Dancing Queen

We’re back, the house is still standing, the dog’s fine, horses, cats, frogs are all accounted for. Kids aren’t back yet, they’re still with Grandma, I’ll be picking them up late this afternoon. And then Beane will have just this evening to wash her clothes and pack for a week in Florida with her friend, Ang. The little jet-setter!

We had a fantastic time together, the Hubz and I, the weather was sunny and hot and beautiful, the resort was awesome, our room was nice and clean, Virginia was beautiful, camping was gritty and dirty and great, the Yough was spectacular, we had tons of adventures and laughs together, we saw the best movie EVER. EVER EVER!!! In fact, this entry’s font colors are in honor of my new all-time favorite movie EVER. I’m sorry, Albert Brooks, but “Mother” has been deposed. I’m really sorry. Really.

We were getting a little sick of resort life, you know, with the water parks and the wave pools and the surfing and the jacuzzi’s and the massages and the room service, there’s only so much of that shizzle you can take (seriously, I am NOT a resort girl. I got seriously sick of all that stuff, pretty quickly), so we headed into Harrisonburg, to see what we could get into. We ended up antique-shopping, but the prices were painfully ridiculous, so we decided to see a movie, IN A THEATRE, which is really quite a luxury for us, we never go out to the movies (onaccounta I tend to fall asleep in the theatre, no matter what time of day it is). I was going to take Hubz to see “Get Smart”, he likes Steve Carell pretty much, so it would be sorta enjoyable for us both. Except that when we got there, it was already 20 minutes into “Get Smart”, so I dragged him into “Mama Mia”, just me and Hubz and about 800 blue-haired ladies. THAT was the audience. We had about 1/2 hour to kill before the movie, so we got a bucket of popcorn and sat outside the theatre and watched the people flow in. 800 ladies, about 4 or 5 pretty pitiful purse-lugging husbands, and me and Hubz. He was not thrilled. But he’s a pretty good sport.

I laughed and cried through the whole movie. At one point, I was sobbing, and I was so embarrassed, I sneaked a glance over at Hubz, to see if he noticed how goofy I was, and he’s got tears streaming down his face! I lost it! And then I put on my sunglasses and watched the rest of the movie that way, which cracked him the hell up. You can totally watch that movie with sunglasses, it’s THAT brilliant and bright and colorful and alive! I won’t ruin if for you, but there’s so much with the girl power, and second chances, and true love, and letting go of your children and friendship and fun and friggin MERYL STREEP, god she is so beautiful,and Pierce Brosnan SINGING, holy shizzle, I never thought I’d see THAT! The audience was kinda an uptight sorta DUD, they didn’t cheer or clap or anything, and I’m telling you, the urge was so strong within me, that I just sorta lost it at the end and let out this little CLAP CLAP CLAP thing, which mortified embarrassed Hubz a little, but my little clapping started a pitiful little clapping WAVE across the audience, you see, they SO wanted to clap and cheer, but no one INITIATED it, no one said it was OK, and that’s all they needed. Next time, I am SO going to clap and cheer as soon as I feel like it. Life is too short. Which is another theme of the movie, by the way…

Sigh.

Here’s how much my husband loved that movie, as soon as we walked out into the parking lot, he turned around and said, you wanna go see it again? True story! He didn’t want it to end! And last night, after we got home and took care of the animals and the house, we went out to eat, and he says, AGAIN, you wanna go see that movie? I wanted to, but I’ll be taking Beane and Flower Childe to see it, so that will be enough. But he says to me, he says, you know, I like that music, I like “Dancing Queen”, he says, when I hear that song, I always sing to it! Oh yes he did, he said that! I said, you know Hon, I have an Abba Greatest Hits CD on the computer, I could burn you a copy. And then he laughed, a little embarrassed, but still, I’m totally going to burn him a copy. He’s a real goofball, but I think I’ll keep him.

We spent the first two days at Ohiopyle, which is a tiny little town along the Youghiogheny River, which, don’t call it the “Youghiogheny River,” the proper pronunciation is “Da YOCK” (rhymes with “clock”). The falls and the rocks and the river are so beautiful, I don’t even know how to convey to you… We’ve been to Ohiopyle before, but it was on a white-water rafting trip with the extended family, where everything was pre-planned out, and we missed seeing SO MUCH of the town and the river and the scenery… But this time we had time to explore.

