Honeymoon wrap-up

The drive to Petit Jean State Park was beautiful.  Alex had warned me (Arthur- it's been a while since I have contributed a post) that we would be driving on mountain roads and I was anticipating drop offs much worse than we actually saw—quite a relief to a nervous driver such as myself.  The area around Petit Jean is sparsely populated and to our surprise there really wasn’t an accessible place to eat.  Fortunately, my ever prepared Alex had enough packed to feed us and a small battalion.  And while I would have rather not have dined on such gourmet items as peanut butter and banana sandwiches (editor's note from Alex: when asked about the worst part of the trip this is what he listed), it was good to have our bellies full.

  After lunch we started out hiking the area in Petit Jean.  This being our last day we knew there was no reason to try to save ourselves for future excursions.  And thus we went all out.  Starting at the Mather Lodge (named after the gentleman who first proposed making this area a park) we went down the roughest trail we had yet encountered.  This trail took us through some of the most picturesque scenery of the trip, including a waterfall, a scenic river crossing, and extraordinary rock formations.  There were areas where trees was all the eye could see, so thick that no one could ever deviate from the trail, almost claustrophobic. 

One of the more memorable stories to come out of that hike was our adventure at Bear Cave (there were no bears or caves that we saw).  It was a group of rock outcroppings forming very narrow gorge-like passages.  Sound carries differently in such formations.  That combined with the thought of bears tucked in our minds was enough to make the sudden flight of a couple pigeons quite a startling event.  Combine with the three snakes I almost stepped on throughout the time on our honeymoon, I spent a good portion of the time quite kerfuffle. But the entire hike was extremely enjoyable. 

When we return we were exhausted.  Alex went to check us in at the lodge for the evening and I grabbed the bags from the car.  The walk from the parking lot to our room seemed like a long way after 9 miles of hiking.  After showering we headed to dinner in the lodge dining room overlooking the canyon to celebrate our 10 month anniversary.  I don’t know what was better-  the view while eating, the food, or the company. After getting back, me with a noticeable limp, we were once again ready for a night of being slugs.  This was made even better by the fact that the Spurs were on TV and that my wife didn’t have a strong preference for another program.  (Alex did make me go outside to watch the sunset and enjoy a little more nature.)

After a refreshing sleep and no longer limping we made it bake to the dining room for breakfast before hitting the road home.  As you can imagine the day was mostly uneventful, save for dinner with a good college friend whose hometown we passed through.  Probably the greatest point of conflict during the entire trip was happened getting to the restaurant to meet my friend.  With just an address and not enough information on the map I pulled out my “cursed talking black box” as Alex would call it though, you dear reader, may know it as a GPS device.  Ceding control of her location to a non-sentient entity is something Alex is just not comfortable with.  I do not share this need for control since I hardly never know where I am anyway.  Frankly, I have a difficult time understanding Alex’s animosity.  Soon we were on the road again so Alex could pull out her blessed road maps and put the blasted thing back in the dark console where it belong.

In closing our honeymoon consisted of 16 hours’ worth of hiking covering an approximate distance of 35 miles and 1 hour of kayaking.  The weather was completely cooperative and my wife as always was completely stunning.