The Honeymoon From . . . Well, You Know

I promised in my last post to tell you about our horrible honeymoon. It wasn't anyone's fault, really. My husband had planned a beautiful week in the mountains of Arkansas. We had a cabin with an amazing view of the mountainous vistas, but things went wrong from the very start.

It all began on our wedding night. Since we were married at 5 pm and the drive to our honeymoon cabin was a good 12-13 hour trip from Baytown, we decided to spend our first night as a married couple in our "new" apartment in Grand Prairie (near Dallas/Fort Worth). We drove the 4 hours from Baytown, TX to Grand Prairie. As we pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex, the radiator in my husband's car exploded. And that was just the beginning.

As we rose the next morning (when we were supposed to leave on our drive to the mountains), I had the auspicious task of calling my father to ask if we could use his van, which I had been driving temporarily, to make the trip to Arkansas. First, let me just say that your dad is not really the first phone call you want to make after your wedding night - nuff said. Dad readily agreed to let us drive his 1984 Chevy van into the mountains of Arkansas, so off we went.

We had a mostly uneventful drive up the narrow, winding roads to our mountain getaway. Things seemed to be looking up for us. Unfortunately, it had been raining for several days prior to our arrival. We pulled into the "driveway" of the cabin (if you call muddy, rutted dirt a driveway) and began unpacking our things. It had been a long, tiring trip, so as soon as we changed, we went out to find something to eat. Well, let me rephrase, we tried to go somewhere for dinner.

Unfortunately, vans like the one we were in are not designed for muddy mountains. As soon as we started to back up, we promptly became mired in the muck. My husband found someone to help pull us out, and we proceeded to the restaurant.

The next morning we decided to test fate again and travel to a nearby park and go hiking. We managed to traverse the driveway with no problem and arrived safely at the park. We hiked along the trails for a while, finally arriving at a cave where you could jump several small crevices (about 5-6 feet deep), crawl through a low portion of tunnel and arrive at a cavern where a waterfall tumbled down from the cave's ceiling. Now, I am just over 5 ft tall, but with my husband's help I managed the jumps (this white girl cannot jump - at least not very well). We crawled through the tunnel and took some nice photos of the waterfall. As we left the "waterfall cave," my husband went first taking our lone flashlight with him. I turned to follow but since the light had vanished with my husband, I was left in the dark. I thought I had knelt low enough to allow plenty of headroom to begin crawling back through the tunnel - something you would not consider difficult for someone like myself who is horizontally challenged. I managed to whack my head directly into the wall where the exit was located nearly knocking myself unconscious. Fortunately, we made it back to our car - with a lovely knot on my forehead but with no further incident.

We decided to play it safe that evening and warm up a can of soup and make sandwiches for dinner. We even lit a fire in the fireplace and managed not to burn down the cabin in the process.

After a successful evening with no further unwanted adventures, we decided the next morning to take a drive up to Eureka Springs because we had heard about the Passion Play there. We drove to Eureka and found that, alas, the Passion play did not start for 2 weeks. No problem, we continued our drive to Branson, Missouri. We drove around for a while, walked through a few shops (full of things we could not really even afford to walk near, much less purchase). We ate dinner and headed back to the cabin.

If you think things have sounded less than ideal up to this point, you are in for a treat on the second half of this journey of ours. Hang onto your hats, the ride is about to take a turn for the worse.

The following morning we prepared to go whitewater rafting. This was one of the things we had looked forward to most about this trip. We both love the water and had thoroughly enjoyed our previous whitewater experience. Off we went, or so we thought. About 30 seconds in the car, and we were stuck fast in Arkansas mud, again. After the friendly neighbor pulled us out for the second time (bending the bumper and probably laughing uncontrollably at us to boot), we took off on our next adventure. Too bad the adventure ended with being towed out of the muck. We drove for hours trying to find one of the rafting establishments. When we finally stumbled upon one, they had closed 20 minutes earlier. Back we went to the cabin - this was getting old.

We had so far managed to do nothing we had intended to do while in the mountains with the exception of my near-concussion at the waterfall. The next day I was determined to go horseback riding - real horseback riding - not trail riding with my horse's nose in another horse's derriere. It had been raining again, so we made a quick stop at Wal-mart to purchase a poncho because I was going to go horseback riding, rain or no rain. We followed the directions to the ranch. When we were a mere mile from the location, we came to a fork in the road. The signage was at the apex of the split in the road, so it was difficult to tell which direction was the correct one. Since there was a veritable river cascading over one branch of the road, we opted for the other direction - bad move, very bad move.

Let me preface the next portion of the tale with a little back story. I spent a pretty penny having my nails done for my wedding a few days earlier. I am not a "froo froo" girl, so having nails was a change for me and up to this point I had managed to keep them intact and looking fairly good. Now, the saga continues . . .

As we made our way cautiously down a fairly desolate stretch of road, we realized our error in judgment. We attempted to turn around and head back the other direction, but have I mentioned the sticky, nasty, vicious Arkansas mud? You guessed it, we were stuck, for the third time in four days. There was one catch - in trying to turn around on a very narrow piece of muddy road in a very large van, I had pulled further to the side as I edged forward. When we became stuck, I was inches from pulling over the edge of a precipice, which dropped into the aforementioned rush of water we had earlier avoided. Oh, and the last detail that is important to mention is that our emergency brake was not operational at the time.

All of that being said, my husband donned the poncho purchased earlier in the morning, walked about a mile back to civilization (if you can call two trailers and a couple of Dooleys civilization) and begged for help. Meanwhile, back at the van I kept my foot on the brake, prayed like I had never prayed before and proceeded to chew off every fake fingernail that had been so painstakingly applied. Needless to say, we survived the experience. We never did get to the ranch to go horseback riding though.

We hightailed it back to the cabin. Pulled out a map and plotted a course to a new destination. We packed up our stuff and took off driving to Bossier City, LA. After hours in the car, we had just pulled across the Louisiana state line when a well-meaning police officer pulled us over to inquire whether we had been drinking. I'm still not sure why - we had turned around and used the shoulder probably a little more than we should have, but have you ever seen the turning radius of those vans? Anyway, I was crying at this point. In fact, I think I scared him a little. He let us go when he realized we were not the drunks he originally thought us to be.

We pulled into Bossier City, found the most expensive hotel room we could rent on such short notice (we had plenty of funds since we never actually did anything costing money - other than sleep and eat), and collapsed. The next day we ate a really nice dinner at Ralph and Kackoo's and headed back home.

Fortunately, we had no further misadventures. We did decide after commiserating about it for a while that if we managed to make it through our honeymoon, this marriage thing should be a snap! Oh, and we haven't managed to take a vacation together since - all trips have been missions or youth-related in the last 10 years.

So, next time you think you are having a bad vacation, just remember our little tale of woe. And if you have a story worse than this one, I'd love to hear it!