Honeymoon

Daniel and I drove out to Arkansas to stay in a cabin for a week. Here is basically what it looked like. It was 

 not very big and as you can see was all one room.
When we got there we went to check in and pay. The owner is a lady probably in her fifties who gets her nails done and has to have her hair just so. She was running our card and said that it was declining our card and said that it had done it before when we had made our reservation. She tried to run it about 5 times. At first I thought the problem was that she was putting in 5/9/11 as the expiration date on the card (which was the days date). We even called the bank to see if it was going through. They told us it was the expiration date that was wrong. She said I have to have a month I can't just have the day ( Daniels card says 9/11 meaning September of 2011 not the 9th day of the month). We had to explain this to her and even resorted to telling her exactly what to type. They told us that it had gone through, but since the system had not approved it, the owner still said it was declining. Above her there was a list a people that were no longer allowed to make reservations there, either because they broke their

 reservation, excessive cleaning was needed after they left, bad credit card, or they were rude or very very rude. I thought it was in bad taste to have this list out for all customers to see. I was also worried we would be on it by the end of the week.
Anyway, she let us go to the cabin anyway in hopes of getting her credit card reader in the mail any day now.

 The tv that they had for us was a 13" so we decided to bring our own. We also brought our own sheets and quilt for the bed. We had called in asking about the equipment they had for the kitchen since it was a bring your own food we will provide the rest kind of deal. She said they had plates and cups and knives and forks and pots and pans and everything you needed for baking. We discovered this was true and we were rather impressed. However, as the week progressed we realized their were things we should have brought for the kitchen. Some of the pans they had were caked in grease, a pot was warped and their was no foil or napkins. We made do with what we had however and we were impressed with the food we could make.

Monday we had pizza for dinner

Tuesday we had french toast for breakfast

That night we made a bacon alfredo pasta which was delicious  and my favorite  of the whole trip

On Wednesday we had bagels for breakfast and a Hogi picnic for lunch.
This is our dinner, a pork tenderloin with a cornbread, apple, cranberry stuffing

Thursday we had omelets for breakfast and then went out to The Chopping Block in Mena, Arkansas

Friday was our last day so we had a bagel and loaded up

Although the cabin was covered in shade we were glad that there was air conditioning. We tried to go for a walk on their hiking trail listed on the map, this ended in sweating profusely and being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

The area also had horseback riding, canoeing, and a swimming pool. I think all but the pool cost extra.

As I mentioned before we had a picnic by the river. We looked on the map to find a nearby picnic area in the national forest. We found and place and headed in that direction. We saw a sign advertising a recreation outdoor center and decided to take our chances on the dirt road. The sign looked unmaintained on the other side and I didn't think it looked promising. The first time we made a major loop and ended up back on the road before turning onto the dirt road. The second time we decided to take a left onto a smaller dirt road.
When we reached a sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY NO SHOOTING NO CAMPING we decided this was a good a place as any. We walked down a trail and found the river.

 This was very nice and had no mosquitoes. We sat on slate and watched tiny fish swim as we ate our sandwiches.

 It was very pretty. The water was too cold to swim in but very nice just to dip our feet in.

The week went by and soon it was Friday. We had to return to the office to try to run our card again. This time was a little less complicated, but we still were there for 30 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong. Ironically, the owner works with Authorize.net to run her payments, this is where Maren works. I thought that was funny. Well she called them to try and do a verification over the phone to bypass any problems the system was having. The first thing the operator on the phone says is that the addresses aren't matching which is why there was a problem. When Daniel had made the reservation in February we were living in Provo, shortly after he switched all of his bills and cards to the Arlington address. We were happy that the problem was finally resolved. This only took about 5 seconds to figure out. Unfortunately, we then had to wait for her to chicken peck on the keyboard all of her information and passwords before she even got to running the card. It took her 3 times to enter in her password correctly since her long fingernails hindered this process. But finally we were done and could leave. 

We decided to stop at a local store. I thought it was just an old antique store, it turned out to be a museum of an old radio show. Kind of interesting. 

This is Daniel with the two men with the radio show in which the museum was established for Lum and Abner.