ESCAPE ROUTES : Tired of Grace Kelly Luxury and Gracie Allen Lunacy? Get Away From the Usual Options

The ice is breaking up on the L.A. River--time to think vacation.

Whatever the travel agents trill, there are only two kinds of vacations. One is the Grace Kelly holiday--serene, flawlessly executed, when the very waves of the ocean prostrate themselves before your ship like Sammy Davis Jr. before Richard Nixon.

The other is the Gracie Allen vacation--improvisational, always fluttering at the edge of chaos. Hand the desk clerk your credit card, and he smiles blandly as he rings the silent alarm. Waiters settle their lovers’ quarrel across your table with searing plates of cherries jubilee.

The first vacation has the gorgeous carelessness that comes only when everything is as precisely calculated as a moon landing. Every scenic photo looks like a National Geographic cover; every shot of you makes the Cosmo girl look like the farm wife in “American Gothic.”

The second is as haphazard as a stroll through Checkpoint Charlie with the Marx Brothers. The heroin smuggler chooses your train case as a drop bag. Once you get home, you hear the dairy with that marvelous clotted cream was quarantined for brucellosis.

So I’ve stayed home. Better to lay new shelf paper than spend good money on a bad time. I never even got to summer camp, not Scout camp, not math camp, not Latin camp. We had no money and lived on a farm. We had soil. That was as good as camp.

Yet now that I can at last consider a Grace Kelly holiday, Berkeley’s University Research Expedition Program throws this at me: the work vacation, or rather, the good-works vacation.

It’s earnest, it’s spiritually rewarding, and I think I’d rather summer with the Guardian Angels.

Monkeys and Medicine: Visit the Curu Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica to observe monkeys. (Anything there I can’t see on Melrose any day?) Stay in simple house or small beach cabin. (Like a Brentwood fixer-upper?) Expect long days tracking monkeys through the lush forest but also plan to enjoy night swimming in the bay. (Where I can get bitten by night fish.) Cost, $1,095, plus air fare.

Prehistoric Rock Art of Easter Island: Study the rock carvings on this island famous for massive stone statues. (I already saw them at Imax; they were huge, all right.) Stay in a small hotel. (Eight indisposed people to one bathroom.) Weather is relatively mild but participants should be in good physical condition to hike to more isolated sites. (If you didn’t break the tape at the L.A. Marathon, forget it.) Cost, $1,965, plus air fare.

Adapting to Life in the Clouds: Collect data on the health, physical condition and diet of women in La Paz, Bolivia, the world’s highest capital. Stay in shared house. (Shared with what ?) Work not arduous but participants should be in good health and take a few days to adjust to the altitude. (Or the possibility of a minor stroke). Familiarity with medical equipment (Do Barney Band-Aids count?) and computers helpful ( Como se dice Internet?). Cost, $1,495, plus air fare.

Pity I missed out on that trip to Suriname in search of the world’s largest leech. They found it on Devil’s Island.

A colleague of mine tracked down those leeches years ago. I heard his stories. I saw the pictures. The leeches that latched onto my feet as I waded in our creek back home jumped off at the touch of a lighted cigarette. Their Suriname kin are a foot, maybe a foot and half, long. A flaming Havana couldn’t dislodge them.

But none of that means you won’t see me at Banana Republic.

Just the other day, I found myself on an expedition, carefully navigating a narrow, plant-canopied trail, sodden from ferocious tropical storms, deep within the heart of the Santa Barbara Biltmore. Suddenly, I heard it--the sound that would lead me to what I’d been looking for: the sharp, unexpected popping cry from a rare cork-headed Roederer. It nearly threw me off my high heels.

So don’t tell me I don’t have a great thirst for adventure.