Super Secret Fun Day

Early June. A Saturday.

This is what my husband and daughter had gathered from the few questions I’d allowed:

1. We would be going on an excursion within a 3-hour radius of our house on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. That could mean as far west as New Orleans, as far north as Montgomery, or anywhere across the panhandle of Florida. Or straight into the Gulf.

2. Swimsuits were recommended, but not required. Hats and sunglasses were a must.

3. It would not be salty (which seemed to eliminate the Gulf and the beaches of Florida).

4. We needed closed-toe shoes for part of the day, and I suggested sweaters to keep warm. And a change of clothes, for good measure.

5. Bathrooms would be iffy.

6. Thunderstorms would cancel.

My husband stood in the hallway looking lost. Would we be hot, or cold? Indoors or out?

I told him: Yes.

This was Super Secret Fun Day — only the second one in our family’s history, but it was so good, we’d all decided to call it a tradition anyway. It’s a simple concept: One person plans a fun day, and they keep it a secret from the others. If all goes well, it’s super. The only detail that’s revealed in advance is the date.

I stocked the car with a pile of snacks, a picnic lunch, beach towels, and everyone’s extra clothes. At 8:30 a.m., we pulled out of the driveway and headed north up the bay.

Dark clouds loomed.

For two weeks, I’d been compulsively checking the weather. As that Saturday had ticked closer, the forecast had first called for a little rain, then definite thunderstorms, then sun, then clouds, then a slight chance of showers. Classic summertime on the Gulf.

As of that morning, the forecast seemed fairly confident that we’d just have partial clouds, no rain. I hung onto that confidence as the wind began to whip around our car.

My family was convinced that when we reached I-10 at the northern point of the bay, we’d turn left toward Louisiana. My husband had his money on an airboat ride in the swamps.

We reached 10 and I turned right, merging onto the interstate and heading for Florida.

What are we doing? shrieked my daughter from the backseat.

Interesting, said my husband.

I grinned.

Just then, the skies opened up. It was a gullywasher, a biblical event, a torrential downpour that turned the whole world into a singular gray bathtub. I clutched the steering wheel and did my best to keep track of the lines on the road as traffic slowed to a crawl.

We’re going far enough away that this shouldn’t affect us, I said, feeling the worry lines knit together on my brow. I just hope it doesn’t slow us down too much.

As we inched forward, my husband pitched guesses about what I’d planned for the day. He gathered that we would be on a boat of some kind.

Jet skiing?

That sounds like fun, but no, I said.

Sailing?

That sounds like fun, but no.

Dolphin cruise?

That sounds like fun, but no.

Can you stop saying ‘That sounds like fun, but no?’ he pleaded. We sat in silence a moment, the rain thundering down around us.

Water skiing?

I bit my lip and shook my head no.

I had a high bar to clear if I was going to match our family’s first Super Secret Fun Day. It had been my husband’s idea, a bright spot of silliness and spontaneity in our otherwise rigorously planned lives.

That first one had taken place on another Saturday, three years earlier. My husband had set us on a course northwest along an unfamiliar two-lane highway, cutting through pastoral Alabama toward Mississippi. My daughter and I could not for the life of us guess where we were going.

Are we going to Hattiesburg? I finally asked him.

We were indeed. He took us to a magnificent, gigantic vintage store called The Lucky Rabbit — an old brick warehouse chock-a-block with memories from childhood. Pieces salvaged from 1990s-era McDonald’s Play Places were stuffed next to Nintendo arcade games and rusted old Coke memorabilia. A life-size E.T. sat perched on a shelf; a back wall of china held the very same Corelle coffee cups I used to drink from as a child when we visited my dad’s aunt in Bon Wier, Texas, at her house on the Sabine River.

A school bus painted in pastels held an entire rainbow collection of Pyrex cookware.

My husband led us to a room in a back corner and we found ourselves in the motel from Schitt’s Creek, rendered in precise detail. In a second building upstairs, we stumbled upon the attic bedroom from Tim Burton’s Wednesday.

We ate popsicles and bought an aqua blue cat clock with a swinging tail, plus the Corelle cups.

Then he drove us to the Pocket Museum, an alleyway that artists had filled with every shade of whimsy: trompe l’oeil scenes splashed across the pavement; a brass sign affixed above a weed, saying “Please do not touch! Weeds have feelings too”; miniature people hidden in cracks and atop breaker boxes, skiing on plastic popsicles and painting old brown bananas yellow again.

It was our first, best, and only Super Secret Fun Day — until now.

Eventually we broke through the other side of the storm, and the sky opened up to a watery blue and amorphous white clouds. We still had another two hours to go, so I tried to gin up some excitement by dangling a clue about our first planned activity.

You guys need to expand your concept of ‘boat,’ I told them.

Kayaking? my husband guessed.

Finally, we had a winner! But I could feel the disappointment radiating off of him. We lived near a bay; we owned kayaks. We did not need to drive three hours and block off an entire Saturday to go kayaking.

So I let the cat a little bit out of the bag. These aren’t just any kayaks, I said. They’re clear kayaks. I could tell that piqued their interest.

But I’m not telling you anything else about where we’re going, I told them. I thought I could string out the excitement on the long car ride by keeping them guessing.

