What a weekend! Ugh.
After our very successful day trip to North Georgia on January 1st, I began looking for something we could do over MLK weekend. I asked around on FB and one friend suggested we use her family's cabin. No one, no one has ever offered anything like that before and I was immediately intrigued. It meant we could spend the night (budget VERY TIGHT right now due to Spring sports) and then we could see my cousin, Gigi, that I haven't seen in several years.
Handsome was not excited. He apparently wanted to travel south and do a day thing again but, since I was doing all the work/planning, I picked. When J got sick Friday, I wondered if we would have to cancel but he seemed chipper on Sunday morning so we packed and left around 1. On the way there, I laughed about how much stuff I had brought; I tend to over pack and it felt like a TON for a 24 hour vacation.
My Dad sent me a couple waterfalls that looked great. I wanted to do two Sunday afternoon but figured we didn't need to arrive at the cabin after dark. So we went to a double fall that was (mostly) on the way. Upon arrival at the falll, I looked at J's feet. He was wearing Crocs, not sneakers like I had instructed him to wear. Sure enough, within 15 minutes he had fallen on the uneven ground and blooded his nose.
We arrived at the cabin and it was cute, there was even a bear rug on the floor. Since no one uses the cabin regularly, they turn the water/power off each time they leave. Handsome began to work on getting things turned on. The cabin was freezing so I built a fire and started dinner for our starving children. It got dark quickly and Handsome was still working to get the water turned on. The cute little cabin was still COLD. (No central heat, two small wall units and the fireplace.) I had brought our little space heater but it was not able to fill the entire house with heat (and it was SO COLD).
Meanwhile, Handsome was talking to my friend/her Dad--still trying to get the water on. Finally, after like an hour, he comes in and says, "Biscuit, I think they are thinking we don't have HOT water. I need to make sure they know we have NO water." He was right. The owner of the cabin texted the caretaker and, sure enough, the pipes had burst a while back and they had not been repaired but capped off instead. The care taker had never informed the owners about it and it had never happened before.
We were stuck in a cabin on the side of a mountain with no water and poor heat. Handsome wanted to leave to go to my cousin's but I was nervous about driving back up and around in the dark. We were safe in the little cabin and we had bottled water. We set up a plan where the kids would go to the bathroom in a bucket and then one of us would dump it out. My friend had told me the cabin was like "Little House on the Prairie" but I never imagined no working toilet :)
I won't go into detail but it was a hard night. I was not feeling 100% and it was cold. Thank goodness I brought sleeping bags! Thank goodness I had the little heater and lots of water and the DVD player. I will never make fun of my over-preparedness again.
The hardest part for me was that Handsome was not happy. It was an awful situation to be in, the next morning we ran out of matches so there was no cheerful, warming fire. It was just cold in the little cabin--so cold I could see my breathe. We packed as quickly as we could, ate breakfast and headed to my cousin's house. On the way out, I actually got stuck in the van on the driveway and I had this awful 10 seconds or so where I thought I might need to be towed/pulled out. That was my lowest moment. But Handsome got out of the car and I was able to get up the driveway and avoid the ruts. Nobody was sorry to see the little cabin go; I left in the shirt I had worn the day before and my pajama bottoms so that I could shower at Gi's.
Everyone enjoyed seeing my cousin and her family. The plan for the afternoon was to go to an old growth forest but, after driving for 2.5 hours through the mountains, we couldn't find it and gave up. When we got stuck in traffic on the way home, it just seemed another example of why the weekend was the WORST TRIP EVER.
I know the boys pick up on our attitudes and I tried to portray it as a grand adventure. I didn't want them to see me upset or defeated. But, the fact is, at times it was scary and it was not fun. If just one of those things had gone wrong--either no water or no heat--it would have been fine. But the combo was just a deadly duo.
I don't think I have ever been so glad to see our little street. Some things go well, some things are a spectacular disaster. We will be talking about this one for years.
