The Snow Is Like a Slurpee in Shangri-La

We are fortunate with friends. Bad with money. Lousy with real estate. But rich with friends. Crazy friends. Funny friends. Generous friends. Frankly, I’d prefer the money, though nobody ever really asked.

“We’re going to the mountains,” my wife explains.

“With friends?” I ask.

“Of course,” she says.

So we head up into the mountains for spring vacation with the Beverly Hills dentist and her funny husband and their three children, a convoy of kids and ski clothes and fishing gear, luggage and shoes stuffed in every available corner of our cars.

Close the minivan door and shoelaces dangle out, dancing in the wind.

“Dad, my laces are stuck in the door,” the boy says as we pull away.

“So are mine,” I say.

Up the steep roads we go, behind Pepsi truck drivers who never look back, through the haze and the clouds, till we reach our Shangri-La, a little mountain town with an IHOP on the corner.

“This is it?” asks my lovely and patient older daughter.

“Nice, huh?” I say.

“This is it?” she asks again.

There was a time, not that long ago, when spring vacation meant stuffing two T-shirts in a bag and heading to Florida or Texas with a bunch of college buddies. If there was room, you took a toothbrush.

Once there, you’d meet smiley girls from Ohio or Missouri in cutoff jeans and bikini tops. If you were lucky, they would ask you to apply their suntan lotion. Buy them a beer. Swim in the sea at midnight, naked as a porpoise.

After four days, they would leave for home. Then more girls would arrive in jeans and bikini tops. Thirsty girls with winter skin, cooking quickly in the April sun.

“Can you help me with this Coppertone?” they’d purr.

Fortunately, those days are long gone.

“Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad,” says a voice from the back seat, nearly waking me.

“What?”

“My stomach really hurts,” the voice says.

“We’re almost there,” I say.

“I think I’m gonna hurl,” the voice says.

“Let me out!” her brother yells. “Let me out!”

At the rental house, we unpack the cars. Because we all work together, it only takes a day.

On Sunday, we ski.

They are soft, these slopes, the mountain turning into a giant Slurpee in the spring heat. Icy but drinkable. In the million-ounce size.

“This is great,” says the boy.

“It’s a little slushy,” the boy’s buddy says.

As with most family vacations, it becomes an Iron Dad competition. One day we ski. The next, we ride horses. One morning, we go bowling. Yes, bowling. For 45 minutes, it is the most fun the kids have ever had. Then they sober up.

“Can we go fishing?” the little girl asks.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“I mean today,” she says.

“Oh,” I say.

The little red-haired girl is rich with friends as well. They join us fishing, three little girls in all, with their Little Mermaid fishing rods and a Styrofoam container of worms. Medium night crawlers. Twenty to a container.

“We’re ready,” the little girls say, wearing sunglasses and $60 shoes, looking like a Nordstrom ad.

And we find a mountain lake that sparkles, fed by snowmelt and stocked with trout by the fine state of California, which knows a thing or two about stocking lakes.

“Watch the holes,” I tell the girls as we walk from the parking lot.

“What holes?” they ask.

Along the path, there are these holes. Dug by ground squirrels, probably. The holes are the size of billiard pockets, just big enough for a kid. One false step and the little girls would be gone, fishing poles and all.

Whoosh, and one would disappear. Whoosh, there’d go another.

“Where are the girls?” the mothers would ask when I got home. And I’d be forced to go back to find them.

“Watch the holes,” I warn the girls as we walk.

Finally, we reach the water’s edge. I open the tackle box. It has hooks five sizes too large. A jar of salmon eggs older than God. A tiny tube of Mary Kay sunscreen.

The little girls dig in the container for worms. When they are done, they wipe their hands on my sleeve.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Sure Dad,” says the little girl.

To our right, the sun is sinking fast, leaving the lake sparkling white, like tonic water.

In the distance, the ski slopes are turning purple, then gold.

“We’re in luck,” I say.

“Why Dad?”

“Because we’re here,” I tell the girls.

“Why Dad?” the little girl asks, still puzzled.

“We just are,” I say.

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Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.