Beach Flies and Broken Bones

Newsletter 2026-06-15

Time flies when you’re being eaten alive by flies. At least I wasn’t the one who got rushed to immediate care for an x-ray. Welcome to the beach.

Before last week, I didn’t know the beach even had flies. Usually, we go in July. Our friends from college, Winston and Virginia, have a priceless connection to a vacation cottage that’s been in a former neighbor’s family for generations. The cottage was built a century ago in a subdivision of small, working-class houses with a private white-sand beach. Back then, sand was considered barren wasteland in Indiana because it was useless for growing corn. In the intervening decades, nearly every other house in the neighborhood has been bulldozed and replaced by a mansion or given an HGTV-style makeover to double in size and add plenty of space for entertaining. I assume all the other owners are professional dog walkers and stamp collectors with a real estate budget of two million dollars. The neighborhood is now extremely exclusive, just like the beach, which, in a just and fair world, wouldn’t be in private hands. Nearly all of Indiana’s coastline is municipal, state, or national parks, save for this one-mile stretch, which belongs to a neighborhood where people only seem to live a few weekends a year. I used to feel guilty going there, but that was before I discovered the flies. Now I suspect the builders who thought the beach was a cornless wasteland might have been right after all.

We had to move our beach trip earlier in the summer than we’re used to. This year, the family who owns the cottage implemented a new lottery system. As friends of former neighbors, we had the last choice and were lucky to get even that. The dates we wanted in July were a hot commodity. Those weeks never had any bugs, likely because it was so hot and dry that any flies burst into flames. We booked our dual family vacation with Winston, Virginia, and their son for this past week, adding to our schedule congestion. Thanks to poor planning, we’ll be on the road every week in June and then home the rest of the year. We’ve never done moderation well. While that wasn’t ideal, I would have taken any dates the cottage family offered us. They give us the whole house a five minute walk from the private beach for the same nightly rate as a normal hotel room miles inland. At that price, I’d build sand castles at Christmas. Winston and Virginia arrived the day before we did. They had the beach to themselves the first day. That made them the sole targets for every insect in the dunes. They warned us that we should bring bug spray. They should have told us to bring a flamethrower.

It still blows my mind that such gorgeous beaches are less than three hours from Indianapolis. People around here regularly drive eight to ten hours to vacation destinations on the East Coast. I guess it’s not as fun if you can’t be eaten by a shark or stung by a jellyfish. Betsy handled the driving Tuesday to finish off some of the final hours on her learner’s permit before she can get her driver’s license. Our van was packed past the bursting point. Besides our usual six passengers, we let Betsy bring a friend. She’s too old to frolic with her sisters but too young to hang out with the adults. Only a teenager can complete the impossible feat of entertaining a fellow teen. Adding her friend and her luggage left less space for our beach gear. The cottage has most of what we need, but I bought my own tent. Every year, the wind wins, laughing at us as we chase our umbrellas across the beach. This year, I brought a heavy duty 10’ x 10’ pop up tent. It was too massive to be easily portable. My hope was that mother nature couldn’t move it, either. With proper bracing, I would attempt to defy the mightiest gales of the Great Lakes. It was a grand ambition that made for a cramped ride. There have been container ships that carried less cargo.

Upon arrival, we unpacked. Then Winston and I, along with Betsy and her friend, made a grocery run. On the trip up, there had barely been enough room left in the van for oxygen, let alone food. To save time, we went to the closest grocery store, which was priced for the mansions around it. That excursion will haunt my dreams for years to come. I should have driven twice as far to pay half as much. Since saving money there was already impossible, we grabbed everything with reckless abandon, making for one of the fastest shopping trips ever. I didn’t realize it was the last time Winston would do anything quickly for the next six to eight weeks.

Back at the cottage, the wives and children had already left for the beach. We hurriedly unpacked the groceries, then rushed to join them. Winston was the last in the house. I need to add a disclaimer here. The family that owns the cottage is nervous about renting to non-family members for liability purposes. The house was built to the safety standards of their grandmother’s generation and hasn’t changed much since. The family is terrified that someone will get hurt and they’ll be sued. It’s a good thing this next part didn’t happen. Winston put on his prescription sunglasses and attempted to navigate the steep, slick stairs leading to the walk-out basement. He did not stick the landing. Winston’s foot hurt, but he thought he just sprained it. He managed to limp two hundred yards and down one staircase to our beach camp. Then he didn’t move for the next five hours. Surely he would be fine when he eventually stood up. For anyone from the cottage family reading this, it’s a good thing nothing in this paragraph actually happened.

