Anniversary Adventure - Part 1

If you’ve seen the movie National Lampoon Vacation you’ll have an idea of how our trip began.   With the perspective of a couple of days I can now call it an adventure, but I wasn’t in too forgiving a mood Thursday.  After driving most of Wednesday night for the Surprise, I had planned to pack for the 6 day trip on Wednesday morning before we left.   But first I had to blog about the Surprise since I was still enjoying the “after Surprise glow” the following morning. 

As soon as I hit “save” and prepared for a final read-through, I heard a loud, thunderous boom and immediately the power went out.  Thank God I’m in the habit of saving while I write.  It had started to rain, for which we were very thankful – heck, I’ve been praying for rain for weeks now.   The ending entry in my prayer journal for Wednesday was “we’ll drive in it all the way, Lord, just let it rain, rain, rain!!”   God certainly seemed to enjoy answering that prayer on Thursday.  

As the rain’s intensity increased it began blowing sideways.  I realized all the things I still had on the upstairs back porch from Monday’s new carpet install were going to get soaked.  Fragile and photo items were all in sealed plastic, but the furniture was just draped in sheets (it looked pretty Jed Clampitt out there).   Since there was no light in the house I opened the doors and started hauling things in – so much for my plan to bring things in a little at a time, rearranging and organizing as I went. 

When the power went out around 8:00 a.m. that morning, my husband had taken the Duke (of the famous Duke Disaster, see Blog in January) out for a walk before we left.  They came back soaking wet, and reported that the power was out for blocks around – a transformer had gone out.  It was going to be a while before we had power.  We busted out the flashlights and began packing.  I had gathered all the clothes already, it was just a matter of arranging them in suitcases.   Apparently this would be a trip I would not embark on with my hair done or any makeup – I needed light to make that happen.  I hated to start an anniversary trip looking like Ellie Mae on a bad hair day but I had no choice.

Suddenly the lights came on and fans roared back to life.  Now I could get ready.  I went to the bathroom to plug in the flat iron and pulled out the putty knife for my makeup.  Then the power went off.  Back to the bedroom to pack by flashlights.   The next time the power brought the lights on I raced to the bathroom – the flat iron got a good 30 seconds of electricity, almost enough to do 2 sections of hair.  Lovely.  To heck with that, just finishing packing and go.   I brought a packed bag downstairs and found my husband in the kitchen, packing what looked like leftovers into a very small cooler.   When I asked what it was for he calmly stated that we would just have a snack lunch on the road and then eat out when we got to South Padre.  Not exactly my idea of lunch on the first day of our anniversary trip with a 6 hour drive ahead of us. 

As we pulled out of the driveway I had quite the attitude about the lunch situation.  I figured we’d at least stop and get something on the way, but nooooo, his idea was for me to handle slimy lunch meat, processed cheese slices and oh by the way here is a bell pepper and pocket knife could you slice that up too?   I didn’t know I was going to have to ‘cook’ on this trip.  Too bad I hadn’t taken time to read my devotional that morning.  When I read it later it spoke directly to my crappy, selfish attitude:  don’t let petty grievances occupy emotional space, turn your energy to the challenges.  Basically, ‘get over yourself’.  Which I was able to do after a couple of hours of pouting and acting childish, while my husband wisely remained silent, knowing there would be calm after the brief storm.  Good man.

It rained hard, cats and dogs and elephants and rhinoceroses hard, the entire 6 ½ hour drive.  Like I said, God was truly enjoying bring answer to all the prayers for rain.  Thankfully I didn’t have to drive, it’s so grueling to drive in rain that hard, looking for your exit in lunch hour traffic in a large city, then hoping you don’t miss your next one after 60 miles of gripping the steering wheel to avoid hydroplaning.  It worked for me though, I had a captive audience so I read out loud, asked questions, and in general used up a lot of my words for that day.   And we had lunchmeat-cheese-bell pepper roll ups to sustain us :)

At one point I had to stop for a restroom break, regardless of the pelting rain.  We found one truck stop in Kingsville that still had power, and after taking the 4 steps to the entrance I was soaked.  It was a good thing after all that I hadn’t spent time on hair or makeup, it would have been totally wasted.  Back on the road for the last couple of hours.  We gassed up in Port Isabel and I agreed to drive the last little bit of the trip.  Which involved a long causeway bridge, invoking my fear of driving over long bridges.  The experience was especially nerve racking given the high winds, driving rain, and other drivers who felt no need to go slow.

The nav system took us right to the front door of the rented condo, which we had never seen.  The outside looked nice, but with the day we’d had who knew what awaited us inside.   We had a good deal on the price, so I envisioned scratchy starched sheets, tiny kitchen table with matching metal chairs, and broken plumbing.  Sure hope they at least had a coffee pot. 

As we started unpacking the car and carrying bags up the stairs, it began to rain harder.