Wednesday, September 06, 2006

The "Vacation"

So, where to start? It's such a long and sad tale of woe.

My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last month. They're wonderful, lovely people, and I love them dearly. I spent every summer with them for the first 15 or so years of my life, and in the years since, I've visited them in Florida about once a year. For the past three years, they've come to Boulder in the summers and spent about 6 weeks with us.

This year, we wanted to do something special for their big anniversary. After much discussion between my mom, my sister and myself, we decided that renting a houseboat on Lake Powell for a few days was a good plan. It's pretty expensive, and a long drive from Boulder, but we agreed to split the costs and decided each kid could bring a friend so they a) wouldn't be bored and b) wouldn't pester us all day long.

My sister flew out from California, and we left for Lake Powell the next morning. We got to the marina at about 6pm, at which point the leasing office was closed - but they'd left us a note with our boat number and told us to have a good night and to check in for paperwork in the morning.

To make this already long story short, the boat had fucking mice. Aggressive, taunting mice that would sit on the counters at night and casually help themselves to our food. The leasing office told us there wasn't anything they could do - they're not allowed to kill them (it's a national park), and "mice are a fact of life in the desert." We decided to give it a try and set out for parts unknown in the big lake.

The second night with mice was even worse, and I got no sleep again. The next morning, I told my family that we needed to head back, because one more night without sleep was going to turn me into a complete raving lunatic. That's a bad thing. Plus, it's really not much of a vacation. Everyone agreed, we headed back, drove home that same day. One thing I will say for the leasing company, they refunded our entire rental fee. Pretty cool of them.

P.S. I didn't even go into the typhoon-like weather that hit the afternoon of our one-and-only day on the boat.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is the first time i stayed in restaurant i feel this was the best for ever.I cant compare Alpine Peaks restaurant to any otherBig Bear hotel