The lockbox on the cabin door took me four tries in the dark, with Harper holding her phone's flashlight at an angle that lit up everything except the lockbox. It was 7:40 on a Friday in early October, the air on top of Lookout Mountain smelled like cold leaves, and Ben's early birthday weekend had officially started.
Ben turns 42 on October 14, a Wednesday. Wednesday is one of his late clinic nights, so his actual birthday will be leftovers at 7:30 and a card. We moved the celebration up eleven days to the first weekend in October, which also happened to be the one bye weekend on the soccer schedule. Ben coaches Harper's team and has not missed a Saturday game in years. He was not going to start for a cake.
Mentone is a small town on top of Lookout Mountain, about two hours from Decatur once you add a stop for gas and a stop because somebody needs a bathroom. I booked a two-bedroom cabin a few minutes outside town back in July, while the fall weekends were still open. Two nights came to $362 with the cleaning fee and taxes. Moose spent the weekend at Carol's in Hartselle, where he is allowed on the couch and comes back every time slightly spoiled.
The market and the waterfall
Saturday morning we went to the farmers market, which sets up on the grass as you come into town. It's small and producers only, meaning the people selling things grew or made them. We bought a jar of sourwood honey, a loaf of bread still warm in the bag, the last decent tomatoes of the year and a small handmade mug for Ben that he has used every morning since. Harper bought kettle corn with her own money and shared exactly four pieces.
Then the waterfall hike. DeSoto State Park is about 15 minutes from town, and Indian Falls is a short walk from the main picnic area along the West Fork of Little River. I'll be honest: early October is the dry part of the year, and the falls were a polite trickle over the rocks. Harper looked at it and said, "This is a waterfall the way a puddle is a lake." We kept walking along the river anyway, over roots and flat sandstone, and it was beautiful in a quieter way. Ben, a physical therapist to his bones, spent the trail watching other hikers' knees on the rocks and quietly having opinions about them.
Last fall, after our leaf day at DeSoto and Little River Canyon, I wrote that we should come back a week later in the season for the color. This year we came three weeks earlier instead, because birthdays don't move for leaves. A few sourwoods and maples had started turning red. Everything else was green, and nobody minded.
Saturday night I made the one dinner I'm known for, steak and baked potatoes, and a box-mix chocolate cake with too much frosting. Harper made a card that said "42: still not old" on the front and "but close" inside. Ben laughed so hard he had to put his fork down. Then he asked if we could come back every year on the bye weekend, and I said yes before Harper could negotiate for a beach.
When to go: Mentone is good in every season, but fall weekends book early, so reserve by summer. Our one tip is to hit the market early. It runs Saturday mornings into early afternoon, and the bread was gone by the time we left.
I paid for the weekend from a line in the spreadsheet I started in July, $125 a month labeled "Ben 42." He found it in September and pretended he hadn't.
What it cost
- Gas: about $28
- Cabin, two nights, with cleaning fee and taxes: $362
- Groceries for the weekend, including the steaks and the cake: $88
- Farmers market (honey, bread, tomatoes and Ben's mug): $31
- State park day-use honor box: $2
- Kettle corn: Harper's money, not mine
Total: about $511. Two nights, one trickle of a waterfall and a husband who says 42 feels a lot like 41, just with a better mug.
