Posting three days in a row? What what?

Before I forget this, we were talking about having a Pie gathering at my house in October and I suppose we should narrow down the date so people can make plans, right?  Would Saturday the 12th or Saturday the 26th work better for those of you who are coming?  I've already got at least one person from out-of-town staying at my house and if my fake kids are still living with me then I can give up my bed, I'll sleep on the sofa or in my reading nook chair (assuming my ceiling isn't leaking water right above the chair come October) and then I could squeeze in one more but that's about it.  Unless you want to sleep on an air mattress.  So if you want to sleep on an air mattress and another person wants to fight with me over who gets the sofa and who gets the chair I can fit 2 more of you.  But I'm too fat to sleep on the air mattress - I can't get back up off the floor.  I'm starting to think this is not making any sense, so y'all just leave a comment letting me know which weekend sounds best, and if you are coming from out of town tell us if you need a free place to stay and I'm sure if I can't fit you in my house someone else around Atlanta might be able and willing to.

Speaking of people traveling to Atlanta, I always look forward to getting the heck out of here.  I just made my last car payment two weeks ago (WOOT!) so as of next month I will have an extra $400 per month.  Thank you, Lord.  The responsible thing to do would be to put that in savings to use for my next stupid house repair, but do you know what I really need?  A vacation.

So I went online recently and started looking for somewhere I could stay for a couple of days up in the mountains.  I'm much more a mountain girl than a beach girl.  I really like Blue Ridge, Ga. because it's only a couple of hours from Atlanta and it's a super cute little town with some great shopping and restaurants.  I've only been there once but I kind of fell in love with it. 

But the weekend there didn't start off so great.

My mom got married two years ago and was quitting her job (basically retiring), selling her house, getting married, and moving to Texas with her new husband all in the span of two months.  So she was a bit stressed to say the least.  I picked up the phone and said, "Mom, I want to take you somewhere for a last girls' weekend before you get married and move half-way across the country from me.  Let's go to the mountains for a long weekend."  This sounded like a great plan.

My aunt and a cousin were going to join us for one night, but Mom and I were going for 3 nights.

The first night we kind of thought we might die and no one would ever find us again.

The cabin rental place was running a special so if you rented for 2 nights you got the 3rd night free.  We decided to head up after work on Thursday so that we would have all day Friday and Saturday and we would come back home on Sunday.  Neither of us had ever been to Blue Ridge. 

I found a cabin online that looked wonderful, I sent the link to my Mom and she agreed so I rented it for us.  The listing emphasized MANY times that it was right in the middle of everything.  Right in the middle of Blue Ridge.  That many cabins claimed to be right in Blue Ridge but they were not, but that this cabin truthfully was right in the middle of town.  So we daydreamed for the few weeks until we went about how awesome our relaxing weekend in the cabin was going to be and how we would walk from our cabin to the town for coffee and breakfast each morning, shop for a while, and walk back.

Our weekend away came up and I got off work that Thursday, drove to my Mom's house north of Atlanta to pick her up, and off to Blue Ridge we went.  We had directions to the cabin rental office where we were to pick up the keys and a map to the cabin.  By the time we got to Blue Ridge, it was after 8:00 p.m.  We decided we would go to the cabin and drop off our stuff and then we would run back out to the grocery store and pick up coffee (my Mom cannot survive without it waiting for her when she wakes up) and a few snacks or something light for dinner, then we would go back to the cabin, put on our pajamas, maybe take a whirlpool bath, play games and snack.  We thought this because we thought our cabin was right in the middle of the town of Blue Ridge since that's what the online info told us. 

I was driving so my Mom was in possession of the map to the cabin and acted as the navigator.  We had no clue where downtown Blue Ridge was since we had never been there, and we certainly didn't know where it was in relation to the cabin rental office.  But we followed their directions.  And part of those directions said:  "Turn right on Aska Road and go until it ends.  Then turn right and look for County Road No. _____ on the left.  Sometimes the county road sign falls down so look for two blue reflectors on a tree."  And that's when I knew, we were going to have problems.

We made our way to Aska Road just fine and dandy and turned right. 

We drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And then we drove.

And then we drove some more.

And it was getting mighty dark by this point.

And then we drove and drove and drove some more.

This was a curvy, hilly, mountain road and we would pass a cabin every now and then.

We finally passed a restaurant.

And we drove and drove.

And we kept saying, "this can't be right.  Should we turn around?  We're following the directions.  But shouldn't the directions say this road is really, really, really long instead of just saying turn right and go to the end like it's only going to be a few blocks?"

