Excerpt from my
real-time journal:
≈3:40 pm 9/5/15
Wow, this
car ride feels even longer than I expected it to. At least my ears have started to feel sort of
normal again. Jason’s been driving since
the last rest stop, because my head was starting to hurt and I felt like I
needed to be able to stretch my neck a bit.
My range of motion is limited as long as I need to keep my eyes on the
road.
Google
Maps says we still have an hour to go before we get to Manheim (Jason just
grabbed hold of the emergency brake again – it’s a habit he has when he’s driving)
and I’m wondering if we should skip the festival tonight and go straight to the
B&B. If we don’t get there until 5pm
or later, it probably won’t be worth the price of the tickets, even at half
off.
I should
mention that Jason has stopped me from eating ice cream three times so far
today. He’s a good boy.
Several days
after the faire, I begin recording the experience…
Picture from the home
page of their website.
The B&B Jason found turned out to be
about half an hour from the faire grounds, which is not a bad drive, but it was
in the middle of a very Amish-esque landscape, which meant that there was
NOTHING around it but wide rolling hills and houses. We got there before 9pm on Saturday, and the
welcome letter Jason had been promised was lying on the desk with directions to
our room and information about the breakfast schedule. Our room had a very tall four-post bed that I
had to climb into; I had hoped for/expected a canopy based on what I saw through
the first-floor windows as we passed by outside, but the third-floor rooms did
not have them. This was probably due to
the rather odd shape of the ceiling. How
to describe this ceiling? Probably
because we had a corner room, and owing to the house’s period-appropriate
proliferation of gables, a huge portion of our ceiling in the corner across
from the door was, well, in our room instead of above it. The sloping of the roof outside took away a
sizeable chunk of the room’s volume.
(The picture to the left is the only picture I took of the room, because for some reason taking
pictures of the room didn’t seem important until after we left. You can see, in the top right, the odd way in
which the ceiling invades the open space of the room. You can also see Jason on the bed, probably
saying something like, “Come cuddle on me!”)
There were two broad mirrors, one above
the sink and its counter near the door, and one above the wide dresser that sat
by the bathroom door. On the far side of
the bed were a small writing desk and an overstuffed chair. The one quite puzzling feature of the room
was the extra door that faced the foot of the bed. Exploring the room upon arrival, and having
already found the bathroom, we were surprised not only to find that this door
opened for us, but that it opened to another bathroom… with another bedroom
beyond it. Considering the apparent age
of the buildings and its furnishings, it is not so surprising that one room
should open into another. However, in
view of its current use as a bed and breakfast, I would expect the door to be
permanently locked as long as there are unrelated guests in one or both
rooms. There were two standard locks on
the door, so we locked the one on our side and sort of hoped that the room keys
we had received were not also inter-room keys.
This oddity also served to inform us of the very close proximity of our
neighbors. So that we didn’t, you know…
talk too loud or something.
After an unsuccessful search for ice to
fill our complimentary ice bucket (“bucket” doesn’t sound right, but even after
a 5-minute Internet search I don’t know if there’s a better term,) I took a
shower while Jason left to investigate the dining situation. By the time I got out of the shower he had
procured not only ice but two bowls of soup as well. It looked like a creamy chicken-based soup,
but was much thinner than it appeared and had an unexpected spiciness to
it. We added the provided crackers, but
it would have been better served by a dumpling or two.
As always, I found it difficult to sleep
in an unfamiliar bed, so although I did sleep, it’s impossible to say how
much. In the morning, after I managed to
drag Jason out of the morning cuddle, we went to the sun room for
breakfast. It wasn’t a “grab what you
want” affair like a typical continental breakfast; we sat down to a three-item
menu – apple pancakes, granola yogurt, or breakfast quiche – and
all-you-can-drink coffee, water, and juice.
I ordered the pancakes and Jason settled on the yogurt. His had a thin layer of caramelized sugar on
top, and mine had orange zest mixed in with the batter (tasted fine, but I had
not expected the zest to be in the
pancakes and felt that it competed too heartily with the apple flavor.) Both plates came with a bit of fresh fruit, a
piece of candied bacon (delicious, but a pit over-peppered and thus too bitey
for me,) and some form of breakfast potato.
Jason’s potato item had a conspicuously crispy crust, and mine looked
like bread pudding, which naturally resulted in a great deal of confusion on
the part of my palate when I took a bite.
Given my generally high level of finickiness with regard to breakfast
potatoes, it is almost astonishing that I really liked them, even the parts that touched my syrup.
The fruit portion of the meal consisted of
a slice of orange, a wee bunch of grapes, and a thin slice of kiwi with the
skin still on it, which Jason thought was unacceptable but which I ate
completely.
We learned after breakfast that checkout
was at 10:30 rather than 11 (don’t most hotels have an 11am checkout time?) so
when we got back to our room we were in a bit of a rush to get our things
together. I wanted to put on my gypsy
outfit before we left, but realized as soon as I had it on that it might be
awkward to walk through the halls of a bed and breakfast with my entire midriff
bared for all staff and visitors to see.
I put on the only thing we had handy – Jason’s oversized raincoat that
didn’t look AT ALL suspicious – before we gathered our things to leave. We made it to the desk about 8 minutes late,
and checkout ended up taking several minutes while the manager attempted to
look up a receipt so she could overcharge us properly for the previous night’s
soup. While awaiting a response from the
kitchen staff, we learned that Jason has a doppelgänger living in the farmhouse
behind the B&B’s property. And his
name… is Jordan. *Twilight Zone music*
Zoë’s gas light came on as soon as Jason
started her up. He had agreed to drive
to the festival so that I could focus on completing my outfit with the
requisite accessories, but instead I ended up navigating and fretting about
gasoline. The route that Google found
for us was not the one that Siri had found the night before. I must have accidentally selected the search
filter “Most Remotely Rural Route In Existence That Will Still Take Us More Or
Less Directly There,” because it took us through the most winding, snakey,
deserted, Amish Country-esque roads possible, with sprawling farm properties
that may or may not have even discovered gasoline yet. Hilly terrain is not ideal for a very low gas
tank, so I was uneasy and silently coaching Zoë for the whole drive, plus
navigating for Jason, so I didn’t actually have time to accessorize. We ended up making it to a gas station just
past the faire, so all my fretting was for naught.
I realized well into typing up my account
of the weekend’s experience that the entire thing was taking up quite a bit of
space and that it may be pertinent to break it into two separate posts. My next post, therefore, will cover the
actual events of the faire, with Saturday’s and Sunday’s events being related
concurrently, partly because the two days ran into each other in my memory even
as we were driving back to Ohio, and partly because I want to group our
activities in a logical way, which meant talking about all of the food in one
paragraph, the merchants in another, etc.
The next one, I assure you, will contain many more pictures. Read on and enjoy!
♥
SM
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