While Winston was having his fictional adventure, I set up my massive tent with the help of my two BSA Scouts, who had erected something similar at their campouts. We buried the feet and weighed down the corners with sandbags. We basically built a house at the beach. It could have stood up to a large hurricane or a medium-sized Godzilla. For the rest of the afternoon, the three other adults and I sat in the shade while the kids played in the sand and in the water, all while being bitten by a thousand flies that seemingly came out of nowhere. They finally got so bad that I got in the lake, which is very out of character for me. The water is best enjoyed from a safe distance while staying bone dry. Maybe the bugs weren’t trying to eat me. They just wanted to make sure I got some aquatic exercise. Lake Michigan won’t warm up until late in the summer, if at all. The water temperature is still set to February. After a few minutes, it stopped feeling cold, probably because all my nerves froze and died. Not everyone was able to run from the bugs. Winston is lucky those flying piranhas didn’t pick him clean to the bone.

At the end of the afternoon, we packed up. It was time to shower and order pizza, the two best parts of any day at the beach. Winston could barely walk. He struggled to make it to the top of the beach stairs. We had to pick him up in the van to get him back to the house. The next morning, Virginia drove him to immediate care. I took her kid and ours to the beach. I set up my perfect camp like the day before, then quickly abandoned it when the flies returned. I spent the next hours at a sandbar with the kids, watching from a distance as the bugs enjoyed the shade I built for them. Virginia didn’t reappear until after lunch. Winston had an acute fracture at a critical juncture at the top of his foot. They had to double cast it to immobilize it in two directions. Going to the beach was out of the question. So was driving. Again, to the family that owns the cottage, all of this should be interpreted as fake, at least until we work out the lottery dates for next year. With all of the adults back, I traded off. Virginia and Lola headed to the beach. I went back to the house to watch baseball with Winston on my laptop. The kids got to keep playing, and I didn’t get bitten by a single bug. It was a perfect afternoon.

Well, it would have been if my plan had worked. Unfortunately, my massive tent let me down. I got a frantic call that the wind had flipped it over and the women and children at the beach couldn’t get it upright again. I rushed to the scene full of regret. I had wanted to be there when it was tested, fighting back against the wind like a sailor manning the riggings in a storm. I thought if I buried it deeper or tilted it just right, I could have won. By the time I got there, it was too late. A main support bar was bent, and everyone was too exhausted and sunburned to help me fight back. The tent came down, probably for good. You won that round, meteorological forces of planet earth, but I got the last laugh. With a storm moving in, I hurriedly grilled enough brats and hot dogs to feed half of Indiana. I finished the last batch seconds before the skies opened up. It was as close to a buzzer beater as you can get in the grilling world. I expect to get high fives about it from my fellow men for life.

On the final day, we went to the beach one last time, this time with no tent and minimal gear. I stuck mostly to the water. We conceded that the beach belonged to the flies. No bug spray on earth could touch them. If you want to enjoy the Indiana Dunes in June, be sure to schedule a preemptive napalm strike. Winston stayed at the house. His foot is still very much broken, or not broken depending on whether or not you’re in the family that owns that cottage. We had a full morning in the water before packing up. Back at the house, we feasted on leftovers but still didn’t eat enough. We barely had room in the van for ourselves, our dirty clothes and gear, and all the food and beverages we didn’t finish off. Even with the man-eating insects and serious bodily injuries, it was still a great vacation, at least compared with normal life. Now the real challenge starts for Virginia. She drove a preschooler and a husband on crutches who can’t put any weight on one foot back to a house where there’s no first floor bathroom. I suspect that, next year, she’ll make sure she’s the one who falls down the stairs. That’s assuming there is a next year. Hopefully, the cottage family doesn’t get spooked. I have their back. If Winston does sue them, I’ll lie in court in their defense, just as long as they keep letting me use their death trap of a beach property.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James