The Castaway!

Skipping right along...

I am going to skip right past the engagement and Wedding part and just skip straight to the Honeymoon! Nice, huh?! Well, here's a few things about those things...

So, we got engaged on Feb 4th, but I didn't have a ring until a few weeks later. Wes took me to regional conference at the LDS Conference Center in downtown SLC and after it was over took me for a walk around Temple Square. He proposed to me officially with the ring there at the fountain looking at the Temple. It was really sweet and romantic!

We were married on May 17, 2001. It was a great wedding and a fun filled day of activities after the ceremony. We had a great time.

On May 18, 2001 at like 4 am we went to the airport to fly out to Florida for our Honeymoon. We had done this thing for our honeymoon where we got the trip really cheap by attending a presentation one morning for time shares. So, the company we did this through arranged for all the hotels and stuff. Our first 3 nights were in Orlando and that hotel was alright. THe next coupl nights were supposed to be at a hotel in Daytona Beach. Wes was really excited about this part as the hotel was guaranteed to be right on the beach.

So, we drove away from Orlando to Daytona Beach, and started to look for the address. At first we could not find it in the plethora of awseome beachfront hotel along the street where the hotel was located, so we stopped at one of the hotels to ask where our hotel, "The Castaway" was located. THe guy explained that is was about 5 miles down the road because the street is split by east and west addresses and this was a west address...

As we got back on the road and started down toward the address, the neighborhood got progressively worse and worse, until we saw this run down shop on the left side of the street. It had towels in the windows with naked women printed on them, and a huge blinking neon sign that said "Exotic tobacco pipes" and had a neon sign style picture of a bong...lovely! As we were just getting over the shock on the shop, we noticed that our equally worn down hotel was actually right across the street. It looked like something out of a horror movie-looked abandoned, run dow , rusty...scarry! But we thought we would go in anyway and see how it was inside-besides, it was the only place we had to stay.

The one-toothed man behind the counter took 20 minutes to get our information in the computer, then said "oops, I messed up," and because he had evidently never known about a backspace key, he started the whole process all over again. When he finally got us checked in, we got into the elevator and pushed the floor number, and stood there in the shakey elevator of a few minutes before the doors opened up and another family got in with us. Then we all sat in the elevator for a few more minutes. Then decided it hadn't moved, pushed the open door button, and sure enough, we were still in the lobby. So we all relocated to the other elevator which slowly but surely got us to our respective floors. As the door on our floor opened, I was overwhelmed by the stench of fish guts and mold-gross, then when we turned the corner to our hallway, it looked exactly like the hallway in "The Shining". So, we sent into our hole of a room, and realized that there was not a door on the sliding door part, and that the balcony was just open and all the people around could come in and out of our room as they pleased.

We decided to just go on a walk on the beach and at least take advantage of the fact that the hotel really was right on the beach at least. We planned on a 1-2 hour walk at most. When we got out to the beach, Wesley saw a dock a wasy off and wanted to walk to that, so we walked. We walked, and walked and walked. And it got darker and darker and darker...And later and later and later...after who-knows-how-long walking, it was pitch black and the dock was not any closer. So, we decided for our safety, we would go ahead and walk up to the street where there was light and find our way back to the hotel. Wes was carrying his walet and we were both just in our swimsuits. I managed to get hit on a number of times (that was back before I had 3 kids), we saw 2-3 drug deals happening, 3-4 arrests going on, a police chase, and had a cop tell us we wer enot in a safe place and that we should find our way back to whereever we were supposed to be...it was CRAZY!!

I never thought I could be glad to see that disgusting hole of a hotel, but I was ecstatic! Gotta love the Castaway...