Vacation with kids gets seal and approval

It's a rite of summer, the annual family vacation.

For a single dad, it's a window of opportunity for bonding with the family that's not to be missed.

Caution is in order, though.

Add one Ford Explorer, two weeks of time, three teenagers and some hot August weather and you have the roughly same formula that produced the atom bomb.

Choosing the right vacation is no job for an amateur.

Our crew had two choices: A road trip to Vegas or staying in the local area and hitting our great beaches while also building a backyard pond together.

The Vegas trip was ruled out as a little too educational for teenagers. So, while we opted for the latter, a lifetime of reading teenage facial expressions convinced me a change in itinerary was in order.

Let's compare how that change in plans deviated from a vacation spent in the Spokane Valley.

Our first day had us headed to a campsite outside Glacier National Park. Personally, I like camping, but also consider anything that has me more than 10 feet from a cable outlet to be roughing it.

So let's compare this portion with say, backyard tent camping.

Scenery? Advantage Montana.

Three days of my campfire cooking versus a Sullivan fast food drive-through? Advantage Valley.

The most popular destination in the three days near Glacier was the bear park drive where you paid $5 a head to see black bears and grizzly bears from the comfort of your car.

Judging from the line around the park, I can see where Walk in the Wild went wrong. Eliminate the walk and they would have had something.

I think if people can just view it from their car, a marmot park would be successful.

The drive back from Montana to Spokane took us through the National Bison Range.

Another entrance fee that made the mall movie prices not look so bad gets you admission to see a large buffalo herd.

I think I now understand the depth of the buffalo extinction problem. We saw four buffalo, one of which was stuffed in the office lobby.

That could qualify as poor use of breeding stock!

We were disappointed. I've heard more pounding of hooves just calling my kids to dinner.

The final Montana stop was the 10,000 Silver $ Bar. C'mon, Valley, we can top this and combat a little bit of the redneck image we have in these parts.

Let's start a politically correct bar here and put up 10,000 Susan B. Anthony dollars along with some of the local wines and throw in some brie.

I smell California money!

At this point the Explorer was feeling like a second home. Worse yet, it looked like a second home.

So a weekend stop in Spokane for food, fuel, major vacuuming, and a cable TV fix got us ready for the next portion of our journey, a trip to Seattle to see a Mariners game.

Tickets for four were almost impossible to get, ultimately costing $94. Safeco Field was beautiful, and the game went 14 innings, so I guess we got our money's worth from the right field stands.

But for $94 I'm pretty sure the Spokane Indians would have given each of us a La-Z-Boy recliner in center field. Advantage Valley.

A visit to the Titanic exhibit was beyond memorable. Touching a section of the actual ship's hull was touching a piece of history, making me less mindful of the $56 touch the ticket price put on me. Advantage Seattle.

The final leg was a stop along the Oregon Coast, complete with a 14-mile traffic jam through Portland. Ah, memories of a summer dash up Argonne.

The ocean is awesome in its ability to always turn up a surprise. In our case, it was in the form of an 800-pound seal that came on shore to literally take possession of my kids football.

Know what we don't have much experience with here in the Valley? Seals.

Quick question for you. Do they bite?

So don't blame me for not knowing as I made a mad dash to recover the football.

And, honest to God, the check to the church is in the mail. I'll keep that promise I made You.

At vacation's end, I didn't have the backyard pond built, but I'll take what I built with my kids: a lifetime of memories of big trout catches, nightly killer Uno games, and early morning walks on the beach.

I'll get the pond next year. Without the seal.

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
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