flashback friday – 21 april 2009

So Saturday morning, we rolled out of bed at the crack of 10:00 (honestly – I got up at 8:00 a.m., but the better half was still snoring away which explains why I got up so early on a weekend!) and managed to get the trailer packed and out of the driveway a little after noon. About 2 miles from home I realized that we had forgotten to bring food for Annie (the dog, not to be confused with Annie, Evan’s girlfriend). I had also assumed (incorrectly) that the trailer was pre-stocked with kitchenware, which it had been at one point, to feed and water her from. Tom, as anxious as I to get out of town, insisted that we would stop somewhere on the way to buy her food. We drove an hour and stopped at a Burger King in Preston, Idaho to have lunch. As we rolled into town, I suggested we stop at the grocery there to make our purchase, but Tom wanted to press on. So on we went!As soon as we hit the road again, the wind, which had been fairly annoying before, kicked into high gear. You don’t know fun until you’ve towed a trailer through gusting cross-winds – it was very exciting! We finally rolled into Lava Hot Springs, population 486, around 4:00 p.m. After an accidental drive-by of the town’s off-ramp, we eventually found a place to get turned around and headed for the motel/RV camp that I had reserved. Tom set up the trailer while I stood by as camp supervisor. When the time came to hook up the water, we discovered two things.First, in addition to the missing dog food and dishes to feed her from, we had also neglected to bring the hose to pipe water into the trailer. Off to the over-priced store we went, where we were able to purchase everything we needed, albeit at horrendously high prices. Second, once we had the hose, we discovered the RV park did not yet have the outside water hook-ups turned on from winter. The nice people running the place ran a hose out one of the motel room windows so that we were able to fill the water tank.Then, one of the highlights! When the trailer was winterized last fall, apparently “we” did not get one of the fittings screwed on right, so once the water turned on, we REALLY had running water – gushing out all over the kitchen floor from UNDER the sink.

Great.

Long story short, this is the view I had of my husband for most of our weekend alone. He spent two hours on Saturday in this position, mumbling, grunting, and more often than not cursing.

After fixing THIS leak, I talked him into heading across the street to soak and relax in the mineral pools. Tom and I have always had different tolerance levels for heat. I am the type that loves a hot bath, the hotter the better. If I don’t look like a cooked lobster when done, it wasn’t hot enough. Tom, on the other hand, can put his foot in tepid water, and leap back from the pain of it all.

He stepped into the pool and immediately moved into extreme slow-motion, oo-oo-oohing his way further in. Being the sensitive, loving wife that I am, I called him a big baby and told him to put a move on. Until I got in. Holy Hannah was it hot! Too hot for me, and that’s really saying something. “Never fear!” I said, “the other pool is much cooler. Let’s move over there.” So off we went, climbing into what I had remembered as being a much cooler pool. But guess what? It was just as hot as the other. We managed to spend an hour at the pools so that we could feel like we at least got our money’s worth, then we took our slip-skinned selves and went to dinner at a cute little place in town. A place that was sold out of the shrimp I was craving, as well as the scones that were supposed to come with the meal and which I was lusting after since seeing them on the menu. In the meantime, Tom got more and more quiet – turns out that the extreme heat of the pools made him sicker than a dog.

Back to the trailer we went. It didn’t take long for exhaustion to overtake us both, so we went to turn in for the night. But guess what ELSE we had forgotten? Tom’s sleeping pills, which he needs because of his screwed up neck and back. After much more cursing and thrashing around, he finally fell asleep at 3:00 a.m. Unfortunately, the bed in the trailer is like sleeping on a rock (not even a smooth one, but a knobby one that rolls you in unwelcome directions), so I finally got up and moved to the bunk one of the kids’ usually sleeps in. Just as I finally got to sleep, an apparent convoy of trains came chugging through the valley, laying on their horns for a minimum of 10 miles both before and after. Needless to say, it was a LOOONNNGGG night, possibly the longest I’ve ever had.

The next morning, we woke up later than planned, but still had time to go off to breakfast. EXCEPT that the water pump was now making weird sounds. Back under the sink he went for another hour. Water pump fixed, just in time for me to hurriedly wash my hair and then it was time to check out and move on! We ended up eating Easter breakfast (at 1:00 p.m.) at a truck stop on the freeway.

On the bright side, the way back was blissfully less windy, and we did stop to take pictures at Red Rock Pass, the site where ancient Lake Bonneville broke through and drained out onto the Snake River Plain. It wasn’t the dream weekend I was hoping for by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we’ll be able to look back and laugh about it years from now. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. And I managed to withhold my “I TOLD you so” until we were safely home!