Sep. 6: Vacation’s end

We’ve been home from Sunriver for several days now and I still haven’t written about our last couple days there. I know you’ve been waiting. You know you’ve been waiting. It’s okay; you can admit it. I’m here for you.

Alright, so nobody cares. I’m writing anyway.

Tuesday was our most active day on vacation, and it was a lot of fun. Katie started out the morning with a tennis clinic. It was primarily racquet swinging practice, and she said she liked it. I’m not sure if we have a future tennis ace on our hands, but hopefully the clinic planted a seed of interest. We’ve failed in so many of our attempts to athleticize the girl…

Katie and I went to Sunriver Stables for a horseback trail ride. I was trying to remember the last time I’d been on a horse, and I think it was at Big Lake Youth Camp—probably 30 years ago. Katie has done pony rides before, but this was her first horse-riding experience. I was so proud of her—she really didn’t seem to be afraid, and she talked to her horse very sweetly. I did not enjoy her horse as much, as I was right behind them and got a colonoscopist’s view every time he took a poo. Ick. My horse frequently stopped to eat the grass along the trail. I was the last person in our group, and this made me even last-er, so I was getting irritated with him. But if I were walking through what was virtually an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’d probably stop here and there for a nibble too.

A trip to Sunriver would be incomplete without a visit to Goody’s. When we realized we’d been on vacation for four days and hadn’t yet gone, we bee-lined it to the Village. Yum.

I told Katie about the picture below, which was taken during my senior class trip to Sunriver in 1986, and she was not even a little bit excited to see it as soon as we got back to my computer. Whatevs. I think it’s cool—and also a little bit weird—that Goody’s looks EXACTLY the same now as it did 23 years ago.

In the afternoon we went to the south pool for a few hours. I saw many, many moobs.

We had planned for Jack to attend a golf clinic, but he thought miniature golf sounded like a lot more fun, so we went to a fun center in Bend. Jack got to try out the batting cages, bowling, arcade games and mini-golf. He would’ve done go-karts and bumper cars if we’d had time. Katie and I spent most our time playing Skee-ball. I love Skee-ball. I rock at Skee-ball. If Skee-ball were a real sport, I could call myself an athlete, because you know those 10,000-point holes in the upper corners of the Skee-ball target thingie? I got them TWICE. Katie and Jack exchanged all the tickets I won for a huge amount of really junky shit.

Wednesday morning we got packed and stopped by Goody’s again on our way out of Sunriver. While everyone else ate their Goody’s goodies, I did a little shopping in the Village. Darlene and I were disappointed to see The Paper Station had closed. A lot of other stores have shut down too, but there are quite a few new restaurants.

Just north of Madras is a rockhounding site, and we had promised Jack we’d look for thundereggs there on the way home. We had so-so luck digging for our own, and much better luck picking up thundereggs other people had left behind. When we got back to the store it took a while for a guy to cut all the geodes open, so we looked at all their other stones and chased chickens while we waited. Because we’re trashy like that.

Seriously, there were hens, roosters and peacocks EVERYWHERE. Most of the chickens had those fluffy feet things (slippers?) and were kinda cute. The peacocks were gorgeous, but I couldn’t remember if peacocks are assholes. They let us come right up to them, but I was afraid to try to touch them because of a bad goose experience in my past. An 80-year-old woman—the owner, I think—was very friendly and kept pointing out things for the kids to look at. She had all kinds of funny little stories. Eventually she ran out of stories and started in on a rant about how Americans overeat and her husband’s on dialysis and how she goes out of her way to tell every fat person she sees that they’re gonna end up on dialysis if they keep overeating. I didn’t appreciate this lecture so I tuned her out after a while. But what really cracked me up is right after she finished her anti-obesity speech, she went outside and lit up a cigarette. Oh yeah, she’s a health nut, alright.

I promised Dawn that I would share the web site of the guy we’ve been renting Sunriver homes from for the past few years. His homes are very clean, they all have wi-fi, and his rates are good, so if you’re interested in a trip there, check out the properties owned by Marvin Butler.