We hiked along the river, a beautiful, rocky trail, lined with wild white rhododendrons, it was like a magical fairy land, with the white flowers twinkling down on our path, and the sun through the trees, and the river roaring below, just out of sight. Hubz and I tripped through the woods, jumped over rocks, sat on ledges with hundreds of thousands of gallons of crystal water roaring under our feet. We trundled down 80 degree hillsides to get to a giant rocky outcropping, where we sat for an hour, daring and double-dog daring each other to jump into the river. It literally took us an hour to get ourselves to jump from a 20 ft high boulder, into the river below. We knew it was safe, theoretically, because we’d seen some teenagers jumping from it the day before. They jumped, they lived. But it’s a different story when you’re actually STANDING on the rock, you know… Finally, it got to be where it was US or the ROCK, and so we had to do it. Hubz flung himself out first, and I followed, screaming my ass off, convinced I was leaping to my death, and then glug, glug, glug, I surfaced, and there’s Hubz, on a rock, reaching to haul my silly ass out of the river.

There was also a little tributary to the river, where you could body-slide down through the waterfalls. This was actually the first place we stopped, but it took us two days to get the courage to go down. We spent a lot of time watching bus-loads of kids, hurtling themselves down through the rocks and the waves, lots of camp busses. Our favorite was a group of boys, ranging in age from about 10 to 16 yrs old, their leader had on a wet-suit, gloves, shoes, and crash helmet. They called themselves “The Meat TRain“, every time they went down together in a row, “Come on, get on the Meat Train!” they’d yell. It was so fun, but I couldn’t get myself to join the Meat Train, much as I wanted to. Eventually, after we had watched for two days, and dared and double-dog dared each other enough, it got down to “us or the river” again, and we had to go down. Hubz went first. I got a few shots of him going down, but Beane has my card-reader, so the pics will have to wait. I really did not want to go down that thing, it sure looked like people were IN PAIN as they crashed and bumped bodily down those rocks, but I had to try it. Especially after I saw about a 60 yr old LADY go down, not once but TWICE. Then I HAD to do it. It was painful and scary and I thought I was going to drown several times and I’ll never do it again, but it’s over, and I did it and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I have a busted ass and a busted elbow, but I never have to do THAT again. I can’t wait to take the kids! Of course I’m going to buy them crash-helmets and gloves before we go…

We had so much fun, falling down the hills, tripping on the rocks… At one point, we’re hiking, and there was a rocky place, with this fetid, mosquito-infested puddle of water, and Hubz is hiking along in front of me, and I’m whining, I’m HOOOOOOTTTTTT, my feeeeeet huuuuurrrrt, and he says, there, why don’t you cool off in that puddle, and durned if my feet didn’t slip on the moss, and down I went into that disgusting water! So I’m splayed out on my side, completely paralyzed with laughter, my entire torso is soaking in this gravid pool of festering filth, I can’t move, I’m choking, I can’t breathe, my right arm is pinned beneath my body, my left arm is trying to save my bag and my camera, Hubz is no help, he’s standing over me screaming, “Are you KIDDING?! Get outta there!!!” It was seriously one of those moments where you can’t move, but you’re laughing, but you’re outta control and it gets scary, expecially when you can’t breathe… Hubz eventually caught on that I was stuck, and fished me out of the puddle. Later, when we got back to camp, we ate and then fell asleep without showering, and he told me, he thought about reaching over and “trying something” with me during the night, as I slept in just my tank top and underwear, but he remembered that my ass was in that water, and he decided to “pass”!!! HARRRRR!!!!! Which means, that was some really disgusting water!

At one point, I fell down one of those rocky 80 degree inclines, and my bag rolled all the way to the bottom. My cell phone, my camera, my jewelry, both of my watches, my “work” watch and my “good” watch, everything rolled out and spread onto the jungly forest floor. It’s a miracle we found all my jewelry! Well, HUBZ found all my jewelry. Me, I was hanging from a tree root, laughing hysterically.

