Yesterday at 8:30am, the girls and I hit the road. We drove from Chicago, through Toledo to Millersburg, OH. That's in the east central part of the state. Amish Country. We were dropping G off at a weeklong farm camp. 8 hours. Oddly enough it went well. The girls were mostly in good spirits (besides being hungry the whole time despite the weeks worth of groceries I packed as snacks). The hardest part of the drive was figuring out if I was on the right track given the bizarrely complicated Mapquest (and Google Maps) directions for traversing rural roads. I wisely bought a map. So much easier. SO....we made it. The hotel we stayed at is hotspot for departing campers and we met a bunch of them at the wiener roast. There are people from all over at this camp (OH, IN, MI, PA, NY, WVA, IL etc.) But last night 5-10 kids played at the edge of a pond for almost 3 hours. Feeding ducks, building things out of muck and rocks, and just being kids enjoying a beautiful July night. It warmed my heart to see kids interested in the same thing as my kids.
I finally got the girls to bed, and at breakfast there were even more camp kids at the hotel. Because the roads are so narrow and windy, I followed someone to make sure we made the 3 miles to the farm at the prescribed time. I'm sure I'll write more about the camp, but in the meantime, suffice it to say, all went well. G is now on a farm, doing farm things until Friday. I can't wait to hear about the outhouse and life without electricity. (Seriously)
And A and I, well we're in a nice hotel, waiting for pizza to arrive, watching Beethoven (movie not composer), having swum in the pool and visiting a place called Rolling Ridge Ranch.
Rolling Ridge Ranch is owned by Mennonites (I think) who have a gazillion animals. You take a ride through it on a horse drawn wagon and get a bucket of feed. The wagon stops and the animals come over looking for a handout. By animals I mean all different kinds of deer, alpaca, llamas, longhorn steer, caribou, water oxen, ostriches, donkeys, zonkeys (half donkey half zebra), plus other animals I wasn't quite sure of. A loved it. Some of those animals were quite aggressive. I had a bucket tug of war more than once and won. There were so many baby deer I sensed an auxiliary business (venison stew anyone?). One caribou with very large antlers stuck his head in trying to get a wayward bucket of feed and pinned a 3 year old to her seat with his rack. She was not pleased. Her mom sacrificed the feed to distract the beast. All was well.
How did we get there? Well A picked out all of the tourist brochures at the hotel that looked like fun, narrowed it down to the two best, and picked one for today and one for Friday when we are back in that area to pick up G. The small town (Berlin) is touristy, and was crowded. It's a town but there are Amish and Mennonite farms 1 block from the "strip". It's your average mix of antiques, crafts and restaurants. But we managed to bypass that to see the ranch. I can say it was an extremely interactive experience. Between the nice man who drove and told us what we were seeing, and then stopping, feeding and petting large animals, it was quite a time. A said it was the best zoo ever. There was also a petting zoo (goats, cows, ducklings and bunnies). And that was all before lunch.
So we ate and drove ourselves back to suburbia. (between Cleveland and Akron) Not sure what we're up to tomorrow. Might be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Cheers from the road!
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