It’s the third day of this year’s family vacation. Last year we drove to Chicago and also spent a few days in Glenwood Springs Colorado. The year before that we were in Olympia, Washington. And the year before that, we drove with Espen all the way out to Maine and visited lots of people en route there and back.

This time, we didn’t go out of state. We left Monday for a condo we rented in Mammoth, and it’s been great so far. On the drive up here we encountered a large thunderstorm in the Mojave desert in the late afternoon. By the time we reached the far end of the storm, the sun had almost set. We never actually saw the sun, but the storm itself became tinted a deep pink, and the flashes of lightning made it a strange world, like we were driving up the desolate valley toward Mt. Doom. Speaking of which, little Abel, mer-boy, has been constantly hollering out “Waterdeep!” every time he glimpses a body of water, be it puddle or lake.

Since we’ve been up here, we rented The Quiet American, a movie we never managed to see in the theater. Films based on Graham Greene novels (The Third Man, End of the Affair) always satisfy on some level, and this wasn’t an exception. It was based on some intrigue in Saigon during the French-Indochine War in the 50’s.

I’ve also gotten some well-needed reading done. I started Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good on Monday night and finished it on Tuesday. It was everything I hoped it would be. Which is not to say that I had particularly shaped expectations; I wanted to be surprised and moved, and was. The novel is, as Hornby says rather uninspiredly, “about a woman whose husband has a spiritual conversion that drives her nuts.” I recommend it if you are any of the following: married, frustratingly idealistic, or comfortably “good”. Or know anyone who is.

Meanwhile, Heather’s reading Crescent, a book by Diana Abu-Jaber about the Irani and Iraqi immigrant experience in Los Angeles.

So Monday was mainly spent decompressing and reading. Yesterday we spent the afternoon casing the joint, figuring out what we might like to do for the rest of the week. We almost explored an old goldmine, but Abel and Espen went absolutely hysterical when we stood in the entrance and carried on during my reconnoiter of the first 60 feet of it. Maybe Heather and I can come back later. That’s the sort of thing we’d love to do together. Other than that we went to lots of different places for the kids to throw rocks into the water.

The last place on our tour was Horseshoe Lake. It looked pretty strange, since many of the trees near the lake were dead, but there was no fire damage in the area. Turns out that seismic activity in the area had released high levels of CO2 into the ground and killed them off. There were large skull & crossbones signs posted because there were purportedly pockets of the gas in the area that could kill one. There were also specific warnings about letting kids dig in the sand near the lake, since that could release the gas.

In the evening we went down the mountain 15 miles to Heather’s aunt’s house, and we had dinner there, but before dinner the uncle and I took the boys down into the wetlands behind the house and let them skinnydip for a while in the cold stream that made its way through the reeds there. That satisfied their day-long aspiration to get cold and wet.

Today we took it easier. We took a small outboard out on Lake Mary for an hour and let the boys steer us in circles until the exhaust fumes were overpowering. They fed their crackers to some marauding ducks, listened to a story about the Red Castle Pirates from me, tried to jump out of the boat, and managed to get wet without doing so. We also checked out a couple of horseback-riding outfits but they were both really expensive and wouldn’t allow children under six to ride, even with a parent. (We had such a ride, private, with a wonderful guide, in Colorado, but it’s not to be here.) Hummus sandwiches, Jones Cola, and Oreos for lunch. Naps. Good times.