The Top Ten Places I Want To Escape To

Washington Mutual's Problem Resolution Center called and left a message. I called back. And left a message. I've no clue as to which of the Washington Mutual Problem's the caller was seeking to resolve. Right now I don't care.

Instead I'm in the mood to muse as to where I'd like to go to escape here, someplace fun that I've already been to and know is fun. I'm not in the mood for anything new right now. Though I am taking the TRE train to Dallas tomorrow morning. I live on the edge.

So, where do I want to go if I could right now? I'll try and think of the Top Ten. That should occupy 10 more minutes of waiting for Sarah Palin to have her meltdown.

In no particular order.

Bryce Canyon National Park. I love everything about this place. It's otherworldly scenery. It's great hikes. Ruby's Inn. I spent an Easter weekend at Bryce Canyon a few years ago. It was in late Spring. There was still snow at Bryce. It's at a high elevation, as in over 9000 feet above sea level at the highest.

Grand Canyon National Park. I've been there several times. Have stayed overnight twice. Once at the South Rim. Camping. I hate camping. And the most recent time, at the North Rim, staying in log cabins. A blizzard roared in overnight leaving us snowbound til snowplows from Utah could rescue us. I've only hiked down into the Grand Canyon once. It's a real good thing.

Arches National Park and Moab. Well, also Canyonlands National Park. Moab is your base town and in all directions there is good stuff to do. Like the photo at the top, that's me biking the Slick Rock Trail by Moab. That's a group hike in Arches NP, called The Fiery Furnace, on the left. You have to pay a fee and it has to be ranger led. You can get lost in there.

Yosemite National Park. The first time I saw this place was in fall. I was not all that thrilled. Then sometime in the 90s we rented a big ol' Cadillac, 3 other guys and me, and went on a road trip, ending up in Yosemite at Curry Village. It was spring, the waterfalls were out of control. I loved it.

Disneyland & California. I've not been to Disneyland since 1994, not since they've added Disney California. I've loved Disneyland ever since I was 13 and got taken there on what was to be my next to the last family vacation. We loved Disneyland so much we went again the next year. I was 14. I never went on a family vacation again. 7 years later I was in California on my own, staying at San Clemente State Park. And remembering back 7 years prior. That seems like such a short time now, but then it seemed like so much had changed. Over the following years I've lost count of the number of road trips to California and Disneyland. I guess the last one was in 2000. But I didn't get to go to Disneyland. Yuma instead. To spend Christmas with my mom and dad. It was real tempting when you saw road signs saying it was only 120 miles to Anaheim to take a right and skip Yuma. But I'm not one to ignore my mom and dad. Even though, apparently, they and others think I do. (That's called slipping in an Easter Egg to see if anyone reads this drivel)

Lake Powell. You need to, at least once in your short life, go to Lake Powell. You don't need to rent a houseboat to have Lake Powell reveal its charms. But a houseboat helps. Good housemates on the houseboat are important also. I've houseboated Lake Powell twice, both times in the 1990s. The water is warm and clear. The scenery is among the best on the planet. Which is why you'll be sharing the lake with so many darn foreigners.

Las Vegas. Any longer than 4 days and Vegas wears out its welcome. But I always have fun there. It can be exhausting. It's not the gambling that attracts me, it's the way over the top over stimulating nature of the whole place. I've only been to Vegas once since I moved to Texas. That was on a roadtrip back to Texas after spending a week or two in Washington. Those trips back were so much more pleasant than the more recent ones. Why? I do not know. That's Nephew Joey and me riding the roller coaster at the New York New York casino when I took Joey and his brother to Vegas the summer before I moved to Texas.

Taos, New Mexico. There was nothing I did not like about Taos. I love the southwest adobe style. The great places to eat. How fun it was to ride my bike around Taos and discover interesting things, like the grave of Kit Carson. And the Taos Pueblo. Even the Taos McDonald's is special.

Yellowstone National Park. I've not been to Yellowstone since the fall before wildfires burned most of the park. Yellowstone is one place I don't mind camping. Hiking over all the boardwalks to see the bubbling water and exploding geysers, loved it when I was a kid, loved it when I wasn't a kid. Yellowstone has been a fond memory ever since my little brother and me were awakened by our mom screaming, standing on top of the picnic table, because a bear was running through camp.

