Our little corner of Hell

Arriving on Monday, I knew we were in trouble when I saw the duct tape on the toilet seat. There was a hole in the ceiling in the kitchen. The refrigerator had been turned off, so it was going to take hours for it to get cool enough to transfer our food from the ice chest. The cabin was full of sand and roly-polys.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to pack cups, plates, or cutlery.

Oh, and one more thing -- the forecast for Tuesday was 107 and windy.

Welcome to Quartz Mountain Resort in southwestern Oklahoma. It's got a unique beauty. We learned that it is the second oldest mountain range in the United States. (The oldest are the Appalachian Mountains.) The pinkish-red rock that colors the mountains is granite. Granite holds a lot of heat. Climbing the Quartz Mountains during a freakish heat wave can give you second degree burns and a heat rash. We decided against doing this when we were halfway up Mount Baldy and a gust of wind nearly toppled Sport over.

Settling instead for a nature walk, we listened as SO read about indigenous plants and the ways Native Americans put them to good use. The boys wanted to swim in the lake, which seemed like a really good idea until we were blasted with sand from winds that had to be gusting up to 50 miles an hour or more. Seriously, the lake waves resembled crashing ocean waves. If we'd had some boards, we could have done some surfing.

At one point, we watched a water moccasin slither near the shore and into a nearby rock formation. One of the beach Bubba's, clutching a Pabst Blue Ribbon in one hand and a fist-sized rock in the other, ambled over to search for the little critter. I wondered if he was drunk enough to actually feel around in the rocks for the snake. Turns out he wasn't.

Trying to grill up some hamburgers in this kind of weather is an exercise in frustration. After numerous attempts to light the charcoal, they finally got done. They were a little crunchy, but if the Egyptians could eat bread seasoned with sand then we could eat burgers with only a light dusting.

The wind never let up the entire time we were there. Temperatures soared. We went out on a paddle boat and were nearly roasted alive. The only relief came when we were in the lake water.

I think my entire body underwent an involuntary exfoliation. Perhaps I'll look 5 years younger when I get back to work.

What I learned on my summer vacation

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Our vacation now at an end, I come back older, a little wiser, and hopefully with a bit of a tan.

What did I learn?

• No matter how well stocked you are with snacks and drinks, the food invariably runs out. We had to hit the grocery store at least three times during our six day adventure. Those boys can eat!


• LegoGuy thinks Shirley Temple was some kind of psychotic orphan who went around killing people. During one of our nightly games of Cranium, he had to act like the dimpled child star and have his teammate guess who he was. The clue? "Hey everybody, let's go kill someone!"


• Bugs really freak out the guys. Every spider, insect or creepy crawly was potentially poisonous. I ended up catching most of them with a rag and tossing them outside while my menfolk hugged the wall.


• No one under the age of 15 will look out the window at the incredible mountain vistas and scenic plateaus if there are GI Joes in the car. Sport and Lego engaged their soldiers in epic battles and reenacted soccer games while we drove through the beautiful Valles Grande Caldera. What was outside wasn't nearly as interesting as what was going on in their own imaginations.


• Sport has a healthy fear of heights, rattlesnakes and lightning. At Bandelier, we came upon a rattlesnake. It wasn't coiled but stared at us with a baleful eye. "I'm too young to die," Sport said, hurrying us around the thing. He kept an eye on the sky in case an afternoon storm made an appearance, and he was leery of the ladders leading up to the cliffside ruins. "I really wish I wanted to climb those," he told me as Lego headed 140 feet up to Alcove House. "It's okay to be careful," I told him. "You'll probably outlive us all!"


• Avril Lavigne has a potty mouth. We've had 3 of her songs on our last three compilation trip CDs and each one has an off-color word in it. We usually don't realize this until we're speeding along at 75 miles an hour and the word comes blasting through the speakers. It only makes the boys love her more.


• The last 60 miles of the trip are always the longest. I swear, when we hit Weatherford I thought I was going to lose it. That hour crept by. I love planning a vacation, but there's nothing like getting home. Nothing beats it.