Plannification

I forgot to mention the Great Wolf Lodge in my last post; see image below for a taste:

Though this picture depicts the Boulder Creek/psuedo camp lodge/fat white family fun fest side of things, it only explains about half of the experience. The place is an indoor waterpark, complete with a kiddie wave pool, kiddie water slides, a kiddie hot tub, and a very grown-up bar, where you can charge things like "Maui Mojitos" to your parents' waterproof electronic payment-tracking bracelets. I got to see my relatives from Seattle, which was great, and spend a little extra time with my grandparents and other cousins before heading back to New York. I also got the fine opportunity to experience first-hand my parents snoring in stereo, loudly enough for me to gather my linens into a nest on the balcony and finish my night outside. There are some things I'm not ashamed to admit I'm too old for, and playing in waterparks with my 8 year-old cousins is not one of them; sleeping inches from the gurgling, somnolent masses of my parents, however, is.

On a more cheerful note, my trip to Iceland is coming UP and the planning is almost finalized. I went on an actual shopping spree at EMS yesterday -- I've never done one of those before! -- and bought all the necessaries, including trekking poles, which Don says are for "wusses" but I think will come in handy. Iceland's Landmannalaugar Park -- which is where we'll be hiking -- is devoid of animals, most vegetation, and people, so that takes out a lot of stress about storing food, outdoor dangers, and getting lost in general: the trail is well-marked and totally visible, since there is nothing blocking your view for miles (besides the mountains and glaciers themselves, and the occasional patch of night-black fog... or sandstorm... or snowstorm...). The huts we'll be staying at along the way are apparently well-stocked with little stoves, pots, pans, and utensils, which also takes a lot of the pressure off of preparing for that stuff. We'll just need water bottles and lots of beans, quinoa, peanut butter, electrolyte powder... any other suggestions? We'll be carrying all of the food with us (4 nights), so any advice on doing this kind of thing -- e.g., how to not get sick of eating lentils, how to estimate how much to bring, are powdered eggs actually good, etc. -- would be greatly appreciated!

I'm also trying to figure out what would be good entertainment to bring besides a book -- mini Scrabble, cards, a flask of Early Times, stargazing equipment?

This will also be my and Don's first real vacation together ("awwweee"). I'm really looking forward to having some straight chillin' time with him, since we're usually so busy during the week that we don't see each other til 11 o'clock at night! (A pathetic over-achieving yuppie lifestyle, what can ya do?) There's nothing like discovering a jaw-dropping rainbow-colored rhyolite vista at 6am with a loved one...

And here's a crude map of where we'll be hiking, from Landmannalaugar to Thorsmork:

Ice Cream, Heritage, Blindness, etc.

I've fallen in love with a dark, salty, Korean delight: black sesame ice cream.

It tastes like peanut butter pie, or a tahini smoothie. Kicks all that Pennsylvania Dutch food out of the water, I have to say; I'm done with breakfast buffets of creamed chipped beef and side dishes of chow-chow and slices of shoofly pie. If your only spice is salt, I'm not interested. (The red beet eggs can stay.)

This past weekend I had my fill of this stuff, though it's not all bad -- peaches, tomatoes, and apple cider from a cousin's garden made up for the stacked plates of dry whoopie pies. A growing team of vegetarians clamored loudly enough for veggie burgers to be had, while fresh scrambled eggs never gets old.

Besides the culinary highs and lows, this year's Smucker Reunion was especially informative. We went on an extensive heritage tour -- in tour buses equipped with ghetto-rigged speakers and dangerously perched folding chairs -- of Lancaster County, stopping at each of the major Smucker homestead sites in the area. Each homestead was armed with a large Amish clan, some of whom had converted the old houses into "Amish stays," or places where curious people from the South can "live like the Amish" in ancient rooms discreetly equipped with wifi and central air. The little Amish boys with bowl cuts would come creeping out to look at us floundering with our limping geezers and sweaty toddlers, the little girls rolling around barefoot, chasing kittens.

The first stop was the site of the original Smucker home, where Christian Smucker first built a farm in the late 1700s. The house still stands, as do parts of the barn and his gravestone.

"Schmucker Family [illegible] 1782" 

Emily touching the Blarney Stone that is the original stone wall of the Smucker barn 

le paysage

It struck a chord in my little black, postmodern heart. I had never thought back further than the great White Flight my parents experienced when they moved from Park Slope to Levittown, which I thought was history enough. I like being able to trace back my family -- at least one half of it -- to a time before America was America, and especially to a line of people who refused to participate in the American frat party of "ideals" before they'd even become part of the great American psyche. My ancestors were nonviolent, and abstained from fighting in the Civil War; they were one of the first two Amish families to establish themselves in Lancaster County; they built strong houses and barns that have held no one but Amish families, even to this day. (The Amish family at the first and oldest homestead proudly presented us with the framed original deed to the house, from William Penn to Christian Smucker.) My family's non-Amishness is a fairly recent thing, occurring only when my great-grandparents were both excommunicated from the Amish community for refusing to repent their sins. (Love and childbirth.)

All of this was recounted to me and about twenty-two other Smuckers from the mouth of my grandpa, who was sitting backwards in a folding chair next to the tour bus driver (my cousin, who had borrowed the buses from the family motel and restaurant business), clutching the microphone in one hand and a crinkled family tree in the other. The tour was long, about an hour and a half, peppered with crying babies and impatient bladders (including my own, which I emptied behind Eli Smucker's old homestead [c. 1912], after which my older Smucker relatives cackled and thanked me for leaving my blessing behind the barn). 

Besides the heritage tour, there was hymn-singing, more eating, socializing, porching, and swimming. Emily and I discovered -- a little too late -- that we had spent the entire weekend confusing the brains out of almost everyone, including but not limited to our own grandparents, second cousins once removed, and great-aunts and -uncles. I would have braided my hair or something, had Emily and I ever shared a mirror together and discovered this ridiculous joke on our family:

Speaking of glasses, I discovered today that, were my vision unable to be corrected, I would be legally blind. I also had collagen protein "plugs" inserted into my tear ducts so that my unusually dry eyes could go swimming in a few more tears, and saw some scary photographs of my retinas that showed "typical, but not irreversible" spots of sun damage. I am currently in the market for two new pairs of lenses for my glasses, a new set of contacts, prescription sunglasses, prescription swimming goggles, prescription eyedrops (RESTASIS®  - "My Tears, My Rewards"), and about $500 USD. If anyone knows where I can get these things on Craigslist, please let me know.