Bears remind me of Stehekin. I've only been there once but everything about it was perfect. A long boat ride up Lake Chelan, staying in the National Park Lodge. Stehekin is in the North Cascades National Park zone of Washington. We brought bikes and pedaled daily up to one of the best bakeries ever, the Stehekin Pastry Company. For dinner each night we'd take a long bus ride up the valley to the Stehekin Valley Ranch where the Courtneys would make a real good dinner for us and a lot of other people.

Stehekin is related to another place I'd like to escape to right about now. That being hiking deep into the North Cascades. The trails are good. What you see when you get to the end of the trail is amazing. Some summers I would go on a hike up in Cascades several times a month, til the snows returned in October. It always amazed me, when I lived up there, how many northwesterners had never experienced the sea of peaks, that being the seemingly endless sea of mountain peaks that extends north and south, with things like Mount Rainier sticking up higher.

I've gone up to 10 places I wish I could escape to right now and I left out Zion National Park. It should be in the Top Ten too. I don't remember ever being so surprised by a place as I was by Zion the first time I saw it. The tunnel into the canyon remains one of the finest moments of my pretty much un-momentous life.

Lulu & the Golden Corral

My dear ol' friend, Lulu, up in Tacoma, has always had impeccably refined tastes when it comes to most things, especially food. She has the snout of a truffle sniffing pig when it comes to finding a random good place to eat when in some random town on a road trip.

Lulu is not snooty or pretentious when it comes to food stuff. It just has to be good. Over the years Lulu has become somewhat of a buffet aficionado. I've lost count of the number of buffets we've done in Vegas over the years. Usually 2 a day during a Vegas stay.

On our first group visit to Vegas, Lulu's first husband, Pulitzer winning photographer, Geff, dubbed us Buffet Sluts after one particularly spectacular stuffing at the original Luxor buffet, during which one member of our party had so overstuffed himself that he began to sweat profusely. That buffet has since gone to the basement in both meanings of that word. Soon after Geff labeled us Buffet Sluts he started one of his many Cool Site of the Day websites. It was about mountain bikiing. He called it Mudsluts. This has since become the term Pacific Northwest mountain bikers are known by.

This past weekend Lulu was in Spokane for something called The Farm Chick Antique Show. Lulu is a well-known Pacific Northwest antique artsy person. So, the Farm Chicks invited her to their show. You can see Lulu at the Farm Chicks Show by going to her blog.

Lulu blogged from the Farm Chick Show. In her first blog from the show she said something that shocked me, shocked me, I tell you, totally shocked me. When I read it I feared Lulu had had some sort of breakdown.

On the first night of the show, Lulu went out for dinner at a buffet. The Golden Corral. A franchise operation that is all over the country. I've been to the Golden Corral a few times. I don't care for it.

But, Lulu has declared the Golden Corral in Spokane to be the best buffet she has ever been to. In her blog she said it was last meal on earth worthy. When I talked to Lulu on the phone she waxed poetic about the Golden Corral's banana pudding with vanilla cookies. That overly sweet dessert is a staple here in the South. I'd not had it prior to my exile here.

Lulu told me she'd make the 500 mile roundtrip to Spokane just to eat again at the Golden Corral. She threatened to take me there when I'm up north this summer. I'd only agree to that if Lulu agreed to go to Leavenworth. Lulu has some very disturbing ideas about Leavenworth. Leavenworth is one of Washington's top tourist attractions. But its charms, for reasons unfathomable to me, are lost on Lulu. I've always liked Leavenworth.

Distorted thinking regarding Leavenworth, and now this Golden Corral thing. I am in fear of what else I'm going to be shocked by, via Lulu, when next I see her.

A Real Lulu

I just got a call from Lulu, in high umbrage mode, being pretty much incoherent. She just got back from her doctor who diagnosed her with Walking Pneumonia and prescribed all sorts of meds and an inhaler.

Last night Lulu somehow managed enough strength to write something in her Blog. But, she did not have the strength or presence of mind to realize she posted twice, the second one slightly different than the first.

When she called this morning I mentioned her double post. As she hacked away, likely blowing all sorts of bad stuff on her computer, she looked at her Blog and claimed to not see the double post. At great effort, on my part, I got her to focus long enough to see the extra post. Lulu then said she did not have the strength to fix it and asked if I would fix it for her.

