i think it translates as...
separating city slickers from their money
Another months-overdue post. Catching up on my posting backlog, though, which is is more than I can say for nearly every other sector of my life. This one’s about my summer vacation.
Well, I say vacation. But it wasn’t quite that, since my family came along, too. Har, har.
We’d been trying to find something to please everybody. Big sister wanted a pool. Little sister wanted an endless supply of booboo. Mommy wanted a spa. And Daddy wanted something bucolic and Northwest-y, so that (har, har) I could hole up and write—my idea of a break from writing stuff I have to is writing stuff I want to.
So we found Kah-Nee-Ta, a mysteriously-named casino slash resort on reservation land. Perfect! A little something for everyone, including my dad, who was in town from Texas.
KNT, as I’ll refer to it from now on, is out in the high desert not too far from Bend, a few hours from Portland. We stopped at the Timberline Lodge atop Mount Hood (thank you, FDR, for building it!) for lunch and enjoyed the sight of snow-starved skiers and boarders lugging their equipment up to “enjoy” a whole ten square yards of grey slush. Poor things. Winter will be here soon, dears.
Back on the road with the kids uncharacteristically and mercifully asleep, we wound down through the mountains and into the desert. I’d never seen that kind of terrain at such a high elevation. It’s a whole different ecosystem. At least the resort was easy to spot, sticking out of the desert like a slot machine in church.
We checked in as quickly as we could, since the pixie was itching to get to the pool. I took a moment to take in the paradox of a cedar log burning white-hot in the fireplace of a crisply air-conditioned lobby in the middle of the blasting heat of the desert. Oh well. Smelled nice.
Swim, road leftovers, talk, sleep. Up, breakfast, activities.
Today was horseback-riding day. The plan was to put the pixie on the tame, amble-around-the parking-lot ride. She wanted me to ride, too, so they put me on this poor pony that’s used to having kids on him. Sorry, fella. At least it was a short ride.
We also spent ages at the water park. Astoundingly, this was Lynn’s first trip ever to one. (I keep forgetting that there are parts of the country that aren’t totally saturated with the things.) Anyway, little one enjoyed splashing in the baby pool, while her big sister delighted in forcibly dunking her long-suffering supervisor.
The dinner options were singularly uninspiring. The buffet was literally a trough of food. Yes, trough. The expensive restaurant had exactly the same menu as the cheap one, but with much higher numbers after the items. The family gamely went for takeout, while I stormed back to the room and picked at what was left of the road food that hadn’t rotted yet.
You have to f… up pretty badly to come up with menu items so unappealing that even I can’t eat them, but KNT managed it that night. The greasy sauces and wilted salads that the family good-naturedly styrofoamed back to the room were worse than nothing. Things were rapidly approaching the three meals away from revolution stage: here we were two meals in, and I was ready to overthrow the whole vacation idea, toss everyone in the car, and drive back to Portland that night. To my embarrassment, I caught myself thinking really uncharitable thoughts about my fellow man, in particular the folks who seemed to be filing through the lobby in happy ignorance of the ripoff ride we were all being taken on. “How can you smile when you’re paying this kind of money to be treated like this?!?” I wanted to shout.
It’s worth pointing out that KNT doesn’t have to compete on price or quality, since they’re the only game for miles around when it comes to food. Would it kill ‘em to have a grocery store next door and a kitchenette somewhere near the rooms? The only alternatives are Bend, which is half an hour away, or going back home, the option I almost got away with.
But Lynn, the no-bullshit soul that she is, talked me back down with the expert technique of a hostage negotiator. (See, folks, this is why it’s crucial to choose a spouse with the right skill set.) Somehow, she got me through the night without a coup, and without my needing to eat the bedsheets.
Good thing, too, because things suddenly started looking up. Beginning with breakfast, the food quality started improving steadily. And the activities drifted away from the crowded, enforced-fun style, to the more relaxed, self-reliant feel. For instance, we took a much-needed cooling kayak trip down the Warm Springs River. My dad, easily the most experienced among us, was the first one tossed overboard. Hee hee! The pixie squealed as we blasted through the rapids, bounced off rocks, and generally ran circles around the other boats.
That night, we discovered that the poolside lounge had food that was orders of magnitude better than elsewhere, and they didn’t (ahem) soak us quite so much on the prices. So we got to eat at a relaxed pace, let the pixie swim safely on into the evening, and then just hop a few steps to the room when we were tired. Nice!
And that’s about all there is to tell. None of us set foot in the casino the whole time there; the only thing we gambled with was our sanity.
