The Greatest Mom and Daughter

South Thompson Inn, Kamloops, BC --  This is truly a golf vacation.  You can tell.  We get up in the morning and have a breakfast that anticipates a full day on the golf course.  We get dressed in our golf togs.  We head off to hit some practice balls at the driving range.  We play a round – four or five hours, depending on the venue and the fullness of the tee-sheet.  We have lunch at the club house, looking out over the ninth or 18^th green, critiquing the approach shots, the bunker shots and the putts of the performers in front of us.  We return to the hotel room and take a nap.  We get up in time for a night cap and some discussion – about today’s golf game, of course – and then fall to sleep with dreams of doing it all over again. 

Life should always be so simple.

And golf should always be as fun as it was yesterday.  Compared with Tobiano, which beat us up and spit us out the day before, Rivershore Golf Course was a walk in the park.  Laid out in the floodplain next to the South Thompson River, it was mostly flat, and mostly predictable.  The slope was higher than Tobiano, but it didn’t feel like that.  And, like most Robert Trent Jones courses, it was set up to be hard to par, but easy to bogie.  And, after the sage-brush infested gullies of Tobiano, we were looking for something that gave us a change to bogie a few holes.

It turned out, I bogied the entire round, which for me is a fine score.  Ben shot better than he did the day before, too.  But what really made the round fun were the women we played with.  Diana and her 71-year-old mother, Pat, who live just east of Kamloops, had won a round at Rivershore in a tournament in their local golf league championship.  We called Pat "mom" all day, and she seemed fine with that.  She tolerated Ben’s colorful language, and oohed and awed at our good shots.  Meanwhile, she hit the ball predictably down the middle of the fairway – not far, but far enough to par a couple of the  par 3s, and double bogie most of her way through the round: a respectable showing for a tiny woman with a couple fractured vertebrae.  

Generally, we enjoy the people we are paired with at random.  Only once did we get hooked up with a total jerk – one that was so notorious that the starter caught us at the turn to apologize for making us play with him.  Most people are great, and either they play no better than we do, or they tolerate our duffs and shanks, probably remembering how they played after just a few years of weekend golf.  Still, Pat and Diana were just the antedote we needed after our tough round at Tobiano.  Wherever you are, mom and daughter, thanks for rescuing our golf vacation and giving us one of the most enjoyable days of golf we’ve had in – oh – at least a week. 

"Not our nicest town"

Kamloops, BC - Standing on the tee box on the 13^th hole at Tobiano on Sunday, we chatted with a couple of guys from Vancouver, who like us, were waiting for the backlog of golf foursomes to clear the teebox and the first landing area before teeing off.   As usual, we exchanged “where are you froms” and talked about the golf games to come and those just past. 

“Kamloops isn’t one of our best towns,” one of the men warned us, when we explained that we were staying in Kamloops and making it the central location for our five-day golf vacation.  With that warning in mind, we drove into Kamloops after our round, a little leery about what we’d find.

I expected a boarded up downtown, like those we’ve become used to in mid-sized towns in the Midwest, where strip malls and WalMarts have replaced downtown shopping districts.  But, to our surprise, downtown Kamloops was bustling.  Partly, that was due to the Jehovah’s Witness convention that was just letting out of the downtown convention center as we were arriving.  But, even without the extra folks dressed in their Sunday best wandering out of the big hall to their cars, the town was apparently more than surviving.  We walked past several restaurants and shops on the main street, an old, historic hotel and a historical museum, all open on Sunday as a regular practice.  We stopped at Kelly O’Bryan’s, a typical Irish pub and restaurant, for dinner, and the place was jammed.

 After that nice surprise, we drove out of town, and Ben discovered his “Big Letdown.”  Canada might be a nice place, but it’s also a place where beer costs $15 an eight-pack (yes, eight, not six) for Molson Canadia – a regular lager along the lines of Coors or Miller.  Obviously, Ben couldn’t live here – at least not on his salary. 

