Magnets for Adventure
Ray and I arrived for our mini-vacation at Cumberland Mountain State Park around 5:45 p.m. on a Sunday evening. The office was closed, but the key to one side of a duplex cabin was ready and waiting for us outside the office door. Notice the name taped to the key: Nopdraff. We knew the key was for us because that very alternate spelling of Notgrass matched exactly with the email confirmation we had received!
We had been delighted with the cabin we had at Cumberland Mountain State Park in January of 2022.
It wasn’t fancy at all, but it was quaint and historic, just what we wanted. Young men from the Civilian Conservation Corps had built it during the Great Depression, and it had recently undergone an excellent restoration. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay.
However, none of the historic cabins had a vacancy when we wanted to be there in late June. We realized that the cabins that were available were quite different and had not yet been updated, but we weren’t prepared for what we found. Assurances that updates are planned for some of them didn’t help us that Sunday night. We hadn’t been inside long before the musty smell hit my nose, which quickly got stuffy. That would never do for my sweet husband with lung issues.
The plan to stay in a cabin for three nights while our friends stayed in their camper at the park campground were now in flux. The office was closed and our cabin wouldn’t do, so what could we do? We decided to drive around until we saw a park ranger. We were happy to see that the camp store was open for a little while longer. We told the clerk our plight, and she offered to call a park ranger and have her meet us at the cabin.
The park ranger was prompt and sympathetic, but she could only offer to leave a note in the park office so that they would learn the next morning that we needed a refund. We drove over to our friends’ campsite for dinner and talked about what to do. We had already planned to drive the 45 minutes back to Cookeville the next morning just long enough for me to attend play auditions before coming back to the park.
As we sat around the lovely campsite, I searched for a rental cabin. God was very kind to us. We found a perfect one only 1.4 miles from the park entrance. We could rent it at 3:00 p.m. the next day. After dinner we drove back to Cookeville and spent the night in our friends’ guest room—the same room where we had spent two nights at the beginning of June while workers were improving the air quality in our old house.
On our way to Cookeville, we texted our children to let them know where their parents were going to be that night. Our son, John, texted back: “You are magnets for adventure!”
We had a restful night. I enjoyed play auditions. We had lunch with our younger daughter and a couple of her children. We headed back to the state park. When we arrived at our rental cabin on Monday afternoon, we were overwhelmed by God’s great blessing. He had swapped our musty little half-a-duplex for a beautiful two-story, idyllic cabin in the woods for a mere 2/3 of the original cost of our getaway accommodations.
Things do get topsy-turvy sometimes, but I like our being magnets for adventure.
Every good thing given
and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
James 1:17