

After dinner, Aaron practiced pool while I read aloud from the journal, starting where we had left off. We spent the whole day lazing around the living room. Luckily, the furnace in the basement was, to our amazement, still burning. The plan had been to go on a hike but it had been too cold out. The following evening we stayed up late as we had had a long nap that day. We were about halfway through the book when we called it a night and went to bed. Aaron read aloud the first four or five entries before I decided to take over.

We found the Paradise Pine diary and snuggled up on the couch. Usually, it was just things like “Went fishing with the kids, caught a bass” or “had a BBQ, played cards with the family”, but occasionally you found something more interesting, like “got drunk, set a tree on fire.” One of our favorite things to do when staying at a cabin is to read through all the journal entries of the previous guests. “Seems to be working,” I stammered through now chattering teeth, “I can feel the heat coming through.” I held my hands up to the metal pipe that wound its way around the house. I squirted some of that cheap vodka your sister sent in there, threw in a match and hoped for the best.” The light’s out in the basement and I couldn’t find a flashlight. “Well, that’s not the only thing that’s broken. I met Aaron on the ground level and told him about the bathroom. I certainly didn’t want to be charged for damage inflicted by the previous tenants. I took a few photos with my phone and planned to send them to the owner when we got back to town on Monday. I did so carefully, regretting the stupidity of the drunken idiots who must have stayed here the week before. They hadn’t even bothered to pick the glass up off the floor before they left. The bathroom connected to our bedroom was oddly door-less, had a broken mirror and a torn-down shower curtain. I went up to the bedroom to wash my face and change into warmer clothes. The temperature started to plummet at around six in the evening and I asked my husband, Aaron, to go down and light the furnace in the basement. Afterwards, we made an easy dinner, opened a bottle of wine, and played a few games of billiards on the pool table in the living room. We brought everything in from the jeep and got to work with dishes and laundry. Since it was a holiday and a snowstorm was forecasted for early next week, we decided to clean the cabin ourselves and ask the owner to reduce our bill when we left the following Friday. The previous tenants in this cabin had clearly decided not to clean, and also not to inform the owner that they were leaving it dirty. Most guests opt to do this, but in the rare occurrence they don’t, the owner sends a cleaning crew. Often times with very rural properties, the owner will offer to waive the $150 cleaning fee if you are willing to clean the place yourself before you depart.
#Paradise pine nosleep windows
The front door was located on the ground floor, along with the kitchen and living room, and the basement housed a washer, a dryer and a wood furnace that heated the cabin through a large pipe that extended up through all three floors.Įven though the views through the bay windows were beautiful, the first thing we noticed when we walked in was that the cabin hadn’t been cleaned. The top floor was simply the master bedroom, which was connected to a second story patio-balcony via a sliding glass door. The cabin, named Paradise Pine, was three stories tall and built into the side of a mountain.

We decided to take a tour of the cabin before we unloaded the car. We had made excellent time on the drive as there was actually very little snow on the ground. We planned on starting a family the following year and wanted one last romantic holiday with just the two of us. Aaron and I weren’t worried, however, since our jeep had snow tires (and we were bringing chains just in case). It was 35 miles from the nearest town and 18 miles from the nearest paved road. The cabin was located outside of Pinetop, Arizona.

The owner warned us that it can be hard to get back to in the winter because of the snow. We found it online through a website we have used in the past and booked it for a week. About a year ago, my husband and I decided to spend Thanksgiving at a cabin up north.
