Davalynn Spencer – Real Life Romance – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Davalynn Spencer shares insight into her real life romance plus a chance to win a copy of her latest historical romance, Branding the Wrangler’s Heart. Comment on this post to enter the drawing. Deadline: July 12th, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Davalynn:

Rekindling the romance by Davalynn Spencer

More years ago than I care to publicly announce, the Cowboy and I loped off across the prairie together and stopped for the night in Rawlins, Wyoming.

Make that e-loped.

It was my idea. With his chocolate brown eyes, cowboy hat, and Judy Collins on the truck radio crooning “Someday Soon,” I didn’t have a choice.

Oh, we had a ring and a preacher, but most of all, we had an adventure that started in California, detoured to Wyoming, headed south to Mazatlán and settled in Colorado. All in the first three weeks.

The commode in the Rawlins motel room ran continuously, but young love forgives all. Besides, it was our last stop before the A-Bar-A ranch where my groom would earn our honeymoon money shoeing 80 head of hard-hoofed, hard-headed trail horses for the guest ranch. But I must be fair. Only one of the horses was hard-headed: the one we didn’t know was blind in one eye and straddled the hitching-post rail as soon as the Cowboy touched her.

We spent the evenings walking the banks of the North Platte River, lost in love and the Medicine Bow Mountains on a 100,000-acre ranch that I thought was Paradise. The ranch cook made the best blackberry cobbler I have ever tasted, and offered to fry up the trout I caught in the river. And we had a small cabin of our own. Twin beds and all.

From the A-Bar-A we headed the blue Ford pickup south to Nogales where we hopped a passenger train to Mazatlán. June in Nogales is a bit warm, but young love overlooks most anything, including a broken air conditioner in the sleeper car.

The seaside resort was Paradise number 2. Fabulous food, pristine beaches, quaint markets and friendly people. Very friendly. The day we rented a cab to Villa Union for the bull fight there, our driver stopped along the way and picked up all his relatives. But he stayed for the show and drove us back to our motel at the end of the day.

Cliff divers, parasailing, sunny days and ocean breezes. What a week.

Rather than take the train back to Nogales, we opted for the bus that traveled just as fast. During the first part of our journey, I was most impressed by the woman a few seats ahead holding a live chicken by its feet. For the second half of the trip, I was most impressed by the Cowboy who didn’t die after eating a fruit bar he bought at the Culiacan bus stop.
We had been warned to eat only at our hotel, and we did for seven days and nights. But what’s a little cellophane-wrapped fruit bar between neighbor nations?

A bad idea.

It was still hot in Nogales when we arrived the next morning, and the fenced lot where we left the pickup didn’t open until noon. Visions of the cool Medicine Bow Mountains, the crystalline Platte River and blackberry cobbler were hard to come by.

At 12:01 p.m. we headed west for California, wind-wings wide open. My beloved intoned only three words the entire way. “Want a milkshake?”

We survived that trip and made our first home in a second-floor Victorian apartment in Greeley while pursuing teaching degrees from UNC.

Many years later on another pass through Rawlins, Wyoming, the Cowboy thought it would be romantic to spend the night in the same motel we chose on our first trip. He even nabbed the same room.

And he was right. What’s more romantic than reliving young love that has endured long enough to reach strong, deep-rooted maturity?

In the room where the toilet still ran.

Happy Anniversary, Cowboy. Thanks for the adventure.

(This column first appeared in the Cañon City Daily Record, June 6, 2014.)
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/ci_25904217/davalynn-spencer-rekindling-romance

About Davalynn: Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer began her writing journey in the national rodeo market, winning awards in the process. Today she writes inspirational western romance – both historical and contemporary – and teaches writing at Pueblo Community College. She and her handsome cowboy have three children and four grandchildren and make their home on Colorado’s Front Range with a Queensland heeler named Blue. Connect with her online at www.davalynnspencer.com, www.Facebook.com/AuthorDavalynnSpencer.com and on Twitter @davalynnspencer.
About the book – Branding the Wrangler’s Heart: Whitaker Hutton always gets his way. When cattle go missing from the Bar-HB Ranch, the tenacious foreman will stop at nothing to find them. But his boss’s granddaughter, Olivia Hartman, is more than Whit bargained for. Once the victim of Whit’s childhood pranks, Livvy has grown into a feisty beauty.
Livvy can’t forget the way Whit used to tease her. Even worse, he doesn’t think she’s capable of helping in the roundup. She could stay mad at him forever—if he wouldn’t act all sweet toward her. But when he literally rides to her rescue, Livvy starts to wonder whether her old enemy might turn out to be much more than a friend.

Come back July 2nd for Elizabeth Maddrey!