Home Again, Home Again

I’m back.

I have several corps-related e-mails to answer and some general stuff to take care of (including watering my poor, thirsty plants, both indoors and out), but first I’m going to relax and take some time to document my vacation.

If you’re interested in reading about antiquing in Amish Country and other vacation highlights, read on.

On Tuesday morning, we had planned to leave Toledo around noon to arrive in Millersburg around 3pm. As it happened, we ate lunch, got the car packed up, and left around 1pm. After gassing up and hitting the ATM, we didn’t get on the turnpike until 1:30pm, which got us to Millersburg around 4:30pm. Unfortunately, in Holmes County, they roll up the sidewalks at 5pm, so we were stuck with nothing to do all evening.

Upon our arrival, we checked into the Hotel Millersburg, where the clerk seemed pretty amazed that we’d found them online. He also provided us with a map of the county, with breakouts of some of the various larger towns in Amish Country, including Millersburg, Berlin, and Walnut Creek.

After we got settled into our room, we headed out to walk around downtown Millersburg, which took all of fifteen minutes. We grabbed dinner at Mo and Gracie’s Jackson Street Diner — chicken potpie and cole slaw, the Tuesday dinner special — then walked it off on the local Rails-to-Trails path. We probably walked just a couple of miles round-trip, but we saw three Amish buggies during our walk; one passed us, and two came the opposite direction. We also saw some Amish women-folk on bicycles, a few non-Amish cyclists, and a couple of power-walkers. Considering the population of the area, the Holmes County Trail was fairly well-traveled for a Tuesday evening.

Aaron decided that the trail must be like an Amish Freeway: no worrying about traffic or other motorized vehicles. I’d imagine that it would be mighty helpful to have a back-country paved trail to follow, rather than taking your horse and buggy on the two-lane highways and rural routes with double-yellow lines and cars really wanting to pass you all the time.

On our way back from the Trail, we came across a map of Millersburg, posted on a streetcorner. If not for that map, we would never have known that Millersburg had a Wal-Mart, o happy day. As it was only about 7:00-ish, and nothing else to do in town, we decided to go for a drive and find the Wal-Mart. But first we found Dairy Queen, and got ourselves Flurries for dessert. 🙂 After that, we drove around for a while, rechecked the streetcorner map, and drove out to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter for entertainment and snacks.

Highlights of the Wal-Mart trip: Never before have I seen a Wal-Mart with a hitching rail. I took a picture of the sign on the way in that pointed in the direction of said Hitching Rail. There was also a large Amish and Mennonite contingent inside the store, just doing their shopping. We ended up getting a 2-liter of Minute Maid Light Lemonade (which was surprisingly yummy), a 2-liter of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, and a bag of grapes.

The rest of the evening was spent watching cable (mainly HGTV) in our hotel room, drinking lemonade, and eating grapes. We went to bed around 11:00, since we knew we wanted to get up at the buttcrack of dawn (8:00am) the next day.

Notes about our hotel room: One of the features of our room was air conditioning. This was a good thing. After we shoved a complimentary mint into the A/C to stop the rattling noise, it was an even better thing. Aaron still ended up being uncomfortable, though, due to the touchy thermostat on the A/C.

Also: we didn’t notice until we went to lay down and go to sleep, but our queen-size bed had an unfortunate dip in the middle. We each had to position ourselves so we wouldn’t roll into the middle of the bed. I felt like I was folded in half no matter which way I lay, and Aaron ended up with a sore back from leaning himself away from the middle while he slept.

Apart from those relatively minor issues (oh, and we can’t forget the strangers’ strands of hair plastered to the shower wall), our stay was a generally pleasant one, I think.

…I’ll pick up with Day Two later on today, I think. For now, it’s time to get some lunch.