My daughter disappeared into her phone. Two minutes later, she emerged. Is the company Get Up and Go Kayaking? she asked. And are we going to Merritt’s Mill Pond in Marianna?

I was floored.

Yes. Yes we were.

The clock tipped toward noon. The morning had evaporated, and the only fun we’d found so far was a stop at a Dunkin’ Donuts. My worry lines etched deeper.

Finally we arrived in Marianna and my family took it all in, curious and concerned. It turned out to be a sleepy, weed-choked little town that had presumably seen brighter days. Downtown looked like it had once been charming, a handful of shops and restaurants keeping it limping along now.

We passed a red and white tent pitched in a field on the side of the road. Next to it, a lit-up temporary highway sign advertised a three-day revival starting at 6 p.m.

Oh my God, I wondered, what have I done?

I held onto one last shred of hope: We weren’t there for the town anyway. We were there for the nature.

At long last, we pulled up to a bluff overlooking the pond and parked the car, stepping out into the humid midday sun. I squinted through the trees to get a good look at the water, which was supposed to be crystal clear. A thick green layer of duck weed blanketed the surface.

Fuck.

My daughter stepped up beside me and appraised the scene. This looks cool, she said. Bless her.

I plastered on a smile and we trooped down the bluff to the water’s edge. The kayaking company had set up a trailer by a little floating dock and strung up canvas shades among the trees. A man who couldn’t have been older than 25 waited for us there, suntanned and lean, his bleach-blonde hair hanging in tangles halfway down his back. A handful of other small groups clustered under the shade, about 10 of us all together.

My daughter and I rode together in one kayak while my husband paddled solo. We set off from the dock and pushed through the duck weed, navigating among the cypress trees. Our bleach-blonde guide led the way on a paddleboard, steering us toward the center of the pond.

Away from the shore, the duck weed gave way and the tightness in my chest eased. We glided out onto mirror-smooth water, the depths clearly visible below us.

The pond was long and skinny, extending four miles from one end to the other, totaling just over 200 acres. Fed by eight springs, it had once been the site of a grist mill — hence the name, Merritt’s Mill Pond. We paddled northeast, the water growing bluer and clearer as we cut a path across the surface. My daughter, sitting in front of me, stopped paddling occasionally to peer into the depths. My husband looked content. The clouds floated overhead, benign and lightweight.

My worry abated about ten degrees.

We sidled up to a spring near the far shoreline and looked down. Below us, we saw divers descending into underwater caves. This was Twin Cave spring, said Bleach Blonde. He dove into the water and pushed into the blue, disappearing into one cave and emerging from another. He surfaced, inviting us to come swim.

But the water looked cold and deep — beautiful, but uninviting. We were fine in the kayaks, we told him. He shrugged and heaved himself back onto the paddleboard.

Let’s go to Shangri La, he said.

We cut back to the near shore, landing at another spring where a dozen people swam in the shallows. This looked more tempting. We docked the kayaks and scrambled up an embankment to a jumping-off point. The rock was slick, which made it hard to get a good push off into the pond. But we would need a good push, because below, a ring of boulders piled up in the blue water. Our target would be a deeper hole that opened up in the center. If we missed it, we would get banged up pretty good.

But children were doing it, flinging themselves in with abandon, so we went for it, one after another, plunging into the spring and gasping as we came up for air. My daughter, a lanky girl on the cusp of 14, flew in all tanned arms and legs, landing with a mighty splash.

After the heat of the day, the cold water felt sublime. We perched on boulders and wriggled one by one through an underwater gap in the rock, emerging into a little shady hollow under the embankment. When we got tired of the water, we explored the land, peering into a dark cave that, our guide told us, had once stored Civil War munitions.

It smells like weed, I said.

Yeah, he laughed. People hotbox in there all the time.

What’s hotboxing? asked my daughter.

My husband said we’d tell her later.

In all, we stayed on the pond for almost three hours. We could have stayed longer, but we had to get to the second activity of the day: a cave tour. We plopped into the searing-hot car still soaking wet and pulled our sandwiches out of the cooler, devouring as much as we could during the 15-minute drive to our next destination.

We pulled up at Florida Caverns State Park with mere minutes to spare. We had just enough time to dash into the bathrooms, change into dry clothes, then run back to the car to stash our wet things.

We descended a long staircase into the underground darkness and found ourselves within the Floridan aquifer system. Our guide led us through a series of chambers adorned in a satisfying array of stalactites and stalagmites, with little pools of water congregating among the rock features. The fossils of long-dead nautilus shells and starburst creatures were imprinted into the ceiling. We found ourselves dialing into each minute detail.

Our guide pointed out a tiny bat hanging from the ceiling. It covered its face tightly with its wings, leaving only its little triangle ears peeping out, trying to ignore all our ruckus.

When we reached the end of the tour and emerged, blinking, into the daylight, raindrops pattered among the lush greenery of the surrounding forest. The rain quickly intensified, and we soon found ourselves in the middle of a downpour.

It might have smothered our good mood and left us dour as we trudged back to the steaming car, dripping like wet cats for the long drive home.

It could have been a bad ending to a day that had somehow, miraculously, come together.

But my daughter erupted in a peal of laughter, her long hair drenched and her face alight. The three of us sprinted up the path toward the car, our spirits high.

The rain was warm.

The green, so green.

The trees sagged under the weight of all that water.

The world and everything in it felt so very alive.