 

 

Gum-drop golf

Kamloops, BC – As we think about the 20 years that we’ve been married, Ben and I believe that golf has helped us stay together.  It’s a sport that men and women can compete equally – thanks to the “forward” tees – and one in which you don’t have to compete against each other, unless you want to.  There’s plenty of challenge just competing against yourself and all those little demons in your head, not to mention the bunkers, water hazards, cliffs, bushes, trees and blind doglegs that course designers throw at you. 

Sometimes, of course, golf can also test the marriage, and does so often.  It’s not easy to watch someone nearly burst apart at the seams over a wicked slice or another lost ball or a chunked chip or a horrible putt.  But, we have learned over the past six years that we’ve been playing this game, that our outbursts of anger and vitriol are just part of the game. I’ve learned to not let Ben’s string of f-words interfere with my composure, and he’s learned not to put his hand on my knee and try to comfort me when I’m pouting and pissed about the last hole…or holes. 

Yesterday was that kind of day. 

On the first golf day of our golf vacation in British Columbia, we woke early and drove west, past Kamloops, up into hills pitted with salt ponds where the mineral soups from the fractured rocks below seep up into low pots, turning the circular depressions snow white.  After about 40 miles, we dipped back down to the river to Tobiano, Canada’s No. 1 new golf course in 2009, according to Golf Digest. 

The course is something to see.  The gum-drop shaped, sage-covered hills that line the wide river were dotted with patches of rich grass of fairways and greens, as if the tops of every other gum drop had been flattened and painted green.  The new club house and restaurant provided floor to ceiling views of the river and the flattened gumdrops.  We watched the U.S. Open while eating breakfast and gazed at the daunting landscape cum golf course.

Although the slope of the course – only 119 from the forward tees and 125 from Ben’s – didn’t indicate that it would be a tough course, the view from the clubhouse said differently.  As we warmed up on the driving range, it was clear that wind was going to play a factor in the day’s game.  And a few quick putts on the practice green also gave fair warning that the fast, rolling – dare I say rollercoaster – greens would be tricky.

We started our round with a decent par four, down wind.  We had decent drives from the tee and decent lies on the fairway, and fairly routine second shots.  But the tough approach and sloping green wrested a couple of extra strokes from each of us, and we ended up with triple and quadruple bogies.  I will spare non-golfers the rest of the details of the round, but suffice it to say that long carries over deep, sage-brush lined gullies, and long shots into a steady 30 mph wind kept us struggling all day.  We each lost far more than the usual number of balls, and Ben exercised more than his usual amount of f-word creativity.  In the end, I was about 14 strokes long of where I should have been, and Ben ended up a good 7 strokes above his usual game. I suggested stopping at the club house for lunch, tempted by the smell of grilled burgers, but Ben would have nothing to do with it.  “I want to get out of here and never come back as long as I live,” he said, leaving little room for doubt.

Tobiano might be the best golf course of 2008, but I don’t think it is the most fair.  There is little room to bail when shots aren’t perfect, and no escapes for those who don’t want to challenge the gully gods.  The wind, which seemed to blow straight down from the Cascades with nary a tree to slow it down, was constant and dreadful.  It was one of those courses where you don’t leave saying, “I’m glad we played it even if we didn’t play well.”  Frankly, we could have done without the pain.

But, that’s golf.  Every course isn’t for everyone.  Some folks need the challenge of target practice – hitting little golf balls onto tiny gum-drop hill landing spots and putting across greens with slope greater than Cherry Street in Seattle.  But frankly, I’m out to play for fun, and Tobiano simply wasn’t fun. 

 

 

Marking 20 years in ... Canada?

South Thompson Inn, Kamloops, BC -- At the end of May, Ben and I passed the 20 year mark in our marriage, which may not seem like a lot to other folks, but if you were inside this marriage, you’d be really amazed.  (Okay, I just wrote that for my husband.  A bit of a tweak, you know.)  Actually, there are members of my family who are amazed, I am sure, although they have the good graces not to mention it, often.  

Truth be told, I can’t imagine what the past 20 years would have been like without him, but I guess that’s always true of any portion of our lives. We can’t imagine a different path or outcome, aside from engaging in fantasy, like some journalists-cum-novelists we know who have managed to not only rewrite their lives, but improve themselves immensely in the process.