And so I did. And when I fixed it I added the drawing of a sick person you see above. So, Lulu gets home from the doctors, and before she even takes her meds or sucks on her inhaler, she checks her Blog. She saw the drawing you see above and apparently this caused a major apoplectic fit. So, she called me demanding I stop whatever I'm doing and fix this at once. I told her to just go delete it herself. She claimed she couldn't figure it out. It would have taken way too long to help Lulu locate the delete button on her keyboard, so I just removed it myself.

Now, I guess I should be a bit more tolerant of Lulu's currently amped up eccentricity, what with her pretty much currently knocking on Heaven's Door. And it is not like I don't know she is extremely, almost pathologically, high maintenance. And it did give me something to blog about.

Speaking of Lulu's chronic illnesses. A few months ago Lulu and her first husband went to Maui. Lulu was sick when they left. He got sick there. It was the flu. They cut their vacation short, by what logic I've never understood. It would seem to be easier to be sick in a tropical paradise than in Tacoma in winter. So, Lulu had to push her so-weak-he-could-not-walk first husband through the airport in a wheelchair.

It is not known how many people Lulu and her first husband made sick by getting on a plane in such a contagious condition. They could easily have started an epidemic. Now that is something to get into a state of high umbrage over, sick people going out in public making other people sick. But to work yourself up to a state of upset over a little cartoon of a sick person, well, I really don't know what to say.

It is a wonderment to me that Lulu is not sicker due to what she eats when she's ailing. As in it is all chocolate derivatives. Primarily hot fudge sundaes, hot cocoa and s'mores. Lulu does not make her s'mores in the Girl Scout fashion over a fire. What she does is roast the marshmallow over the flames of her gas range top, sticking the marshmallow on a fork, getting it nice and toasty and then slapping it on graham cracker with a huge chunk of chocolate. I have seen this process repeated up to 6 times in one feeding.

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To change the subject from Lulu, which is always a welcome relief, my Internet connection was uncooperative for a couple hours today. The problem was my router. It is so annoying to feel so dependent on something and to feel like it's such a major thing when you can't connect to the Internet. It's like some sort of addiction. I don't think it is healthy. And the trend line is ever worse. Like years ago when I went up north first thing I'd do was set up the computer wherever I was staying so I could do email and work on websites. Then about 4 years ago I started lugging a laptop with me, which is not easy, particularly switching planes involving long walks through an airport, carrying a big carry-on and the laptop. Or using the restroom facilities. Try standing at a urinal with heavy items hanging off your back and neck.

I flew north right after Katrina, leaving D/FW late, like 10pm. The plane was full, to my surprise. with Katrina refugees. I was seated next to a refugee mom and one of her kids. The two older kids sat behind us. They were heading to Bremerton to her sister's. We switched planes in Vegas. Previously this had always involved moving to a plane at most 2 gates over. This time the gate was way at the other end of the airport. And the moving sidewalks were not working. I'd asked if she'd like help getting to the next plane, not knowing we'd be hiking what seemed miles.

So, I was carrying my big backpack and my laptop and one of the kid's bags. I had one kid with me. He and I moved fast, got separated from the mom and the other kids. Went back and found them. They had to stop because the little girl had to throw up. Made it to the gate. Benefit of helping, she watched my stuff while I used the restroom facilities.

We got to Seattle at 3am. As soon as we landed I called Lulu (Oh Good God, we are back to Lulu) to make sure she was heading to get me. I got her voice mail. I helped the Katrina victims get to baggage claim, helped them get all their giant duffel bags. I had not reached Lulu and the refugee had not reached her sister.

Gradually the airport emptied til we were all alone, just me and the refugees. Finally Lulu called, said she'd slept through the alarm, that she was 20 minutes away. Eventually, after what seemed hours, Lulu drove up. I gave the Katrina refugee my cell number and told her to call if her sister did not show up. I took over driving from Lulu and drove to my sister's house in Kent. My sister was on vacation at Yosemite, the keys were hidden in the BBQ out back. Lulu drove away and I pretty much passed out from exhaustion, vowing to never travel with that damn laptop again.

I've been back 3 times since. With the laptop.