*I never finished this post and can't be sure when it was originally written. What's obvious is, it was before our daughter came along. This is an adventure that happens before kids. I miss that us. I wouldn't trade back, but it was a really great time, so I'm throwing this up unfinished. It's probably from around the time The Jones was created: 2006.
friday night about 7:30, guy is finally ready to go. we get in the lesbian soccer mom subaru and head on out on our first scavenger hunt for a pristine mountain swimming hole. traffic is bad and it takes us three hours to get to yuba city, a place we think about for sleeping, a place where we do end up sleeping. what should it be, guy asks me. what should it be? we want a little mom and pop motel but we don't see any, so it's between holiday inn and best western. i decided on best western, "it's a little cheaper, but still nice." we are both grossed out by cheap cheap, but also penny-pinching enough not to spend the cash on holiday inn and it's gym and spa amenities. we get there, guy goes in and pays, and i look around for a pool. don't see a pool, doesn't matter, it's 10:30pm and we're tired. besides, we love the inside of motels too. we pull up, unpack, go in. get on bed. wrestle. wrestle wrestle, there's lots of room on the king bed. tickle fight, just a little, we were both tortured with tickling as children and listen seriously to screams of NO!! NO!! there's something about motels that turn us both into children. freewheeling whoops and thrashing about are totally routine. this time our room has a flatscreen HDTV in it. cool! one more! thing! to get unreasonably! excited! about! and then it's sleep.
get up, have breakfast in tacky motel cafe that seems to have been decorated by the women who decorate their husbands' gigantic humongous houseboats. "i have money, now i have decorating talent!" not. breakfast is eggs, bacon coffee and mimosas. finish. start driving. find our searched-for swimming spot deep in the mountains. which mountains? not sure actually. somewhere in that part of california i don't understand, near chico, off highway 70...not sure. it's hard to find the spot because the book we are using "Swimming Holes of California" is not accurate. the author says 18 miles down hwy 17 but really it's 19. this does make a difference when you're looking for an unpublished, damaged 4WD-only dirt road off the side of a mountain freeway. but we find it and climb boulders for at least a half hour into the most beautiful swimming hole we have EVER seen. climbing boulders is the best kind of hiking/climbing. they're clean for one, but the concentration and balance that is required to NOT break a leg creates a real zen state of mind.
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