So what does this have to do with travel?  We were too busy at the end of May to take a proper vacation to celebrate this milestone, and instead, planned a trip to Kamloops, BC – yep, Canada – for the end of June, and here we are.  It’s a bit like going to Grand Junction, Colorado, for a vacation.  Looks like it, anyway. So it probably deserves an explanation.

Kamloops wasn’t our first choice, really.  A couple of years ago, back when the market was flying high and we were flush with cash, we thought we’d take one of those super-fancy little-boat cruises around New Zealand and play all of the incredible coastal golf courses for two weeks, and maybe get in a hike or two.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner and daily golf, all for just a tidy little $11,000 each. 

But a market crash later, we’d scaled down our plans to a trip to Bandon, Oregon, for a week of golf on the area’s famed links.  Then, a recession-led pay cut later, and we scaled down again, finding that we could play the No. 1 new course in Canada for 2008, and four other courses, and stay in the nicest places in the region if we went the same distance from our Seattle home – but north and east instead of south and west. And it would cost us half as much as Bandon, and about one-eighth of our fantasy New Zealand cruise. So, here we are in Kamloops, BC., a place a golfer we met today called, “not one of our nicest towns in Canada.”  We’ll see when we take a trip into town later.

We flew to Kelowna, and after some self-inflicted hassles trying to get the rental car (you have to use the right key for the right car, dummies), we drove north out of town, remarking how the territory looked like parts of Colorado.  We pulled off the freeway just past the town of Lake Country, and followed typical wine-country roads that wound around vineyards and then plunged in big hairpin curves down to Lake Okanagan.  We had lunch at Gray Monk Winery with a spectacular view.

After lunch, we sampled the winery’s pinot and gamay noir at the complementary tasting, settling on a bottle of the gamay.  We asked the cashier if we could buy the wine in Seattle, and she wrote down the name and phone number of the distributor in Seattle for us, so we can find it at home if we still like it enough to pay $20 for a bottle later.

We chugged our way about half-way back up to the highway (we’re driving a Chevy Cobalt, you see) and stopped at the Arrowleaf Winery, where preparations were under way for a wedding on the winery grounds that evening.  Ben suggested moving along without the tasting, once he found out it cost $2 a person, but I convinced him it wasn’t REAL money (just Canadian), and it was the only other winery we would visit that day, out of about four dozen in the area.  So, we paid our fee and sampled some more pinot and blends, and agreed on a zweigelt, an Austrian red.  My previous experience with Austrian wines has been limited to gruner veltliner, so it was nice to discover a new dry red wine to add to our options.

We then drove through country that changed from thick pine forests to craggy, folded hills covered sagebrush and jack pines that evoke the western-most counties of Colorado and the dry steppes of central Montana.  Diving down to the Thompson River, we passed ranches and horse farms until we spotted our hotel across the river on the left.  We arrived at the gate of the South Thompson Guest Ranch, wondering if we’d made the right choice.  The equestrian center bespoke the “horsey set,” which neither of us can identify with, and the sprawling inn was swarming with wedding guests who filled the rooms and porches in anticipation of two weddings that were taking place here that night. 

We took to our room, a pleasant wood-floored, wainscotted room with a full view of the river and surrounding hills, and sets of wicker chairs on the balcony.  Horses and paddocks behind us and only the flowing river in front of us, we forgot about the horsey set and the weddings and settled in for a comfortable night.

Tomorrow, we start our golf adventure with Tobiano, the No. 1 new golf course in Canada in 2008, a little worried about the weather.  We’ll see what happens.

 

 

 

 

Why I don't fly so much anymore

For years, I was the most frequent leisure traveler of nearly anyone I knew who also worked for a living. So, what’s going on? Why am I not updating this blog very often? Have I been grounded?

