The Griswolds...er, Grafs go to Idaho

We headed out on Friday to Lava Hot Springs. It's only 2 1/2 hours from home, so it's the perfect short vacation spot. We had reservations at Cascade Villa, a two room, two bathroom condo. Sounds nice, right? Well, I've learned that anyplace that has a website, but no pictures is one to be cautious of. Our first clue came when we could not find the place. The business area of Lava Hot Springs is only about 6 blocks long, so how hard could it be? Krysta even managed to get an address from her iTouch. Still no luck. We were at the address, but no "villa" appeared. We asked at several other motels, but no one could give us a clue. Finally I asked a clerk at one of the stores; she led us to another store, Mountain Mayhem, about a block away to check in. Mountain Mayhem? Cascade Villa? Oh sure, those sound alike. We were told the "villa" was in the second story of the building across the street. From the front, it looked like it could be old-fashioned and charming.

From the back entrance, it just looked old and scary.

It was actually quite spacious, with a large kitchen with a very nice refrigerator. I coveted that fridge, but I wondered why they would spend money on such a nice fridge; I would have replaced the 1950's sofas first.

There were, however, a few interesting features. The bathrooms didn't have doors, just these screens that were meant to be placed across the bathroom openings at the appropriate time.

These stairs were much darker than in the picture, and Camille told me that someone could come up them at night to kidnap us.

My first thought, which I didn't share with the kids, was also to envision a crazed ax murderer coming up these stairs from the abandoned shop below. I told Camille that Kevin would save her.

Rachel told me she found this hiding spot while searching for mice.
I had also wondered about the possibility of mice, since there was a open vent from one of the bedrooms leading into the walls of the building. I didn't share that thought with anyone either; Rachel came up with it on her own. We both would have been excited to see a mouse, but for entirely different reasons. Fortunately, there was no evidence (other than the decon under the kitchen sink) of mice.

Ignoring the kitchen at our "villa", we ate burgers at Fat Jack's with their old fashioned candy machine and 10 year old grandson as the cashier. The burgers were so good, we came back later for more.

We very much enjoyed the hot springs. It was so relaxing and not cold at all to walk between the different pools.



The top pool is 112 degrees with the lower of the three pools being 102 degrees. Those 10 degrees make a difference. The top pool was really hot, while the bottom one was merely warm. The middle one was our favorite.

Upon returning to our "villa" we soon found that while the "villa" had beds for 6, it only had shower water for 2. After the first two quick showers, we had to wait several hours for the water to heat up. Rachel and Camille learned this the hard way as the warm water ran out in the middle of their showers. Poor girls, got all toasty warm in the hot pots and then froze in our room.

One of the good things about our "villa" was that the bedding was very clean and the beds were comfortable. Curt and I had the "master bedroom" at the front of the building.

We didn't need a nightlight because there was a big streetlight right outside our window which the blinds did almost nothing to darken. Nevertheless, I managed to sleep really well until 2:00 a.m. when the bar down the street apparently closed and all the drunks loudly stumbled out to find their cars. "Do you want to fight?" one guy asked another. "Sure, ha, ha ha," the other guy replied. All of their approximately 15 drunk friends joined the conversation. I probably could have made a comment and the single pane window would have done nothing to dampen my voice. But in case, one of them knew about the stairs leading up from the abandoned store, I kept quiet.

The next morning we found several inches of snow on the ground. We ate breakfast at the Chuckwagon cafe. The pie we had there the night before was so good, the kids had more for breakfast along with their all-you-can-eat buffets. It was greasy, cheesy, buttery, and fattening. Cafe food at its best. In our less than 24 hours in town, we'd pumped more than our fair share into the local economy. Whoever thinks Idaho is a cheap vacation would be mistaken. We watched an hour of conference, said farewell to the "villa" and headed to see my grandma. Stay tuned for Idaho-Part II wherein we discover our hotel pool is actually a cesspool, Erin requires Lortab, Kevin joins the Wannahuckaloogie club, and our TV rejects conference!