A few months back, I had this really fantastic idea. As you may know John and I have spent a little over a small fortune to get our house out of the shambles that it is in (which it’s not out yet, but getting there), and another large fortune on buying Pottery Barn items because one unnamed mom to be is obsessed and can’t stop. So when it came time to decide where to honeymoon, well we were limited by the money factor. That meant no cruises, no happiest place on earth, and no sin city. Now enters my fantastic idea. Why not go camping? At the time it was brilliant. The pre-pregnancy me loved to camp, and at the time, my five month pregnant body was digging the idea too. So I made reservations to spend three nights in beautiful Flaming Gorge Utah. Damn my five month body for not anticipating the pain and uncomfortable state of my seven month body!
Flaming Gorge is a 3+ hour drive from our house. So my very sore six month pregnant body (but not as sore as 7 month), had an amazing idea. I reserved a hotel in Park City for our wedding night. But not just any hotel, a really really nice hotel, with room service, and down filled pillows. It was a mistake. I know you are asking yourself “but how could breakfast served right to your room be a mistakeâ€, trust me it was. Park city was so much fun, and the hotel was so nice, that it made camping look like spending the weekend watching one of those ungodly Jenny Jones “My out of control teen needs to go to boot camp” episodes, over and over and over (You know, the ones where some big guy comes out screaming at some white trash 13 year olds who think it’s fun to sell their bodies. But really it’s all a lie.). Needless to say seven month pregnant me, who was not excited to go in the first place, was now panicked over camping.
The drive was nice. I got a little car sick once we reached Duchesne (yep, I’ve Done Shane), probably because I had eaten a whole bag of licorice, and no actual food. Duchesne is a waste land surrounded by gorgeous mountains. There is no Wendy’s, no McDonalds (GASP!), in fact the only restaurant we could find was some kind of run down Mom and Pop diner. Despite the fact that I eat everything, I am still picky. So no ghetto diner was going to get my business. We ended up having to drive to Roosevelt, where we found an Arby’s. Since enjoying that delicious roast beef sandwich, I can’t stop needing another; I crave it day and night.
Night one: We arrived in Flaming Gorge around 7pm. The next 3 hours were spent putting up our new tent. The thing was huge; I think it slept eight or twenty, or something. A bigger task then the tent was blowing up our air mattress. The air mattress came with a pump, a battery operated pump that only had enough juice to blow up half of the mattress. My bighearted new husband blew up that son of a bitch with the air from his lungs, all so I could be comfortable. In the process he almost passed out and was turning blue, what a sacrifice.
The first night was fine. I slept really well on my cushy air mattress, oblivious to squirrels and other creatures. We spent the day lying around. That was after a trip to the convenient store for candy, and a shower (okay so we had some luxuries, but no Air Conditioning). It was pretty cool all day because of the overcast. During one of my naps it got hot and I felt like I was suffocating. So John and I decided to go soak up some of the beauty of Flaming Gorge and do some swimming. I didn’t actually swim; I walked and almost passed out because I am out of shape. John did some cliff jumping, here are the before and after shots. It started to rain right after so we went back and took yet another nap.
Night two: It started out nice. I fell asleep even though I had had 3 naps that day. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of some sort of creature rattling our tent. I tried to ignore it, but I am a wimp, and I was scared. So I wake up John. He was mildly annoyed, but checks out the situation. After he is sure nothing is getting in the tent, we go back to bed. Well he goes back to bed; I stay awake to make sure nothing eats me. About 10 minutes later the creature comes back and is again rattling the tent. To add to this, I had to pee so badly. But I was too scared to get out of the tent? So of course I wake up John again. He is a bit more annoyed, this time he shakes the tent. Of course the damn thing came back again. John finally handed me the flashlight and told me to stop bugging him. I was able to fall asleep eventually. I woke up later that morning having to pee so bad that if I moved it would leak out.
Day 3: We decided to get off our asses and do something. So we drove the 50 miles to Vernal Utah, home of Dinosaur land. John has a non sexual crush on Dinosaurs, so this was the best day of his life. I was happy because the museum was air conditioned. Actually it was a lot of fun. Did you know that Utah is the number one place to find dinosaur bones? Who knew?
After the museum John found out that they have a Dinosaur National Park just 20 minutes away. He was practically drooling, so of course we went. It was really neat. They shuttled us up to a quarry, where they showed us all finds of fossils. John spent about 100 bucks in the gift shop on nerdy maps of evolution or something like that.
When we got back John decided that he wanted to do some more cliff divining. I thought swimming would be fun. So we headed down to the water. John showed up some teenagers by jumping off some crazy high cliffs. I heard one of these teens tell his friend, “If the old guy can do it, then we canâ€. When did we get old? John is 25! I tried swimming. The water was so cold that I started to have contractions, isn’t that weird? So we had to cut it short and head back to the campsite.
Night 3: Tonight John was the one doing the panicking. We fell asleep during a wind storm. All of a sudden I wake up to John whispering “I think there is a bat in the tentâ€. Oh my god, I couldn’t even move. I just kept thinking, “is it on me? did it suck my blood already?” John got the flashlight and looked around, the bat hadn’t gotten in the thank god. But he was right outside the tent. You could hear him making plans to bust in. I think he had friends too. Well after John was satisfied that he couldn’t get in, he went back to bed. But not me, I could still hear that little bastard outside the tent. There was no way in hell I was going back to sleep. So I spent the entire night in and out of consciousness.
So that was our honeymoon. I mean there were more details. But I am sure this is boring enough as it is. Except for the bat part, that was pretty exciting eh? One thing i did find out while on “vacation”, was that Gavin does not sleep through the night like I thought. In fact, he stays up all night rolling around. I’m in for some fun come October!