I started this travel blog right before I quit traveling. I didn’t quit entirely – but certainly I cut down on the number of vacation and leisure trips that used to dot my calendar like bumps on seersucker. Why? I went back to work, which entails a fair amount of business travel, which I don’t like to write about. And we bought a house in the mountains 80 miles away from Seattle. That limits both my opportunity and appetite for getting on a plane and flying away for fun.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I’ve been limiting myself too much. I haven’t been to South America in four years. Ben and I never go to Hawaii anymore; if we want to go someplace warm, it’s too easy to slip down to Palm Springs where we already have clothes, golf clubs, bikes – everything we need. No luggage required.

But as I say, I recently started to wonder if this is healthy. I came across a travel diary my friend Janet gave to me four or five years ago. Empty. On a desk, I uncovered a beginner’s guide to Slovak – evidence of a once-planned-then-cancelled trip to the mountains of Slovakia and the beer gardens of the Czech Republic. Janet has been e-mailing me lately about fantasies of a quick trip to Zuleta in Ecuador. Ben and I picked up brochures about golf and wine tasting around Mendoza, Argentina. It’s starting to get to me…I need some air under my feet and some serious non-American cultural immersion.

Well, until the past weekend, anyway. Two consecutive maintenance-caused flight cancellations with Alaska Airlines reminded me how little fun it is to get on an airplane anymore. A flight that should have taken 2 and a half hours - at the most - turned into a 22-hour ordeal – just trying to get home from Southern California. The sleep deprivation lasted for days, and I lost my nice $300 Sennsheiser head phones along the way. And wasn’t it just the last flight from Phoenix when the airline lost my golf clubs, which were checked alongside Ben’s, which arrived fine?

It’s as if the airlines are trying to drive away traffic. And, I can’t imagine I’m alone feeling this way. When this flight-hassle fatigue is combined with the coming “depression-syndrome” ethic of non-consumption on the part of consumers, I can’t help but think the heyday of air travel in the U.S. is over. Airlines that want to stay in business pay attention to preventative maintenance (get those planes healthy!), customer service and responsiveness (please tell me why my flight is delayed four hours?), creature comforts (is it really the swine flu that mandated the removal of pillows or penny-pinching?), and convenience (don’t make me drag my checked bag across the airport for loading. Don’t you have conveyer belts?) . But I don’t see that happening.

The TSA’s arbitrariness and rudeness seems to have lessened lately. But undoing that negative isn’t going to be enough when obliterated by increasingly budget-minded airline stinginess that leads to more discomfort and more and more delays.

Thank goodness Ben and I decided to drive to Canada for our big golf trip this summer instead of flying. We may actually get there on time. And we may actually have our clubs when we arrive.

Winter wondering

With the economic "uncertainty" around us - I put that in quote marks, because I wonder what's so uncertain: the economy is certainly horrid - Ben and I have often wondered if we were incredibly foolish to have purchased a two-bedroom bungalow in the mountains of Central Washington this year. Granted, by the time the place was constructed, it was really too late to change our minds, as we had sunk the down-payment and stood to lose it all if we backed out. But, still, it has seemed to hover on the edge of reason at times.

I wonder if we'll end up going up in financial flames because of the investment. But, the past 11 days of solitude, sewing, snowshoeing with Carly and sitting by the fire with a good book helped put the risk in perspective. It was simply wonderful. I'd do it all over again.

Suncadia, the development near Roslyn where our duplex unit sits (under about 10 feet of snow right now), is probably in more financial trouble than we are, but it, too, will stand the test of time, I believe. Let's get Obama into office, get some fiscal stimulus going (enough of the tax breaks as be-all-and-end-all, please) and I think Suncadia will get a chance to blossom and fill out in time. But right now, there are about as many port-a-potties in our little neighborhood as there are houses, as the construction of new units and completion of half-built units have hit a deep freeze - and not just because of the weather. Still, it's a nice place: trees, paths, creeks, a pleasant golf course and a half (the other half also stalled for the lack of economic certainty), a big lodge, a tiny inn and a fitness center with a pool and water slides that keep the youngsters at bay.

It snowed nearly constantly, and Carly and I went out to snowshoe nearly every day. We broke trail occassionally, but given the depth of the snow, we ended up spending most of our time on the groomed trails cut for skiers and snowshoers. The trails were lightly used and we spent most of our time out in the deep snow and deep woods all alone, just a bouncing, happy dog and her heavy-footed mistress who wondered - with Oprah - how did I let myself get this big again?

