For many moons, it has been my deepest desire to spend a couple of weeks in the mountains during the fall. My first choice would be the Rockies, but I know better than to think that could actually happen. So, I’ve set my mind and heart on the Smoky Mountains.

What I’m dreaming of is a rustic cabin tucked far away in a mountain cove with a dancing stream that will sing me to sleep at night. So, I started looking.

Now, the Smoky Mountains are a honeymooner’s paradise, but not everybody who goes to the mountains is on a honeymoon. But evidently those folks who rent cabins don’t know that.

Every brochure features honeymoon specials with couples lounging, smilingly, in a Jacuzzi. But I have no need or notion to submerge myself in a tub of hot, churning, sudsy water surrounded by flickering candlelight and sipping a fine wine from a stemmed glass. I’ve been there. Done the honeymoon thing. And, never in a thousand years could another one hold a flickering candle to that one.

The Hideaway Lodge brochure enticed us with the idea of a hideaway at the end of a winding, tree-line country road in the hills of Holmes County, Ohio. Truthfully, that was all that was available to us.

The brochure was true to its word. The drive to the lodge was absolutely breathtaking. The leaves were spectacular in their fall colors and the roadway was a vibrant patchwork of wildflowers. The sun, although, fading was still warming the earth and birdsongs were in the air.

The lodge was even better than we had hoped — small, cozy and in harmony with the hillside. What a place.

“As we entered, I glanced in one of the rooms. Mmmmm. A canopy bed all dressed in white lace and roses on a table for two. Must be the honeymoon suite.

The young man who greeted us seemed a little bewildered.

“We have reservations.”

After checking several times, as if we’d told a falsehood, he said, “Come this way.”

He opened the door to our room and stepped aside.

We looked at each other and back at him – or should I say looked at the back of him. The young man was high-tailing it out of there.

Fancy was not an accurate description of our room. Elegant was more like it. Poster bed with a lace coverlet and pillow shams and dozens of puffy accent pillows. A table for two set with fine china and a vase of roses and bowls of mints on the bed tables. The bathroom door was open. Lighted candles surrounded the Jacuzzi and a bottle of wine was chilling on ice. Two monogrammed terrycloth bathrobes were hanging on the door, and a sweet aroma that I couldn’t identify permeated the air.

Astounded, we looked at each other. All of us. “We’re in a honeymoon hotel!”

“Wait a minute,” I called after the young man. He turned on his heels and sheepishly walked back toward us.

“There’s only one bed, and there are four of us,” I shrugged. “We can’t all fit on one bed.”

“I’ll bring a cot,” he said and hurried off.

Sis, June Bug and I started to giggle like school girls. “We’re on our honeymoon!” Tater Bug was with us but a little boy couldn’t fully enjoy the joke.

The brochure hadn’t mentioned one word about the lodge being for honeymooners only. We decided it would be best if we went out for supper instead of enjoying the picnic we had planned on the lodge lawn.

When we returned, a cot was in the room. The roses were gone as was the fine china. The wine had been replaced with sparkling grape juice and the bathrobes were no longer ours.

“They left the mints,” Tater said proudly.

There was no television but luckily we had brought checkers along so we set up the board.

After a while, I retired to the tub. Never having been in a Jacuzzi, I decided to treat myself. I drew my bath water and decided, why not a bubble bath?

I poured in a little bubble bath, but I remembered, as a child, I would have to use nearly the whole bottle and then have to slosh the water around in eggbeater fashion to get a few bubbles going. So, I poured in more and more. I wanted bubbles. I got in and turned on the jets.

In about three seconds, I was engulfed in bubbles. Millions of them. Billions and they kept coming up, up, up. I was going to be suffocated by soap bubbles. I held my nose and dived in the bubbles and felt my way around the tub until I found the knob and turned off the jets.

The bubbles had overrun the tub, extinguished the candles and were standing around me in peaks higher than Mt. Everest.

I tried to wash the bubbles down the drain, but they wouldn’t go. So, I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around a wad of bubbles and wrung them out. It took a while and to dispense of the bubbles — wringing them out of the towels and stomping them with my feet, like a hip-hop dancer.

Finally, I emerged from the bathroom after my “relaxing” candlelight bubble bath.

“That was soooo nice,” I said and waited my turn at checkers.

When Sis was put out of the checker game, she got her gown and went into the bathroom. The light went off. Only the flicker of candles could be seen beneath the bathroom door. She had no more experience with a Jacuzzi than I had so I knew what was coming. I whispered to June Bug.

The water came on. Then the jets roared on … and off. I knew Sis was in there “busting” bubbles like fighting wildfire.

She finally opened the door and peaked out, we started laughing and laughed until the overhead lights blinked on and off.

Sssssh. We were in a honeymoon hotel for goodness sakes.

We checked out real early the next morning before the other honeymooners.

“This was the best honeymoon ever,” we girls said laughing. “The very best. Ever.”

Just thinking about it. Maybe a honeymoon hotel won’t be so bad after all.