As I mentioned in my last post, we spent the early part of last week on a mini-vacation for our anniversary. Well, it wasn't really our anniversary, but we pretended that it was. This August will mark 25 years of marriage for us, but because that is back-to-school time, we can never get away in August. So we took advantage of Bethany being gone to slip off to Eureka Springs for a few days.
For those of you not fortunate enough to be from Arkansas, Eureka Springs is a Victorian village in northwest Arkansas. The entire city is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has a really neat downtown area, perfect for walking and window shopping. It's a popular honeymoon destination, and is where we spent our honeymoon twenty-five years ago. Here are a couple of pics, so you can get the flavor of the area.
The population of the town is actually just barely over 2,000 people, but, of course, in the summertime, it is full of newlyweds and tourists. It is also the location of the Great Passion Play, which is well worth seeing.
My husband is always interested in the history of places like this, so we took a narrated trolley tour of the city. It was fun and informative, but our tour guide left a little to be desired. I don't know...maybe it was her first day on the job. She seemed a little flustered, repeating the same things over and over, and had apparently never heard of subject-verb agreement. By the end of the tour, we and the people sitting behind us were all giggling ... don't worry, she couldn't see us!
We drove by the little cabin we spent our honeymoon in, and it's still there. It actually looks like it is a private residence now. I would never have been able to find it in a million years, but my husband is one of those people who once he's been somewhere once, he can always find his way back. I, ahem, am not one of those people.
This time, we stayed in a nice little cottage on Lake Lucerne. We were very pleased with the cleanliness and the quality of the accommodations, and would definitely go there again. You can check them out here, if you think you'd like to make a trip to the area. Here are a couple of pictures...
It was a beautiful, very peaceful place.
We did some fishing off our little dock. Guess who caught the most? And the biggest?
We spent a lot of time reading, fishing, walking, shopping ... oh, and eating! It was fun trying out several new places, all recommended by my gourmet friend, Laurie. We especially enjoyed dessert at Local Flavor ... If you ever go there, try the Baked Fudge and the Chocolate Decadence. They were amazing!
We also spent a lot of time just talking about our experiences over the last several years. I sure am glad we didn't know when we were in Eureka Springs on our honeymoon what was in store for our family in the future. Oh, there have been many, many good things ... too many to even begin to enumerate. But, I'm not going to lie, watching your firstborn child suffer through cancer and die is a difficult test for any marriage. I'm so grateful that God has given us the grace to withstand it.
We spent some time wondering out loud what the next twenty-five years might hold. That's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around. The first twenty-five (actually just the last four or so) held such an unexpected and unwelcome string of events ... I prefer to live day by day, and not spend too much time peering into the future. I am content to just walk beside my Savior ... not ahead of Him ... and trust Him for strength for each day. And right there, on the other side of me, my faithful husband, always there to hold my hand along the way!
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