It was far more exercise than I'm used to, but I didn't lose any weight because I got to exercise another passion of mine: cooking. And, no health food for us! I made pot roast, prime rib and carnitas. I started the day with biscuits and sausage, or eggs benedict with homemade hollandaise sauce. Ben didn't complain, although at one point he asked if I might be trying to kill him by loading up his arteries. After cooking for the past year in a kitchen the size of a small closet, the charm of the big, eat-in kitchen overwhelmed my nutritional better judgement, and with Carly at my side to catch any stray food particles that plopped toward the floor, I indulged.

(Now, of course, I'm on my new New Year's diet, the seventh or eighth in a row ... we'll see where that takes me.)

From that cholesterol-endangered husband, I received two books for Christmas - a book of essays on pre-Inca Peruvian cultures and another I had put on my Amazon.com wish list: Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes. It was a wonderful read - like sitting around talking with a good friend, although none of my friends likes to talk about dealth. I recommend it for all atheists; believers could probably learn something from it, but most won't find reason enough to crack it open.

And sewing: I probably spent more time sewing than anything, making book bags and wine bags and finishing a quilt I've been making for my niece for the past two years. With KPLU on the radio, Carly underfoot and a fresh pot of coffee to sip on all day, I'd say I was about as happy as I've been for an extended period of time as I can ever remember.

I hope all of you had some time to relax over the holiday, too. And, someday, you'll have to come up and visit Ben, Carly and me in Suncadia. I promise I'll put away my sewing long enough to make room for the Murphy bed, and I won't poison you with too much cholesterol. I'm over it.

Wine country

Yakima Valley and Rattlesnake Hills
November 23, 2008

The first time I visited the Rattlesnake Hills wineries, I did it on a bicycle with my friend Keri Robinson. We had planned our trip with the aid of a guide to Eastern Washington wineries and a map.

Maps are flat. Rattlesnake Hills should have been a clue that this small AVA in Eastern Washington is not. Duh.

It was a tough ride over big hills, but it was made managable - even enjoyable - by the consumption of small amounts of wine at each of the nine wineries we visited, the excellent weather and the friendly owner of the Hyatt Wineries who stopped to help us with some mechanical issues. He couldn't help with the bike, but it was the thought that counted - and the apples he gave us from his orchard.

Yesterday, I visited Rattlesnake Hills again, and this time, the hills were not an issue. My friend Kristine Kurey and I visited via the Explorer, stopping by the Wineglass Winery on the way back from a visit to several tasting rooms in Prosser.

More on the Wineglass in a moment...

We made the trip to Prosser from Suncadia, where Ben and I bought a duplex last summer. The boys were watching football, so we decided to make the most of a sunny but chilly Sunday afternoon and drive down to the Yakima Valley to restock our wine racks. (Neither of us is so much a connoisseur that we have "cellars" - just racks.)

We drove directly to the Olsen Winery tasting room right off the frontage road on I-90, looking for some of the Rouge de Coteaux that we had tasted last summer at the wine tasting event at the SAM Scuplture Garden in Seattle. It was my favorite wine of the tasting - rich, dark, dry and spicy. My memory of it was piqued on Saturday night at the Lodge at Suncadia. We had stopped in to share a bottle of wine in the 56 Degree Lounge (the temperature at which you are supposed to keep red wine, they inform me), and the Olsen Rouge was offered at $110. Yowie! I figured we could get it cheaper at the winery's tasting room.

I was wrong. Yes, it would have been cheaper - $33, in fact - but they had sold out. Argggh! Still, it was a commodious and pleasant tasting room, and I bought a couple of bottles of the Olsen Syrah, and we headed next door to Willow Crest.

