The following portrait on the right will forever be very dear to Davina…Jake has been in Afghanistan for the past year.  We weren’t expecting him home until the end of the month but he came in for this weekend to surprise Davina on her birthday.  The BEST birthday gift she received was the return of their dad. 

I was confident that our hosts for the week would set our minds at ease; I’d spoken on the phone with the resort manager, Betty, to set up our reservation and she sounded friendly.  At the time, she’d mentioned something about not being at the resort office when we arrived, and I had called her on the way down to let her know our ETA.  Sorry, she said, no one would be there to meet us but we were in cabin #5, which was unlocked for our convenience, and her husband, Bob, would check in on us later.

When we pulled off the highway onto a gravel road and entered the densely-wooded resort grounds, it was true, no one was there.  No one in the resort office/tackle room, no one in the murky swimming pool, and it appeared that no one occupied the 5 other cabins that comprised the resort.  We easily found cabin #5 and with our dog Louis in tow, we entered.

My standards for lodging are somewhat arbitrary.  I don’t care so much about the set up or accommodations, but I tend to have bad experiences with bed linens, and so I had come prepared, with a set of our own queen-size sheets.  With that peace of mind ready in my suitcase, I wouldn’t have cared if there was mold in the refrigerator and dead flies on the kitchen table.  But, there wasn’t.  The cabin was quaint and tidy (and neat and charming), and thank God, it had satellite TV.

We’d arrived that day in the 95-degree afternoon heat and although the resort pool looked murky, it still looked swimmable. This trip was my last chance for a summer tan, so I’d brought my Hawaiian Tropic SPF 4 for laying out.  We decided to brave the waters, partly in effort to get out and see if there were other human beings around.  To our surprise, there were.  A family of approximately 4 people and 2 dogs scurried between pickup and porch two cabins down from ours.  Ironically, they did not acknowledge us, even though we walked 10 feet from them.  The fact that they didn’t want to socialize didn’t bother Justin any, but I wouldn’t have minded finding out where they were from.  Once inside the pool gates, I became less intent on laying out and more focused on casually monitoring the cabin #3 occupants.  They eventually drove off in their pickup, leaving us alone again.

Dinner time approached and I’d gathered from the chamber of commerce website that there was more than the kwik shop to find something to eat, but I was scared to ask where.  We’d found out from a friend who knows the area that the marina was a safe bet.  We were headed out of the resort and to the marina restaurant when another pickup met us in the road.   We took a lucky guess about the driver.

“Ya’ll cabin #5?” Bob, resort co-manager and Betty’s husband, laughed a little too hard at his own comment.  We stated we were headed to get some dinner, as though to give an explanation for why we were leaving before they’d even met us.

“Oh yeah?” Bob said. “I got a restaurant.”  A moment of awkward silence followed, then “but it’s not open right now.”

He explained that Betty had gotten heatstroke that day and with her being the only cook/hostess/waitress, they had to shut it down.  But, some friends had a restaurant in town.  When he described where to find it, I realized it was the same dilapidated cabin with the screened porch we had passed on our way through town.  Bob insisted it was good food, and cheaper than the marina.  By this time, the conversation had run a little long, so we said we’d go, if only to appease Bob.

The restaurant sat at the end of a row of vacant cabins, part of a resort whose owners either had given up completely on the curb-appeal aspect of the hospitality business, or just weren’t making a go of it anymore.  This was another familiar scene in town: little abandoned motels and cabins with sketchy exteriors and overgrown landscaping.  The next night we saw a police car parked in front of one, the officer nowhere in sight.

Anyhow, we walked inside the restaurant and there were three people sitting at the nearest table, each reading a book.  The screened-porch dining room was no bigger than my living room.  I could feel Justin bristle at the thought of having to visit with strangers the entire meal.  The woman at the table jumped up and told us to sit anywhere and she’d be right with us, so we guessed she was the waitress.  Once we’d ordered our food, the two men at the table, cook 1 and cook 2, went back into the cabin area of the restaurant to fix our dinner.  Meanwhile, we admired the lattice covering every surface of the room and wondered if the AC unit would make it through our meal.  We didn’t have to wonder long since our food, deep-fried catfish, shrimp, and fries, came out within the next five minutes.

Our dinner conversation was slightly dull as we didn’t want too much to be overheard by the waitress and cooks, who had gone back to reading at the far table.  Recently our topics kept circling back to Justin’s 10-year high school class reunion that we would be attending if and when we made it back home.  It took a moment for the waitress to realize we were done eating and give us our check, possibly to seem as though she was not listening to our dialogue.

We paid, leaving a hefty tip as we were the only customers who’d come through in half an hour, then we headed back to the resort.  Bob had said he would meet up with us once we got back from dinner to tell us all the things we would need to know during our stay.  When we pulled up to the cabin, we found it odd that Bob was already there, walking the perimeter of the porch with a can in hand.  As we parked and got out, it became clear that he wanted to first discuss wasp control at the cabin.   It was also important, he said, that every day we empty the bucket underneath the AC unit.

We asked him if there were a lot of other people staying at the resort.  Bob said it was only the two of us and the family we’d seen earlier (Bob and Betty lived in a house near our cabin; I didn’t know whether to be grateful or cautious of this fact).  The other family was from Florida and according to Bob they were “real religious…Lutherans, or something.”  They had a boat they brought with them, and we asked ourselves why, Lutheran or otherwise, they would come to the Ozarks from Florida to use their boat.

Before he headed back to his house for the night, we asked Bob how to get to the canoe outfitter we’d heard of for a float trip the next day.  He said he would get their phone number for us, gave us directions and told us he thought we’d enjoy ourselves.

That night we slept surprisingly soundly; we had many of the comforts of home (our own sheets, our favorite late night shows, our Louis) and the forested seclusion of the resort was a lot like our actual home.  I think comfort came in the morning and in the realization it was unnecessary to fear harm by the locals when we’d often had similar concerns regarding our neighbors at home.  We felt relaxed for the first time on our vacation.

After I’d made and drank my own coffee that morning (bliss), we followed Bob’s directions to the river; it was a good thing we’d left early (the first occurrence in our married life) because there was a fair 20-mile discrepancy in his estimate.  It rained the entire four hours we spent on the river, but canoeing is probably one of the most fun things we’ve ever done together and we can’t wait to do it again.

Our vacation continued for the next couple of days, and ended with us being home in time to attend the reunion.  I admit, I am ending this vacation tale abruptly, and many parts aren’t included in this story.  For as much credit as I get for recalling events using the written word, many of the stories are best when told by my husband, in person.  I cannot find a way on paper to re-create the scream of a deranged teenager in a go-kart, the animated frustration of driving down winding Ozark highways, or even the idiosyncrasies that made “Bob” our new favorite character voice.  Despite his reserved nature, Justin tells our vacation story a hundred times better than me; it’s a good thing he had something to talk about at his reunion.