Wow, I'm so sorry it took so long to update. I was a bit stuck and I've just gotten around to finishing this. Anyway, enjoy!

If it hadn't been for the travel brochures spread across the kitchen table, I probably would've forgotten what we were arguing over. It started out as a simple 'where to go on vacation' discussion until Daggy quickly turned this into an argument in spite of the fact he picked where we went last time.

I would've simply agreed to whatever he suggested if it wasn't for the fact that the last trip he planned was a three day weekend to some fast food place, that took two days to get to, all because they had talking trash cans. He was convinced it was one of the seven wonders of the world. And when we got there, they were switching out the trash cans for silent ones. That's when I found out that was the whole purpose of the trip as it was supposed to be a surprise. We came home with nothing but a bag of taquitos, a jalapeno slushy, and a mango-raspberry smoothie to show for it.

I finally had enough and decided to settle this once and for all. I should've thought of this an hour ago, but I've just now gotten fully awake.

"Okay." I pulled a quarter out of my pocket. "Heads, we go to the mountains; tails, we go to the beach, fair?"

"You sure you don't want to thumb wrestle over it?" Dag asked.

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life." I said.

Yes, that's melodramatic, I know. But it'll take longer and he always has to add "dramatic" and loud music to a thumb wrestling match. I once watched him and Norby have one for two straight hours. Dag lost his voice by the end of the match.

"Alright." I continued. "We re-flip if someone touches it in mid air, if it hits the furniture, or if it lands on its end. Okay?"

"Okay." He agreed.

I flipped the coin; it landed on heads.

"I win. Fair and square." I picked up the coin and stuck it in my pocket.

"Fine." Dag snorted.

I know he wants to call "do-overs", but he has no reason to insist on it.

"Think of this as making it up to me for spending hours cramped in the car to see a trash can." I started gathering up the brochures. "Like I really wanted to see a trash can on my birthday."

"It talked. How often do you see trash cans talking?" He asked.

"You have a point there, but was it worth driving hundreds of miles only to eat greasy taquitos?" I stacked up the brochures and stuck them in a drawer. "My smoothie was delicious, but I've made it better at home."

"Fine. We'll go to your stupid mountains." He muttered as he walked away.

"Get packing. I want to get an early start." I said.

"This better be fun." Dag said. "I only agreed to this because I remembered what happened that one time me and Norb went to the beach."

"Trust me, it is. Me and Stace went before. We had a lot of fun." I replied.

As we got closer to the mountains, the sky slowly turned to grey. This would happen to me when I plan a trip anywhere.

"I thought you said it wasn't supposed to rain today?" He questioned.

"That's what the weather report said this morning." I answered.

Of course, the forecast isn't always accurate though. In my defense, it was sunny when we left the house.

Dag looked at his phone.

"Hey, it says we're getting one hundred inches of rain."

"Wait. What?" I raised my eyebrow.

Since we were at a stoplight, I took a quick look at his phone.

"That says one hundred percent chance of rain." I said. "Where in blazes did you get inches?"

"Oh. That makes more sense." Dag shut his phone off.

"Well, maybe it won't or it'll blow over pretty soon." I replied. "It's usually wrong anyway."

This had to be the one day they actually got the weather right. It started raining once we got into the little alpine themed town.

It's freezing cold and here I am, wearing shorts and a t-shirt like an idiot.

Dag glared at me.

"Go on and say it. I know ya want to." I threw my hands up.

"We shoulda gone to the beach like I said. But no, you wanted to go to the spooty mountains." He waved his arms around dramatically.

"Ugh, but the beach is so tourist-y." I leaned against the car door.

"Sure, it is. What's your point?" Dag shrugged. "At least we wouldn't be freezing our tails off.

And this is coming from someone who was wearing cargo pants and a long sleeve shirt.

"Well, we can still go tubing." I replied. "They are open." I have to come out of here with something, after all.

"You have gotta be kidding me." He said. "What part of 'freezing cold' didn't you get?"

