Crazy Lady Tours journeys to Wallace

If you want to get on a bus with a self-described “crazy lady,” here’s your chance. Spokane’s Vicki Deschaine and her business partner, Sonia Bertsch, have launched Crazy Lady Tours, and they’re headed to Wallace on Saturday.

For a mere $35, they’ll take you to the 20th annual Depot Days and Classic Car Show. About 300 cars will join you there, along with entertainers, craft and food vendors, and more.

The Crazy Ladies also will stop off for a visit to the Cataldo Mission.

“Sonia and I are both tour directors and we decided we would have a lot of fun by picking and choosing regional events that people would enjoy,” Deschaine says. “They can leave the driving to somebody else and have professional tour directors in the front of the bus.”

Tour directors keep things running smoothly behind the scenes – a job that requires patience, compassion and great organizational skills, Deschaine explains.

“The sociology and psychology of group dynamics on group tours is very interesting, and it takes a people-person to do this,” she says. “We want everybody to have a great time and not worry about a thing.”

The Crazy Ladies also are planning wine tours, a Lewis & Clark-themed trip and perhaps a visit to Grand Coulee Dam.

You can reach Crazy Lady Tours at (509) 466-8632 or (509) 327-8231.

Family fun and fortune

You’ll have to help me out with this one.

For the cost of a tank of gas and a six-pack or five, I could spend a perfectly hilarious few days with my brothers and their inamoratas – significant others, whatever you want to call them – mostly goofing off and generating quite a bit of silliness.

You could, too. And I recommend it.

Or – and this is where I get confused – you could have more or less the same experience for $75,000, give or take an Oregon hazelnut scrub.

The Sunriver Resort, just south of Bend, is betting you’re willing to pay more for familial togetherness than I apparently am.

Maybe you are. So whip out your checkbook and prepare to enjoy the Family Reunion Dream Package for 40 people, at just under $800 an hour.

And before you take exception, remember that includes both taxes and tips.

Besides, you can’t put a price on memories.

Years from now, if you have to take in mending to put Junior through one more quarter at Hamburger University, you’ll look back fondly at your exclusive evening in the Sunriver Observatory where, according to the resort’s marketing materials, “the crystal-clear Central Oregon skies will allow guests to see galaxies, globular star clusters and the planets while experts explain every object.”

There’s more, of course. Sunriver, a AAA four-diamond recipient, will turn its 3,800 acres into your very own playground.

You’ll spend four days and three nights in private, four-bedroom homes, your retreat from the never-ending schedule of dodge ball, horseback riding, tennis, cycling, whitewater rafting, a river float and golf at Meadows Golf Course, site of the 2005 NCAA Division I Women’s Championship.

While the kids are off at Fort Funnigan, you can relax for three whole hours at the Sage Springs Spa, home of the aforementioned hazelnut treatment along with the Deschutes Deep Tissue Massage and High Desert Wrapsody.

They call these “indigenous specialty services.” Just like the Native American tribes used to offer back in the day.

The history lesson gets going right away at your opening-night dinner, where a storyteller recounts regional tales. On the last evening, the resort’s chefs take over one of your kitchens and turn out a classic Pacific Northwest meal.

Naturally, you’ll have a concierge and a photographer assigned to your group so you can keep your hands free to write that check.

Find out more at www.sunriver-resort.com or by calling Diane Randall at (541) 593-3781.

Cool house

Let’s start with the name: Rem Koolhaas.

With a moniker like that, you’d better be a real with-it cat, and Dutch architect Koolhaas delivers. Check out the recent New Yorker magazine profile if you don’t want to take my word for it.

Or you can visit Seattle Central Library, a Koolhaas production and winner of a 2005 American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Outstanding Architecture. That award will be presented along with 12 others at AIA’s National Convention and Design Expo in Las Vegas later this month. Four hundred projects were eligible.

The glass and steel Central Library houses 1.45 million books and materials, compared to 900,000 in the old facility. Art installations include a video project by Seattle-based media artist Gary Hill, a 7,200-square-foot hardwood floor with raised letters in 11 languages by Ann Hamilton, and a series of three video sculptures created by New York’s Tony Oursler.

Outside, 42 trees grace the grounds while grasses, ferns and flowering perennials complete the landscape. “The Fountain of Wisdom,” a bronze sculpture by the late George Tsutakawa – in storage during construction – has been reinstalled at the library’s entrance.

The library offers tours daily; there’s a schedule on their Web site, www.spl.org. You can also reach them by phone at (206) 386-4636.

Regional events

•Walk with Artists in the Outdoor Sculpture Garden, May 14, Maryhill Museum near Goldendale, Wash. Have a look at the works in this year’s Outdoor Sculpture Invitational and hear all about them from their makers. (www.maryhillmuseum.org/509-773-3733)

•Old Snohomish Antique and Classic Motorcycle Show, May 15, Snohomish, Wash. Thousands bring their rides to the historic business district to see and be seen. The Seattle Cossacks perform stunts on vintage motorcycles, the Neil Rush Band provides the music, and there’s food and shopping opportunities for all. (www.snohomishbikeshow.org)

•Kimberley Jazz and Ragtime Festival, May 20-22, Kimberley, B.C. Enjoy live jazz in Kimberley’s Bavarian Platzl, concerts, a coffeehouse, workshops, gospel music and dancing in a jazz nightclub setting. (www.kimberleyjazzragtime.com/250-427-3966)