Tales of a Honeymoon

Betty Beguiles is hosting a Honeymooon Tale Link-Up! Check out her site for more stories.

This blog post is about our honeymoon…there will be talk of romance and intimacy, but of course, no details, (duh!). I don’t intend to scandalize with what I have written but wanted to share the story of our honeymoon.

Joshua and I were married seven years ago this month, so the memories of our honeymoon have been floating around in my mind quite a bit this past week.

We did not have a lot of money when we were married but wanted to go on a honeymoon somewhere. I tossed out Tabasco country, but Joshua shot me down saying it would be too hot. (He was right, October in the deep south is still shorts and tee-shirt weather). We ended up deciding on  a cabin up in the Arrowhead of Minnesota, outside of a town called Ely and it was a great decision.

Our reception was purposely planned on being short (only about three hours), as we did not want to be out to late and really, we were just married, we had things we wanted to do. Our original plan was to leave the reception and drive to Chicago and spend the night at a hotel there, go to the Cathedral for Mass the next morning then head up to Ely. We ended up scratching the Chicago part and spent the first night as husband and wife at our house.

This was really wonderful, actually. We arrived home from the reception, me in my dress and Joshua in his tux. Our neighbors, smiled at us and waved. Joshua attempted to carry me over the threshold, but my dress made it very cumbersome, so it wasn’t very pretty.  We then prayed a rosary together, in our wedding finery. The rest of the night was just wonderful, being married and not having to have Joshua leave and being able to fall asleep next to him seemed like heaven.

The next morning we went to early Mass (730) and planned on leaving right after to drive up to Ely.  We ended up being stopped by quite a few people after Mass to congratulate us and by Father to tell us to get our coffee table (a gift from a dear friend, Ben, who came from Ohio to MC the Mass) out of the sacristy. So with a bit of a late start and a swing by the house to drop it off, we headed up to Ely.

We stopped for lunch/dinner at a burger king (romantic I know) somewhere in central Wisconsin, got it to go and headed on our way, again. The drive seemed to take a lot longer than we had planned and we arrived at the cabin quite late, after mid-night if I recall correctly. We saw snow flakes while driving! Snow, in early October!

The next morning we woke up to a nice quarter inch dusting of snow and I had only packed sandals and tennis shoes…and since we were heading out to Mass, the sandals were the option, so there you go, sandals in snow. Since it was the Feast of St. Francis, it seemed fitting. We went to Mass then to breakfast at a small cafe in Ely, then to the grocery store to stock the cabin.

Then it happened. Joshua was starting to feel pretty yucky. We suspected food poisoning and well, with the timing, we are pretty sure it was from the BK. So, Joshua spent the rest of the day on the couch and I read.

The next day, my period started.

We attended Mass each day that week. On the day that Mass was at the mission parish close to an hour away, we planned to go hiking and had a good time in the woods, just walking around. I knew then that when we had kids, Joshua would be the one leading the pack in doing dangerous things, like oh, climbing the rocks overlooking Lake Superior.

The day we went hiking, we also ate at a little mom and pop roadside restaurant where we were the youngest people by far. That was also that day that I convinced Joshua to drive to Thunder Bay, Ontario. (When you grew up metro-Detroit and watched Channel 4 news, Chuck Gadica always told the temp in Thunder Bay, and it was always much colder there.) So off to Thunder Bay we drove. These were the carefree days, before a passport was needed to get in to Canada, just your drivers license got you over the border.  Sadly the customs agent or border patrol did not tell us about the paper mill between the border and Thunder Bay. Oh, wow, they aren’t pretty smelling things, I’ll tell you that.

Thunder Bay is, well, let’s just say, I don’t get to make spur of the moment, on the road, hey let’s look at that decisions in our family because, well Thunder Bay didn’t have much going on. I am a lover of Canada, so I enjoyed just being in Canada, but really, aside from the waterfront park, not much to do, that we knew of.

We tried canoing the next day but it was cold and I am not a very good canoe-er. Well, to be honest, that’s the story we tell, but really, I was super-duper, crampy. (sorry my one guy reader, but hey, you should know about these things too.)

When it came time to leave our little cabin in the big woods, we took a slow, meandering route home, spending the night in Medford, Wisconsin, my Grandpa Kress’ home town. We also stopped in Ladysmith and Gilman, WI, where my mom was born and where my grandparents were married, respectively. While in Medford, we went to visit some family at the Catholic Cemetery. We then stalked the old family homestead, then headed down to Stetsonville, WI where my grandpa’s brother, Monsignor Alphonse Kress was buried.

Our way home included a trip up to Door County (which really, probably cemented the “I don’t get to make spur of the moment, on the road, hey let’s look at that decisions in our family”, because it wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought it would be.

That evening we had dinner with our friend, the now Father David Schalk, but then just Dave, at Grandma V’s in Libertyville, Illinois and he took us on a small tour of Mundelien Seminary.

So that was our honeymoon. Simple, wonderful, grace-filled with a bit of trial.