He folded his arms. "Maybe I'm the smart one after all."

I'm gonna say that was mostly the annoyance talking and let that slide.

"Since we're here, we might as well see what else there is to do around here." I grabbed a thin jacket I kept leaving in the car out; I locked the doors and walked away.

Dag scoffed, but followed me as the only alternative was to sit in the car and stare at the bus parked in front of us.

"Aw, spoot." I stopped in front of a shut down building. "They closed the homemade ice cream place."

"Are you kidding? It's too cold to eat ice cream." Dag looked at me like I was crazy.

"I know." I said. "It's too bad you didn't get to try it though. It was the best. They made it fresh, you could watch the waterwheel churn it. It was so incredibly soft..."

"Shut up." He said. "You're making me wanna ice cream. It probably would've been the only cool thing in this spooty town."

"Sorry, forget I mentioned it." I replied. "C'mon. The town can't be this dull."

After we passed a few more shops and the closed mini golf course, Dag started mumbling under his breath.

"What?" I asked.

"This is just as tourist-y as the beach." He said. "At least there's a lot more to do there."

"Like being chased by psychotic crabs and jetskis?" I shot back.

"No, like... uhm... spoot." He groaned. "You win."

"I admit, I don't remember it being like this." I said. "I was a little kid the last time I was here, so I probably didn't have the sense to realize how much of a tourist town it is."

We walked by the go-kart place and it was closed as well. Because I needed a break from driving, and I'm not about to let him drive again after what happened earlier, we decided to walk down one more street before we set off for home.

As I stepped around a trash can, I walked right into a puddle. "Aw, man." I shivered as the ice cold water splashed up my pant legs. To my surprise, my leg sank into the puddle.

"Well, we can still go tubing." Daggy mocked me with a lame impersonation of my voice as he walked past me.

I glared at him as l stepped out of the puddle with a soaking wet canvas sneaker and hurried after him.

"Hey, there's a coffee store over there." I pointed to a little shop on the left. "Maybe you can get a cup of coffee to warm you up." No matter how cold I am, I can never force myself to even taste hot drinks.

Unfortunately, they didn't sell already made drinks, but they did have a free sample which Dag tried. I don't like the idea of jalapeno flavored coffee, so I passed on the sample.

They did have vanilla coffee in two sizes: A small pack that looks more like a sample size and a regular sized pack. The only tag I found had the same price that the regular size would cost at our grocery store.

"It's probably for this one." I thought as I picked up the regular sized bag.

When the cashier rang it up and told me the total, I was stunned. Nine dollars for a bag of coffee that would normally cost me four dollars at our grocery store.

Daggy overheard and nearly choked on his coffee, with the drink coming out of his nose.

I nearly gagged at the sight, but I didn't want to call attention to it, not that it would embarrass him.

Behind the shop, there was a little deck overlooking a river.

I laid my arms on the deck, watching the calm waters as I tried to remember where this great pizza place I had been to before was at.

Dag came up beside me, chewing on something and making a face.

"What are you eating?" I asked.

"I got this weird gum from that machine over there." Dag said with his mouth full. "It must've gone stale."

I glanced at the only machine I saw on the deck. "That machine?" I motioned to it.

Dag spit the "gum" out into the river and looked toward the direction I was pointing in. "Yeah. Someone needs to tell them to replace it."

"Daggy, that's duck food." I said.

He gagged. "Duck food? Why? There's no spooty ducks around."

"They must not be out today." I replied. "Me and Stace fed them once. They're easier to feed than seagulls." I know from experience: dad told us seagulls love to be fed, so we were more than happy to feed them… at first.

"Let's go." Dag started to walk away.

"Fine, fine." I followed him. "Let's get something to eat first. I know an awesome pizza place."

"Okay, but only because I'm hungry and it would be stupid to come all the way up here for nothing." He replied. "Where is it?"

