The Final Last Vacation Story

From the Pastor:    The Final Last Vacation Story

      The story of my recent journey left off before I made it back home, so you are stuck with yet another tale of my trip. After the long detour and blocked road from last week, I finally made it to North Carolina where the Carsons had invited me to visit them while they were spending time in their mountain cabin. As I left off last week with the delay causing me to either arrive after dark or spend a night in a hotel, I opted for the hotel. In the morning I had a cup of coffee and sat down to pray my breviary as I drank in both the mountain view and the coffee between scripture verses. It was a good way to start the day.
       After getting back in the car, I let the Carson's know my approximate arrival time. I checked in with them about an hour out and it seemed like in no time the GPS lady was telling me to turn off the main drag and onto a small, steep mountain road leading up to their house. The distance left to travel wasn't exactly making sense relative to the time it was saying it would take, but I was to find out soon enough why it would take so long. As I mentioned before, I am glad I didn't attempt this part of the trip at night, for even in daylight it was a tough drive. The road was very, very twisty, very, very narrow, and very, very steep. The going was very, very slow. And then the GPS lady got lost. She wasn't showing me to be exactly on the road and didn't warn of forks in the road demanding a decision of which way to turn. At one point the paved road was going left and a gravel road went right and she said nothing. I chose pavement. Up, up, up I went, the whole time thinking, "If I had a cabin up here, I would take a year's worth of food and never venture back down until I was ready to leave." This paved part of the “road” ended up being a driveway. There was no place to turn around so I followed the drive right up to the front door of the house and continued past it as it looped back down. I waved just in case somebody with a shotgun was watching. Going back down I had the Honda in low gear and the GPS girl found me before I got to the gravel road. "Take the other road this time, you big dummy!" she screeched. So I turned. Up and up and around and around I went, this time on wet, loose gravel. Then I came around a tight turn and had to hit the brakes when I came face to face with a four-wheel drive All Terrain Vehicle, which also slammed on its brakes. It was driven by the Carsons, who were coming down to make sure I found the right road. They put their vehicle in reverse but it simply spun the tires and started sliding sideways toward the edge of the mountain. Not a good sign. They finally got it moving in the right direction—backward—and found a small place to pull over and motioned me to pass. I, too, spun some gravel but the tires soon caught and up I went, the transmission and engine straining as they have never strained in Florida. I certainly knew why GPS said it would take so long for such a short trip.
      The Carsons make this trip up and down every single day, for they never miss daily Mass. They have memorized the Mass schedule of parishes in various distant towns to which they travel since none of the parishes has Mass every day. I, on the other hand, was very happy to be able to celebrate Mass in the cabin and stay put. Of course, that was not to last long, for they insisted on showing me around. We went to the top of the mountain in the rain on the four-wheeler as they talked about how they almost went off the edge the other day in the exact same conditions. Back home once again, we saw their "pet" woodchuck that lives just down the hill from the house. We watched a multitude of hummingbirds fighting incessantly over the feeder and flowers. I heard about how a bear completely destroyed their apple tree this year, the first year it produced apples, never to be capable of producing fruit again. And they drove me (in their four-wheel drive SUV, not the ATV) all the way down the mountain and into various small towns to show me where they went to Mass, where they shopped, and where they hiked. There is a parish that has a TLM and they are just starting to clear the ground to build a new, beautiful church. Our Lady of the Mountains in Highlands is worth checking out online. We also watched people swimming in "Bust Your Butt Falls" right off the main highway in Highlands. The Carson’s know how it got its name, for others from our parish have visited them and one of the girls busted several body parts there. We also went hiking to some waterfalls and came back drenched in sweat and gasping for air, though the temperature was only about 80 degrees. Go figure!
       Finally, after much too short a vacation, I had to head back home. The rest of the return trip was uneventful, with the exception of a major thunderstorm on I-75 just outside of Tampa (yes, I took the interstate the last day). And that really does bring me to the end of this series of articles. How was your vacation?


With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka