Imagine yourself sitting outside in the middle of July overlooking the water with a book in your lap. The sun is sinking lower in the sky. You can see your uncles out in the middle of the lake on the boat fishing. They aren't really catching anything except for loads of seaweed. Your siblings and cousins are throwing sticks out into the water for the dogs to swim out and retrieve. And your dad is grilling hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner. Everything around you is perfect even though you got a little sunburnt while playing volleyball earlier that day and your thighs burn from tube rash.

This is typical summer for me. Almost every weekend we take the hour and a half trek up north to spend quality time with our family and enjoy fun outdoors activities like biking, tubing, water skiing, paddle boarding, kayaking, and so much more.

My cabin is my happy place. It's the place where I can just relax and not worry about the hustle and bustle of my daily life at home. Just being by the water can help relax me. I enjoy laying out at the end of the dock all day with a good book and tanning spray because it just takes me a little bit further away from reality.

However, there are so many things about up north that I love. The most important being the way it brings my entire family together. Most times I head up north some of my extending family tags along for the fun. If enough of them come we set up tournaments (my family is very competitive) like volleyball, horseshoes, and disc dunk (Kan Jam, Disc Slam). If you've never tried disc dunk before I highly recommend you do. It's a yard game where you throw a frisbee to your partner and they have to try and hit it into the can.

The competition isn't the only fun thing my family does there. We also try a lot of new things on the water. Whether it be a trying out a brand new tube or trying wake boarding for the first time. Even way up north we're still learning new things. We could be out on the water for hours tubing. Seeing how long we can hold on for and keeping track of how many awesome wipe outs we've had. We always make sure we've had a turn riding with everyone who came along.

When night time rolls around, everyone starts to relax, and the camp fire gets lit. We all gather around with paper plates loaded with hotdogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, chips and dip, fruits, and veggies. Listening to playlist of old tunes that we all know the words to. The night is filled with laughter reminiscing on the events from that day or memories from when we were younger. We always play some kind of camp fire game that no one really wants to participate in but we do anyway. Of course, I can't forget the best part: S'mores. Some like them with Hershey's and some with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, for me I love both and will probably have three of each before the night is over. The very last part of the night with the remaining few people still chatting around the dying fire pit is spent looking up and the sky above up. How bright the stars seem to shine up there. Count satellites and shooting stars before we go to bed and do it all over the next day.

When is comes down to it being up north is all about making memories with the people you love and just enjoying the time spent with them. I can recall so many memories from my childhood being up north and I'm planning on making so many more. There is no better time spent than with the people you love in the place you all love unconditionally.