MARK MY WORD: THIS DAY AT THE BEACH WAS NO DAY AT THE BEACH

Barely 10 minutes out of Cape Girardeau and already the kids were asking, "Are we there yet?"

Joni and I quickly pointed out that it would take two days to get to our destination, sunny South Florida and a stay with relatives.

We hadn't made the trip for several years. The last time we made the 19-hour drive, Becca was still in a car seat and Bailey hadn't been born.

This time, we loaded up the van with enough stuff to outfit the international space station and headed across the river bridge.

Bailey brought along her entire wardrobe of swimming suits. The kids also took along plenty of toys, dolls and other games, not to mention an entire variety pack of assorted bags of potato chips.

But clearly the most important item in our vacation inventory was the small television with built-in VCR that we set up on a backseat of our van. We also brought along plenty of videotapes to keep the kids entertained on our long journey.

It's amazing to think how our ancestors crossed this great nation in covered wagons without so much as a Game Boy or videotapes to pass the time. Of course, there were Indian raids from time to time, which, no doubt, kept the trip from being boring.

There weren't any motels to stay in either and they didn't ride in air-conditioned comfort.

In our modern day world, we had the luxury of mapping our route on the Internet before we ever left home.

We skipped Lookout Mountain. We plotted a direct course through Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and finally Florida.

Traveling down Interstate 75, you quickly become convinced that everyone on the road is just passing through Georgia to get to Florida. No one's thinking about peaches, they're thinking about ocean breezes, palm trees and how soon they'll get sunburned.

Getting to Palm Beach County is half the battle. Even with videotapes to pass the time, we had to referee numerous arguments between Becca and Bailey. It's tough for most kids to spend even half an hour crammed together in the backseat of a car much less an entire day.

By the time, we rolled into Palm Beach County and neared Joni's parents' home-away-from-home, I was seeing chads everywhere.

Joni's parents live in a mobile home park, which is considered a condominium by Florida's snowbirds. The great thing about it is it is close to the beach.

Our vacation proved to be fun once we get past a few minor crises like Bailey pouring baby oil all over Joni's parents' asphalt driveway. When you're visiting relatives, children always manage to do something they have never done before.

But it's water, not oil, that's the big issue in Florida these days. South Florida was experiencing a drought. Residents were saddled with restrictions limiting the hours that lawns could be watered and cars could be washed.

Naturally, this upset Florida folks who view watering their lawns as a constitutional right. According to a local newspaper story, one homeowner association threatened to fine one man $100 because he had brown spots on his lawn. He pointed out that water restrictions had curtailed some of his lawn watering efforts. But the homeowner association insisted that wasn't a good excuse.

Personally, I thought his lawn looked pretty good by Southeast Missouri standards and certainly far better than my yard.

I depend on Mother Nature to keep my grass green. Unfortunately, my lawn has plenty of bare spots too. When it rains, I "grow mud," as Bailey likes to point out.

A vacation can be a great learning experience. I learned, for example, that the economy of South Florida is based in large measure on replacing all those eyeglasses that tourists lose in the ocean.

I know that's the case because a giant wave carried my glasses out to sea on one of my first days at the beach. My recovery efforts proved futile, although I did manage to latch onto a nice shell that I never would have found if I hadn't been looking for my lost glasses.

I ended up going to an optical store and buying a new pair. The nice saleswoman said those big waves are good for business.

Having spent most of our money, we returned home with bags of shells, sand in our van and some new videotapes for the kids to watch.

They ended up watching the movie "Mystery Men" all the way home. The story, about an unlikely group of superhero wannabes, is marginally funny, but not if you have to listen to it all the way through Florida and Georgia. Fortunately, the children seem to have tired of the tape too. We haven't watched it once since we got home. That's fine with us.

Sometimes, it's best not to make waves, particularly if you're wearing glasses.