sandcastles.

The second step in your Keuka Lake visit is making your way into the cold water. You must focus on your footwork; it’s a skill worth having if you wish to keep your bare feet away from any dead lake creatures, broken shells, or zebra mussels.

Not wanting your daughter to look like a tourist, you'll have her do these steps alone. Some bleeding is normal.

Once you sidestep past the obstacles, your feet will meet mush. Several sloppy inches of seaweed, broken from their stems, will caress between your toes and slither up your ankles in a friendly greeting as the gentlest wave pushes the mixture of slush and sand further up your shins.

The villagers will laugh with green water dripping from their lips, as the other tourists deny their children a chance to swim. Since you allowed your daughter to risk the lake water, you are better than the other tourists. A metaphorical pat-on-the-back will be felt at this time.

The rusted-over sign by the abandoned lifeguard post suggests against swimming. But the villagers know there’ll never be a lifeguard on duty, and safety is up to personal opinion. Not once has there been an attractive young person in red, wielding a whistle to keep them safe. Only an itchy, weathered rope with yellow buoys keeps the children safe from where the tide might suck them under a boat.

The village parents half-watch their children play in the murky, dead-fish-littered water as they blast classic rock and country music. The other tourists read books with noise-canceling headphones. You should continue to make your way into the progressively warming water, looking back at your daughter just long enough ot make sure she hasn't disappeared into the dark green.

By now, you should be up to your navel.

The other children will be rushing in after your daughter. Your skin will bristle, but you must push aside your prejudice. You don't want to spoil another vacation for your lonely, only child, do you?

The Final step in your Keuka Lake visit is having a successful cookout. A row of wooden tables with matching benches resides next to five beat-up miniature charcoal grills. Like meerkats popping their heads from their burrows, families watch for an opening. Once a table is free, quickly pack your belongings and shuffle, with sand still pressing grains into your plump bottom, to your wooden throne. The wet butt prints from the other family will not be fully dried, but you should sit anyway lest you lose your chance to another hungry family.

Fathers grill smoking sausages, hot dogs, burgers, vegetable Kebobs, or corn. Mothers herd their children back from the murky beach while ignoring their pleas for more playtime on the lifeguard chair. Your daughter is quiet, so she will not complain about the small collection of food, nor will she whine about not having a father to cook it for her.

You should play your role well as both mother and father, as tourist and villager, as daughter and mother. That is the only way to really enjoy your trip to Keuka Lake.

You should sit side-by-side as the sun sets into a remarkable orange that turns the green water black. You must brush the sand that prickles and itches your skin away before packing up all your damp things and climbing back into the hot pleather and stale air of your vehicle.

Tomorrow, you’ll do it all over again, as there isn't much left to do in the hometown you ran away from and have reluctantly returned to.

As you drive away, you must look back at your daughter and be content with her tiny smile. Her eyes will be closed as she reminisces about a childhood neither of you fully got to experience.

Later, she might stir with a sudden sadness. She might ask questions about her father again.

Try not to fret.

When in doubt, stick to cigerrate sandcastles.