Willow Crest has always been one of my favorite stops in the wine country because of its focus on Rhone-style wines. They make the one of the closest blends to a Chateauneuf du Pape in all of Washington (in all of the West Coast, maybe?) -- a wine they call XIII. WC's current 2005 vintage of Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah and Viognier rivals the higher-priced Cuvee Elena from Syncline to the south, but the substitution of Viognier for Cinsault produces a slightly brighter and fruit-forward version to this dark tradition. I'll have to admit that I think the Syncline version wins my vote - perhaps due to its more traditional blend - but $28 versus $35 makes the WC a winning option.

To add to the disappointment of not finding the Rouge at Olsen, WC was sold out of the Cab Franc and the Grenache, but I loaded up on a few bottles, including the half-bottles of spicy mouvedre (perfect for a solo dinner), the pinot gris and Collina Bella. Kristine opted for a similar collection, but added some Rockin' Red, which is a cab-merlot blend. Obviously Kristine is one of the millions of people who, unlike me, doesn't taste ear wax in merlot. In fact, I don't know anyone who agrees with me, and most folks adamantly maintain they have no idea what ear wax tastes like, but I know what ear wax tastes like - and I taste it in all merlot blends - even those that are seemingly overpowered by cabernet.

From Willow Crest, we moved next door to Thurston Wolfe, which in my book is famous for its PGV - pinot gris/viognier. We added nearly a case a piece to our collection, including the fabulous Lemberger Rose - very dry in the way that vintners often promise, but rarely deliver. We stopped briefly at Apex - a nice cab and syrah were my choices. I like Apex, but rarely find anything that surprises or delights - particularly price points that delight. Another quick stop next door at Florentino had me considering the rich malbec, but it's hard to justify a $38 malbec, when so many great Mendoza malbecs are available at QFC for less than $10. Yeah, I know ... "support your local wineries" ... and I do! I just want them to give me something that is so special or unusual that I don't mind spending three or four times my usual per-bottle budget to bring it home. Or charge a price that's a bit above my usual bottle budget, and I'll justify the additional cost by chalking it up to supporting our state's most compelling industry.

By now, you might have noticed that I said "next door" a few times in the preceding paragraphs. That's a clue: Prosser offers a great quick wine-tasting trip thanks to the Wine Village that's developed right there on the north edge of town, off the first Prosser exit as you come into town on I-5 from Seattle (or Suncadia). And, at the next exit, you've got the beautiful tasting room, shop and bistro at Desert Wind, and the rather industrial strip-mall tasting rooms of the likes of Alexandra-Nicole and Kestrel (among others). All told, you can quickly taste a variety of Yakima Valley vintages, chat with the friendly owners and staff, and get back on the road - even if you only have a couple of hours to spare. You miss the pleasure of winding down country roads through the vineyards, which you get to do in Rattlesnake Hills and all of Washington's AVAs, for that matter. But, when time is short, Prosser's tasting rooms are a great alternative.

Not only that, but the folks are friendly and never condescending. You don't have to be a wine expert and you don't have to pretend to like anything. As my friend Kristine observed, all of the tasting staff we met freely complimented their competitors, and suggested other wineries to visit in the area. Which is why we decided to stop by Wineglass; at least three folks mentioned Wineglass as we were tasting wines, so we decided it would be worth a quick detour off the highway on our way home.

But first, on the way out of Prosser, we stopped at one of several wine shops in town and found two bottles of Olsen's Rouge de Coteaux at $38. Not the $33 we had hoped for, but affordable.

Up on Bonair Road, north of Zillah, we pulled into the casual and rather industrial tasting room of Wineglass Cellars, and immediately launched into a discussion about dogs with another pair of customers - always a good sign. Their springer spaniel was waiting patiently outside in the convertible while we talked about him and the dozens of other dogs in our lives and began tasting Wineglass's retinue of cab, syrah, merlot and zinfandel.

Vintner David Lowe turned out to be the charmer of the day - and what we had intended to be a five-minute stop turned into a half-hour (and could have been much longer), as we discussed everything from how hard we all wanted to work in a day to soup recipes to whether merlot tastes like ear wax and whether it should be used to "throw back the earthiness of syrah," as was David's opinion. The award winning wines and the discount on the cab tempted us, but it was David's winning personality that probably sealed the deals. We added to our stash, and headed back up the mountain to show the boys our gatherings.