I was a bit bummed up after our Yock adventures. Especially my feet. Who goes hiking and river-rocking in a pair of shower thongs?!!! Oh yes I did. Idiot. I wore out a hole between my toes, both feet. I also brought home a nice case of the poison ivy.

In fact, I spent 4 days at the resort then, OOOOzing. It was special. I have a really bad patch on my left ankle, that oozed yellow poison like a seive. Constant stream. It was gross. I had to wear a big band-aid at the water park, and still I felt guilty, swimming in public. Didja ever notice how disgusting people and their bodies are? I really notice it while standing in lines at water parks. Everybody has HAIR, and suspicious little red marks, and funny white marks and scars, and HAIR and water dripping from their noses, and HAIR… Water parks bug me. But I’m just as disgusting as everyone else, even more so, with my oozing, poisonous ankles…

Hubz’ sunburn was in really good form too, the first day at the water park, that’s the day his back decided to bust out with the glorious reds and browns and pinks and flapping, peeling SHARDS of skin… It was a really good show, I must say, spectacular… He had to wear a shirt all day in the water park. Oh, we were a PAIR. Lizzard Boy and Pussey Poison Girl. We weren’t exactly tearing each other’s clothes off at the end of THAT day!

The resort was nice. The tour was long. It was supposed to be 90 minutes, but the saleslady kept us for 3 hours, all told. She was fine, not too pushy, but she drove us around that mountain for HOURS, pointing out WAY MORE than we EVER needed to know about Massanutten Resort! In the end, she brought us back to the office building and started the Big Pitch. Bottom line was this, in case you’re interested in time shares: She started at $23,000 buy-in, with $370/yr maintenance fee. We said, no thanks. She went to her computer, she comes back with $10,000 buy-in, $250/yr maintenance fee. We said, no thanks. She says, thanks for coming, and passes us on to the Hard-Sell Guy. He offers us $6000 buy-in, $150/yr maintenance. No thanks. He finishes with $5000 buy-in, $120 maintenance. We said, we’ll think about it, he said, no thinking, it’s now or never, we said, OK then, No thanks. They gave us our deposit back, and our Bonus Cruise (3 days in Bahamas), and as we were leaving, he says, you folks can come back today if you want to take me up on that offer. We went back to our room, did some figgerin’ on paper, and decided to pass anyways.  And then we got pissed. Because how many poor suckers buy at $23,000? Oh well, not my problem.

The rest of the time at the resort, we just sorta did water things, and went into town to explore some. We had a great dinner at Finnegan’s Cove, they had REAL FOOD. Hubz even tried fresh mussels! I had seafood alfredo, with scallops as big as my fist, I durn near CHOKED trying to eat them. Hubz had chicken alfredo, with so much chicken he couldn’t eat it all. It was so good, the sauce was so light, home-made, right there in it’s own little skillet, I saw them cooking it, none of that cloying, thick, JARRED alfredo junk, just real food, and fresh fish.

We didn’t actually do the Skyline Drive thing, as so much of our travelling was along gorgeous mountain routes, we stopped at plenty of the overlook things, Hubz was real big on the scenic overlooks, which I thought was cute. Me, I was pretty much car-sick on the mountain roads, but he was having fun. Route 40 was beautiful, in PA, we stopped at little shops all along the way, which we never get to do with a car full of kids, you know… We found a day-lilly farm too, it was so ridiculously beautiful, just some lady’s yard, with about 100 varieties of day-lillies. I bought some called “Tuscawill Tigress,” “Strawberry Candy,” and “Little Miss Tinkerbell“. The names are as fun as the flowers! So of course now I’m telling Hubz, all I need is about $1000 to start my own day-lilly farm… It was really fun, carrying a big shoe-box full of day-lilly roots into and out of our hotel rooms, and trying to keep them watered and covered and pampered for the week. Which reminds me, I have to go get them in the ground right now, before it’s time to pick up the kids.

Hubz and I are planning a big water-fight with the kids later this week, we bought 6 brand-new Super-soakers, 400 water bomb balloons, and team t-shirts. The kids called us a couple times suring the week,  they’re expecting some big surprise every year when they return, so, that oughtta do it!

Will return with what little bit of pictures we took!

Tags: hiking, Ohiopyle, resorts, time shares, vacations, water parks, Youghiogheny