The Elephant Burial Ground

We are staying in a tomb.

This was not intentional. A brush with good fortune some time back allowed us to secure accommodations in an RCI time-share "resort" anyplace in the world for next to nothing. However, the lateness of the season narrowed our potential world view significantly, and by the time it was all said and done, we ended up choosing a location in what probably could be characterized as the most undesirable time-share vacation location in the world.

We are staying in the farthest corner of the time-share universe—a purgatory for penalizing all the late planners and procrastinators, or the suckers who don't really understand the nuances of wheeling and dealing for trade-ups to better locations.

There was plenty of space here in the White Mountains by the time our time-share opportunity arose. We are where nobody wants to be.

It seems time-share vacationers opt for places with access to beaches and casinos and parasailing and shopping. These jetsetters—with their one precious week a year to spend in pursuit of leisure—opt for locales where beautiful people don't mind showing off their tanned and ripped torsos during the hottest part of the day, where friendly bartenders have perfected the craft of whipping up good strong drinks garnished with fine sweet fruit and paper umbrellas.

Here in the White Mountains, there are big stands of Ponderosa Pine forests for as far as the eye can see. The sky is quiet and dark at night and the nearest shopping is a Family Dollar store five miles down the road. In their resort brochure, the RCI marketing folks admonished that a "car is necessary to enjoy the region's amenities," many of which are located "less than a six-hour drive away." We are in the middle of the forest in the middle of nowhere.

There are no casinos, no beaches. People walk around fully clothed at all times, and the median age of resort dwellers here must be about 75 years old. The tap water is impeccably good tasting, pumped up from an ancient aquifer that is untainted by the ravages of civilization and industrial processes.

For us, this place is perfect. We are enjoying ourselves immensely and we have no plans to drive anywhere. The White Mountains are rich with biking trails and we have spent the past two days enjoying singletrack trails that range from smooth cruisers to shockingly technical grinds over tire-ravaging lava rock. Our legs are already tired but we are still looking forward to riding a 30-plus-mile epic later this week.

In some respects, vacationing here is a lot like vacationing in The Atomic City—with "nothing to do" and "no place to shop"—so we feel close to home. The nearby Apache tribe has even erected a fine cheesey casino just twenty minutes away by car, as if a Pojoaque Pueblo Déja Vù had been placed here just for us.

But what of the others who have come here? We have little information, other than that they seem to be very old. The resort's common area is uncrowded by people and the place has very little buzz. There are puzzles out on the tables in the atrium that seem to get assembled a little more each day by the gray ghosts who have come here this week to populate this old tomb of a resort.

People of this age demographic eat dinner early, and the restaurants in town are standing room only from 5 until 6:30 p.m. Then the town empties out like one of those spooky Midwestern hamlets where the locals engage in unspeakable rituals to guarantee a favorable harvest next year.

Last night we awoke to the sound of thumping as we tried to sleep off the stupor of a days' worth of riding. A new set of Blue Hairs had arrived. Night creatures. A different breed from what has been here so far.

We will be watching them—like Fort Lauderdale residents wary of Spring Break interlopers.