We went to Disneyland recently. The week before the trip, I bought our park tickets and made a rough daily itinerary. Then I got busy.

Silence picked up my list and read: Tuesday—Beach.

“What beach are we going to?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Pick one.”

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but Silence is a super-fan of The Mother-Daughter Book Club series by Heather Vogel-Frederick. (Direct quote: “Heather Vogel-Frederick is a literary genius.”)

Silence has read the books multiple times; she’s listened to the audio books multiple times; she’s corresponded with the author; she’s memorized the middle names of all the characters. Thus, on our Tuesday away, we ended up renting a car and driving to Newport Beach. But not so we could see the beach. No, so we could find the tiny ferry terminal that would take us to Balboa Island, home of our (fictional) friend Cassidy Sloane, and birthplace of frozen bananas.

We spent the entire day driving, hunting for ferry, riding ferry, walking island, finding said bananas, and then doing it all in reverse, but it was a lovely, sunny day and Silence was very, very happy. (Violence wasn’t complaining about a day in search of chocolate-dipped treats, either.)

All in all, it was much more successful than our second “literary” tourism moment of the trip, which was a turn on the Harry Potter 4D ride at Universal Studios. That one left me sitting on a park bench with my head between my knees while the kids enjoyed their butter beers without me.