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Family Vacations
"While I love my family, the next time my dad suggests going up to Lookout I’m going to volunteer to stay home and water the plants."
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By Ursula Mehl
My family is vacation-happy.
When I was little my family would take vacations every summer. But instead of going someplace exotic like Europe or Mexico we went camping, usually in some scrubby little campsite with smelly outhouses and my five-member family squeezed into a three-person tent. We’ve since upgraded to a roomier, albeit slightly moldy, tent-trailer. All we have to do is attach it to the back of our gigantic green van and we’re all set for another fun-filled trip. There’s nothing quite like traveling the open road in a Ford Arrowstar pilled high with ice chests, sleeping bags and oversized duffle bags.
My parent’s new favorite place to vacation is Lookout, California, population 50. Now I’ve actually only seen about ten of the town’s residents, but I’m sure the other 40 are around there somewhere. My dad, being the amateur astronomer that he is, loves to spend time observing the sky. The problem is that in the Bay Area it’s hard to see more than a couple dozen stars at a time. So he bought 60 acres of lovely, open land in Lookout.
I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person who will go anywhere once, and while I was skeptical of my dad’s purchase I agreed to go up to our land with my family. We all got up at 6 in the morning to get an “early start”. At 11am, we finally made it out the door. Seven hours later we stopped at the gas station just outside of Lookout. While waiting in line with my older sister I spied a bottle of Peach Schnapps for sale. Elbowing her I said, “Look, it’s what they drank in The Virgin Suicides.” All of a sudden the man in line behind us turns and says, “Personally, I prefer the blood of Christ.” Neither of us knew what to say, so we just paid for our M&Ms and left quickly.
Lookout may be a great place for my dad to observe, but for a restless teenager like me it’s horrible. There’s no downtown and no nightlife, unless you’re counting owls. To make things worse the property did not come with any sort of bathroom on it. While I love my family, the next time my dad suggests going up to Lookout I’m going to volunteer to stay home and water the plants.
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