Honeymoon, Or, 'Honey, What the Heck?'...

Someone wrote me and told me to continue the story. Okay, I confess it was my mom. And technically, she already knows the ending, but I'll indulge her...because she's my mom, and because sometimes she takes me out to lunch on her dime even if it was my idea.



So, let's continue shall we?



With the wedding over, we were so excited to begin our honeymoon. We were being magically whisked away to...wait for it...Arkansas. Come on, don't laugh! We were two poor college students and Arkansas was the furthest our bucks would take us! We booked a couple of bed and breakfasts, and planned a week of relaxation amongst the related citizens of Arkansas. Sorry. Couldn't resist. Missouri and Arkansas have a love/hate relationship. Sorry good people of Arkansas...please don't stop reading. I give you permission to take a cheap shot at me in my comments section.



We were particularly excited about the first bed and breakfast. In the pictures it was this quaint little place with gorgeous bedrooms, a continental breakfast served to our room, and a pool nestled among the trees. It was the perfect place for relaxation and romance.



We were a bit shocked to discover our little inn was not exactly depicted correctly on the brochure. At first we thought we had the wrong address. After checking the map, checking the address and doing a bit of comparing and circling the place a couple of times...we realized, we did indeed have the correct location.



The building was a bit...outdated. It looked like it's latest paint job occurred in the 80's. We drove around back and just happened upon the pool. It was above ground (and definitely NOT Olympic size), and I'm sure there was water in there somewhere beneath all the leaves. We decided to at least go inside and talk to the manager. We'll call him 'Frank'. We walked in and prepared to tell Frank we wanted to cancel, but he was the sweetest man. He said he had been looking forward to our arrival (I'm pretty sure we were the ONLY ones staying there) and that he had our room all ready for us. What could we say? We decided to at least go take a look.



All I can say is at least the decor was consistent with the 80's time period of the rest of the place. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen those shades of peach, mauve and teal with accents of brass in quite some time.



The place was immaculately clean on the inside, so we thought we would at least stay one night, for Frank's sake. Frank excitedly showed us all the features of the room and before he left we asked him about the continental breakfast served to our room. "Oh!" he said, "Are you guys gonna love this!" He took us over to a little box about the size of a large mailbox attached to the wall of our room. He pulled on the handle to open the box. Inside it was lined with orange shag carpet with another small door that led to the outside of our room. Frank said, "Tomorrow morning I'll place your breakfast in the box, and when you're ready, you can just open the door on your side of the room and, VOILA!" Needless to say, he was quite proud of his invention. Brent and I stood there wide-eyed, with fake grins plastered on our faces, nodding in unison like a couple of bobble heads.



Frank finished up the tour, then let out a sigh and said, "Well then, I guess I'll just leave you two kids to it." And with that he left, closing the door to our room leaving us standing there staring after him.



We looked at each other and burst into laughter, deciding we HAD to stay there for at least one night purely for the insanity of it all! We changed clothes, went out to eat, walked around town a bit and then headed back for the night. There were a few sights we wanted to see in the morning, so having the continental breakfast would be so nice and such a time saver.



The next morning we awoke early and 'rock, paper, scissored' who would be the lucky one to check our box. I lost. I walked over, opened the door and inside, nestled in the shag carpet, were two Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, a couple of Lipton tea bags, a thermos of hot water and a couple of Styrofoam cups.

I don't know if it was the prepackaged muffins or the tea bags, or the look of it all among the shag, but we quickly decided breakfast 'out' was in order. We also decided it was time to move on. Good bye Frank...it was fun while it lasted.

We spent the rest of our week hopping to a couple of different inns, taking long drives along the Ozark hills (which, I'll admit are gorgeous), and seeing the various sights. We spent a few fun days in Branson, then headed back home to embark on our new life as a married couple...with no permanent home to call our own...