I am feeling sentimental about our honeymoon and the mountains…

so I decided to share some thoughts on choosing a honeymoon location. We went to the mountains about four hours away. A surprising amount of people tried to talk us out of such a low-key honeymoon. Their argument was this was a one time event so why not make it big. Trust me, I totally get that mindset and it’s true but here is why we went where we did.

1. I LOVE the beach. Texan LOVES the beach. We go to Florida every year with his parents and we talk about missing it all year leading up to it and then are sad to leave. The problem is we love very different things about the beach. I want to be down on the sand, armed with a book, as early as possible and then not move for as many hours as possible. Texan likes to wait around for everyone else to be ready so he can help carry the load down (he is a lot nicer than me) and once down there, he wants to go for a walk, play wiffle ball, play frisbee, float, boogie board…. the list goes on. Needless to say, as much as I think the beach is the greatest… it doesn’t foster an environment where we actually spend time together.
2. I wanted to be as far away from people as possible. I didn’t want to be in a hotel or resort where would have to pretend to be interested in random people for week (I am a jerk, I know). But after a five month engagement, crammed with some sort of wedding-related meeting every day, I wanted our honeymoon to be JUST us. The potential downside to this is we picked somewhere where it most convenient for us to make most of our own meals (I think we ate our out for lunch and dinner once). Some people would not want this on vacation so there are some major pros or cons depending on the person.
   

   One of the roads leading to our cabin

3. I had to work at the Masters the following week. A typical work week during the tournament is 90+ hours. I wanted the week before to be some serious relaxing.
   

   Overgrown school buses on the side of the road, I loved these

4. Okay, now probably the biggest reason is, I hate to fly. I am working on this but we both knew the stress of me getting on a plane for what is supposed to be a magical week would have been a nightmare. Being a driveable distance may have actually been the number one reason we chose it.

It comes down to the couple. Several of our reasons were very specific to us. Weigh all options. IF I was not afraid of flying I think my dream honeymoon would be Europe, which is actually my dream trip in general. In hindsight though I am glad that trip is being saved for later in our marriage. For the mountains we researched places to go and hike and flower gardens… Did we go? Nope. In fact, we were packing the car to leave and I realized that we had hulled up in the cabin all week. For this reason I am glad we saved money on this trip and can plan ones later where we will actually take advantage of outside activities.