Dawn as most of you know was a strong, intelligent, resourceful woman! At least that was most of the time. I have decided that to tell about dawn would not be a complete story unless you see her other side, the goofy, naive, dumb side too, the parts that i grew to like in someways more than her strength’s, because i/we got some great laughs from them.
Now keep in mind this is one of those stories that, at the time, was no where near funny. But the hard feelings fade as with most other experiences in life, and us as humans somehow remember the funny, and even the painful as funny, the most. It started out as one of our average brilliant ideas, her always looking to broaden her boys horizons, me a camping trip. When Stephen was about 4 or 5 i took him with me on a “family” trip to the mountains, Corey was too young to go. He talked about that trip for years, the “cab-nin” he stayed in, etc. Dawn wanted him to experience it again, and Corey to have that great time Stephen did.
I in my Explorer, Dawn in her little pickup, neither of which was mechanically sound enough to make the trip alone, but together we might make it. We loaded up and left. Now i will tell you that i made some really bad assumptions. Dawn lived in Connecticut at some time during her life. This was April, the weather here ( South Louisiana) was moderate, we were driving 8-9 hours north, to the mountains. The most beautiful campground you can imagine. Top of a mountain, the campground ringed the ridges around a canyon, cut by a stream, down to the valley below. The trails – from around the canyon to – down IN the canyon, with two fantastic waterfalls. Ten minutes south of Chattanooga Tenn. Dawn did the research on the other sights to see, if you know the area you know already, when and if we got bored. The trip was mostly open ended, no firm return date, at least as long as we didn’t run out of money. We had lots of money with us, maybe $150 or more.
My truck (packed to the gills with essentials) made it as far as Picayune Mississippi. Should we turn back, my transmission slipping (that started in dawns driveway), try to make it or….HEY… why don’t we rent a truck. OK, trip back on. So we rented a Kia, the smallest one they make, and the only rent-able anything for 100 miles. Dammit, we (by we i mean Dawn) were by now determined to make the trip. I loaded everything, by order of importance, into the car. We did leave a few things behind. This will be important later, provided i finish this story. If only dawn had more room in the back of her truck. You should be asking yourself by now, why did four people, two of them a couple of 30 lb boys need so much capacity. Because, Dawn didn’t have the heart to leave Mocha, their new puppy dog home. I, at this time, hadn’t grown nearly as fond of him as i am now. His cage, the smallest one we could find on short notice (we very carefully planed this trip a day earlier), took up most of the bed area. It had Ringling, something, something, something, written on the side, with a hole in the front that said, “trunk hole”. We rearranged her truck to accommodate some of the stuff in my truck. We put Mocha on top of every thing else like Jethro did for Granny for the trip to cal-i-for-ni-ay.
We stopped every 15 minutes for someone to pee and a couple number two’s, mostly Mocha, fear I’m thinking. The actual trip at this point was very normal, like National Lampoon normal.
OK, you are right, this is getting long. This was the easy, least stressful part of the trip. Check back later for the next part, there will be a lot of these = $*&$#%^*&!@#$%^^**$%~ and a lot of :-)’s in the next part. To be continued…………………
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