A Tiny Love Story
May 1, 2024
A Tiny Love Story
Finally, the honeymoon.
In honor of our anniversary a few years ago we finally decided to take a "true" honeymoon trip.
Our original, post-wedding, excursion had been to a bleak island in the iron ore part of northern Minnesota. My wife was about to start her first teaching job and I was still finishing my undergraduate degree; thus, we were both enchanted with each other and broke.
The island was owned by my aunt and uncle and, by our youthful standards, pretty cool and the price was right (free): cabin, outhouse, boat house, and a sauna with a deck overlooking the lake. We had a boat and motor and tooled around the lake a bit. We also swam and used the sauna. A highlight of the adventure occurred when my uncle – a retired iron ore miner and steward of the now defunct mine in Soudan – took us on an elevator 2500 feet underground to the last mining area. That was cool – actually, it was a constant 55°.
Everything, however, was so remote. There was no midnight dancing, no clubbing. I don't think we even had any beer.
Fun enough, but Hamburger Helper dinners weren't quite the celebratory excesses we'd had in mind. Sensitive lad that I was, I thought – watching my young bride walking grumpily back to the cabin from the outhouse one morning – Well I guess this isn't just like going to the Bahamas.
So, those many years later, it was decided: Niagara Falls, that gushy bastion of newlyweds. We weren't newlyweds, but we could pretend.
No longer shy or broke we did it all: Sheraton At The Falls Hotel right downtown; really good restaurants; bus tour of the region (an excellent way to plan our sightseeing), which included: both the American and Horseshoe Falls, the Maid of the Mist boat ride, the Cave of the Winds, Luna Island, the Whirlpool, and the Aquarium. Tourist mecca or not, virtually everything we saw was just breathtaking even with the stifling August weather.
One night, after dinner, we took a walk and, as we were standing near an Indian statue trying to take a selfie, two young women walked up and offered to take our picture (see above). Turns out that one of them was from England, near London, and the other was from Wales. The English one was studying business, and the Welsh woman was studying to become a midwife.
Dinner that night was at the Hard Rock Café but, alas, our day's adventures were not yet done.
Somewhere around ten-thirty – both of us exhausted from our touring and asleep – the alarm in our room went off, the strobe lights came on, and a voice said: "An emergency has been reported. Please evacuate the hotel. Do not use the elevator."
Really?
Thus, we trooped with numerous other guests down to the street (one young woman, her priorities right, carried a large box of pizza) where we waited for about a half hour for the all-clear.
Back in our room, however, and in the hallways and presumably other rooms, the strobe lights were still flashing. We waited and waited, assuming, now that the crisis had been resolved, that they would stop flashing. They didn't. Finally, I called to ask about it twice, then finally dressed and went down to the desk. They were well aware of the problem and said they were working on it. The problem seemed to be that no one knew where the master switches were. We tried putting towels on our eyes but those lights, small as they were, were monstrously strong. It was impossible to go to sleep or even read or watch the TV. It wasn't until somewhere around 1:00 A.M. when the lights finally went off.
We never did find out what the evacuation-worthy problem had been, but the marriage has lasted.
G.K. Wuori© 2024
Photoillustration by the author