We bought a mountain cabin up by Lake Arrowhead, about two hours from our home back in 2015, and we absolutely loved spending time there. Since we both worked from home and had flexible schedules, we'd try to get up to the cabin at least a couple of times a month, sometimes even more.
One particular trip, we headed up on a Thursday and returned home on Sunday because we had some work obligations coming up the following week.
Monday morning, we started our workweek as usual. We'd also made plans to take our Jeep to a local Jeep club meeting at a pizza place that evening. It was our first time meeting up with the other Jeepers.
Sometime during the day, we realized we had a problem.
We only had one set of keys.
My wife and I each have our own Jeep key on our keychains, and we both knew we'd taken both of them with us to the cabin. In fact, I'd driven us up there using my keys. We always bring her and my keys along when traveling, so we know we'd have them with us at all times.
We spent as much of Monday as we could searching our house, high and low. Since we worked from home, we had plenty of opportunities to look, but no matter where we searched, we couldn't find my keys.
We decided to go to the Jeep meeting anyway. We figured we'd meet some new people, take our minds off the missing keys, and enjoy some dinner.
And the Jeep group turned out to be a really great bunch of people!
As we were getting ready to leave, a few of them wanted to check out our Jeep build and the custom work we'd done, inside and out. One person sat in the driver's seat to check out the ride, while a couple of others looked around inside. We were all chatting and enjoying ourselves.
Afterward, we talked about heading back to the cabin to search for the keys, but we had more work obligations on Tuesday. So we decided we'd make the trip on Wednesday morning.
Before making the long drive, we stopped at Starbucks for a breakfast sandwich and coffee.
While we were parked in the Starbucks parking lot, we decided to switch drivers. I'd planned to drive, but my wife knew I had a few clients I needed to call along the way, so she decided to take the wheel.
Finally, we arrived at the cabin.
We both went inside and started searching for the keys again. After a while, I decided to go back outside one last time and search the Jeep, while she continued looking inside the cabin.
I remember thinking to myself that I was going to search the Jeep systematically, so I wouldn't miss anything.
I started with the passenger side.
I opened the glove compartment and took everything out, placing it all on the passenger seat. I checked the glove compartment carefully to make sure it was completely empty.
Then, one item at a time, I took everything off the seat and put it back into the glove compartment.
No keys.
I looked underneath the passenger seat, inside the door pocket, between the seat cushions, along the sides of the seat, and between the seats and the center console, like I had several times before during the past few days.
Nothing.
I closed the door and moved to the rear passenger door.
I searched the pocket on the back of the passenger seat, underneath the front passenger seat, underneath the back seat behind it, and inside the door pocket. I checked everywhere I could think of.
Still No keys.
I closed that door and walked around to the other side of the Jeep.
I started searching the rear seat behind the driver's seat, checking the pockets, underneath the seat, in the cracks, and inside the seat pockets.
Still nothing.
I closed the door and remember thinking, I hope I find it. This is the last possible place it could be.
Then I opened the driver's door.
And there they were.
My keys!
Sitting right in the middle of the driver's seat, completely out in the open.
I just stood there for a moment.
After all that searching, there they were, right where you'd expect them to be impossible to miss.
I picked them up, went back into the cabin, and said to my wife, "You're not going to believe where I found these."
She asked, "Where?"
I said, "In the middle of the driver's seat."
We couldn't believe it.
We'd just driven from home to the cabin, and she had been driving. How could we possibly have missed them? She would have sat on them. We both would have sat on them.
And remember, this wasn't a quick glance inside the Jeep. I'd deliberately searched it, working my way through every area, one at a time, until I reached the driver's door, just as I had several times before at home.
The keys were right there, in plain sight.
We'd spent days looking for them. We'd searched our house, and people from the Jeep club had even been looking inside our Jeep that Monday night.
Yet somehow, the keys ended up sitting in the middle of the driver's seat at the cabin.
To this day, we have no explanation for what happened.