Then my Mom yelled for me to pull off.  We sat on the side of the road debating whether or not we should go back and find a hotel somewhere.  I finally said, "Mom, we are following the directions.  Let's just keep going a little bit further and see what happens."  She wasn't happy about it but said okay.

A couple of miles further we finally reached the end.  I would say that angels sang, but they didn't.  Because it was about to get even worse.

By now it was flat out dark.  It was almost 9:00 and we were on a mountain so there were trees everywhere and no street lights.

We turned right and looked for the county road and it was just a couple of hundred feet up on the left.  I turned on it and pretty much immediately we were on a dirt/gravel one lane path going into the woods.  The directions said to go until the road forked, take the left fork where the sign said, "Entering National Forest." 

Y'all, they were not kidding.  We were in the forest alright.

Then we got good and scared out of our minds.  My Mom started saying over and over and over, "Please turn around.  Let's get out of here."  And I kept responding over and over and over, "Mom, we can't turn around.  There's a really high bank on the left side and a cliff on the right side of the car and I can't possibly turn around." 

I could not drive more than 10 mph because it was dark, scary, bumpy, and dirt/gravel.

We finally came upon two cabins - one on the left and one on the right side of the path. 

"Hooray!" we both exclaimed.  "We've finally found our cabin!" 

Wrong.  Neither one was our cabin.

We kept driving.

Then we came to a dead end y'all.  There was a huge tree in the middle of a circular area and as we drove around the tree there was a gate with a No Trespassing sign.

"OH JUST GREAT!" my mom yelled.  "All of this for nothing?  What are we going to do?"

I replied, "Apparently we're going to turn around and go all the way back and try to find a hotel."

As I turned around, my headlights shined on an opening in the trees off to the left and I decided to go for it.

And then the angels didn't exactly sing, but they made a bit of a whimper for us.  Because our adventurous night was still not quite over.

Our cabin was in a clearing once we drove through the opening.

I'm not going to lie.....we were both terrified to get out of the car.  It was pitch black and we were two women with no flashlights and no weapons in the middle of a forest.

I shined my headlights on the front door and ran as fast as my fat self could and got the door unlocked, turned on the front porch lights, and we grabbed our bags out of the car, ran inside and locked the door.

The cabin was super nice.  The master bedroom was upstairs and there were two more bedrooms downstairs.  We went downstairs to check everything out and that's when we discovered the door leading outside in the downstairs had not been locked before our arrival.  So we held hands and walked through the entire house checking to make sure no one was in there and I'm not sure either one of us breathed the entire time.

Mom said, "we are not sleeping on separate floors no matter what you say."  So we decided to share the master bedroom.

Then we came to the realization that it was 9:15 and we were starving since we had not stopped for dinner.  I found the number of the restaurant we had passed and called them.

"We closed at 9:00," they told me.  I asked if there were any other restaurants nearby and they told me there were not.

Luckily my Mom had thrown some microwave popcorn and a bottle of red wine in her bag and that became our very gourmet dinner.

The next morning around 7:00 a.m. my Mom starts whispering, "are you awake?"

I grumbled and she said, "get up, put on your clothes, do not take a shower, I'll give you enough time to brush your teeth, but I NEED COFFEE.  NOW."

We decided to clock the miles as we found downtown Blue Ridge.  Y'all.

Our cabin was FOUR MILES into the depth of the forest on that one lane gravel/dirt path.

Then we drove FIFTEEN MILES down curvy, hilly, mountainous Aska Road. 

Our cabin was 45 minutes from downtown Blue Ridge.  And yet online they said many times they were right in the middle of everything.  Liars!

Here is a photo of the county road going into the forest where our cabin was and this is pretty close to the main road and not way deep in the woods.  Does this look like it's right in the middle of everything to y'all?  And imagine not knowing where in Sam Hill you are going and driving through this when it's pitch black at night.  I was waiting for Jason from Friday the 13th to jump out from behind every single one of those trees.

On Friday afternoon my aunt and cousin drove up from Atlanta to join us.  We warned them what the deal was.  And we drove them to the cabin while it was still daylight.  And they kept asking, "Are y'all sure you're going to the right way?  There can't possibly be rental cabins back in here, can there?"

Did I mention yet that there was absolutely no water pressure in the cabin and none of us could take a bath or shower all weekend?  I know.  Gross.  My cousin wanted to take a bubble bath in the whirlpool tub and we said, "okay.  Good luck with that."  She ran the water as full blast as it would go for over 30 minutes and there was maybe an inch of water in the tub and the tip of her toes could have taken a bubble bath.  Disappointed is what she was.

I emailed Mom earlier today and told her the next time she comes to Atlanta we need to take a couple of days and go to the mountains.  But I've found a place that I know is not in Friday the 13th territory.

THE END.