Cabin Fever

I'm going to share a little story that happened back in the Olden Days, long before kids or even marriage, for that matter. It was not long after my husband and I had started dating. I think I may have met his parents already but not anyone else in his family. We were just kids having a good time dating.

Hubby's parents own a cabin in the north Cascades. He thought it would be nice for us to join them at this cabin for a weekend. It's on a river where we can fish and of course, being in the mountains, there are lots of hikes to do. And it was going to be a sweet little get away for my birthday. The first time we ever celebrated my birthday together.

At that time we both owned mini-pickup trucks. Mine was a Dodge D-50, my steady eddy never-let-me-down pick up. I loved her! His was a Chevy Luv. I didn't know much about his truck, but my little black & gold girl was much prettier. We discussed who's truck we should drive to the cabin and I really thought it should be mine. But he insisted we should take his. We were leaving later in the day and would be arriving at the cabin after dark. The roads up there don't have much traffic and if something should happen to us, or the truck, we'd have a CB radio to call for help.

Remember those? CB radios? I think truckers still use them. There was a time in the 70's & 80's that even normal people thought they were fun to have in your car or truck. Along with lifters, radar detectors and the biggest woofers you can fit in. But I digress...

So, the weekend comes and after work we head out of town and up to the cabin. It takes a couple hours to get there, about half of it freeway driving and the second half on Hwy 2. Hwy 2 is one lane of travel in each direction and the further east you go, the smaller the infrequent towns get. The climb into the mountains is very rural.

Once we have left the freeway behind us and travel about 45 minutes or so east into the mountains, the truck begins to lose power. The little Chevy Luv truck. The little blue truck with the CB radio. Whew, who knew? We're rolling onto the shoulder of the road, coming to a stop, but at least we have a CB radio, right?? Thank goodness!!

Wrong.

I ask the boy, who I don't realize will become my husband some time in the future, to use the CB radio and call for help. And do you know what he said?

"It won't help. We are too far away for anyone to hear us."

I.Kid.You.Not.

So here we are sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 10:00pm or later in pitch darkness. Did I mention dark? The kind of dark you have when there are no towns around shining their street lights collectively up into the sky to reflect down from the clouds. The kind of dark that won't even let you see your hand in front of your face. That kind of dark.

One or two cars came by over a period of time, but they didn't stop. I am not sure they even slowed down. I thought we would certainly be sitting there still when morning came. Eventually, a car came zipping by us, slowed, turned around and came back. Finally, an Angel! We were still a good 10 miles from the gate to the park where the cabin is and our good Samaritan was very close to being out of gas. It probably doesn't take much to figure out that in that remote place there are no all night gas stations. We gave the driver some money for gas praying that alone would coax his car along. He told us why no one would stop to help us. It seems it was just a week or so earlier that one of the country people living in that area had picked up a hitchhiker and got mugged. The odds of being helped were against us, save for this kind stranger. I am grateful to him to this day!

So ten miles later we were dropped at the gate to the park. From that gate it's about a mile to the cabin. A long, middle of the night, cold, can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face, walk. When we arrive at the cabin his parents seem a little surprised to see us. Hm, that's odd, I thought they were expecting us! Even odder, there are other people there I don't recognize: my boyfriend's sister, her husband and baby, and my boyfriend's brother. What a lot of people!! And what are all those things that look like **birthday presents**??!!??

Oh.my.heck!!

Future hubby has planned a surprise party for me. And the party guests have been waiting for much much longer than they had anticipated!

And they were still waiting for him to call on the CB and let them know we were about to arrive. Yes, that CB! If it wasn't for that one little detail in their plan, we would have been in my truck and arrived on time!

We had a great weekend. When his entire family showed up to showered me with birthday presents before they'd even met me.... well I guess I should have known how serious he was feeling about me.