"Uhm…"

"You don't remember where it's at, do you?" He narrowed his eyes. "Sheesh! Let's just hit the drive through back in-"

"No, I remember that it's on the main strip." I replied. "We'll have to go through there to get back to the car. It'll jog my memory."

I was right. I was able to find it fairly quickly once we got back to the town square.

Unfortunately, I never knew that this place had live music played on occasion and this is one of those times where they had a band.

Since Dag could yell over the music loud enough to be heard, I let him order mine as well. He wound up ordering me a pepperoni slice instead of veggie even though I told him three times what I wanted. Oddly enough, he repeated it back to me perfectly just two minutes before our waiter came over.

He gave me death glares the entire time as whoever was singing for this band sounded worse than a bag full of cats gargling razor blades.

"I didn't know." I said. "I'm-"

"What?" Dag asked.

"I said-"

"What?" He leaned closer. "Speak up."

"I'm sorry." I apologized.

"I know, right?" He leaned back.

I could do nothing but blink. Moving on then…

"I could totally sing better than that." Dag scoffed.

I chuckled. "Yeah, I'm sure." I know I'm not anybody who should criticize anyone's singing, but I never claim that I can sing.

"I had a recording contract once." He replied. "Norb too, but mostly me."

"When was this?" I asked.

"Years ago." Dag answered. "We only had one song though and that was 'Beaver Fever'."

"That was you?!" My jaw dropped.

"I never told you?" He sipped his soda.

Why am I the last one to know anything?

"Huh… you and Norb didn't make as much money off of it as you'd think." I said.

"We did make some, but…" Dag trailed off. "I guess they took it along with our movie collection and pajamas."

"They took your...? Why and who's 'they'?" I asked.

"Uh… them." Dag replied. "And something in our contract said they could take that stuff. I don't remember."

That clears up that mystery. "Uh huh. So, no royalties then? " I took a sip of water.

"Uh… Not that I know of." Dag shrugged.

It looked like he didn't know what I meant, so maybe I'll ask Norb one day. Dag must've had the same idea because he got his phone out and started typing.

"Hey. Norb deleted his account." Dag said. "I can't find his page at all. He's not showing up in my friends list."

"That's weird. I wonder why." I pulled my phone out and started typing the 'unlock' password.

"I'd call him and ask why, but I haven't been able to get through for a week." Dag set his phone down.

Norb's account shows up on my phone and I called him a week ago. Norby probably blocked him over Dag putting up a bunch of photos of himself in that ratty, old Muscular Beaver costume. I told Daggy not to post those or at least let me make him a new costume that was less embarrassing.

"I'm sure it's nothing." I replied. He'll probably unblock Daggy in a few days. No more than three weeks tops.

The waiter brought out our order fairly quickly and, while the pizza was amazing, it didn't quite make up for the trip.

Once I paid the check, we found the car and headed for home.

The drive home was starting to prove itself more memorable as we passed by a large group of people in T-Rex costumes.

"Dag, get your phone out and-"

"Way ahead of you." Dag held up his phone.

An hour later, I was looking for any reason to get out and stretch my legs.

"Hey, there's a Taco Shack." Dag pointed at a sign in the distance. "I could go for a jalapeno slushy about now."

"Great." I replied. "Let's go in and get it. My legs are getting kinda stiff."

I ordered while Dag got us some straws for his slushy and my smoothie.

Once I got our order, I handed him his slushy and threw the receipt and my straw wrapper into the trash can.

"Thank you." The trashcan responded, complete with the most ridiculous robot voice ever.

"Oooh!" Dag gushed and immediately threw his straw wrapper in there to hear it talk again.

I still don't see the appeal in that. Oh, well. We got out of the house, saw a parade of T-Rexs. All in all, we had a weird, but good day.

Taco Shack is a spoof of Taco bell. I actually did go to a taco Bell that had talking trash cans back in '04 when I went tubing with my parents and cousin. And I only wish I saw a parade of T-Rexs... I did see a dancing one in a mall though.