Wednesday, November 11, 2015

November 11 and Veteran's day........

Today I set out on an adventure! I found two antique malls nearby and decided I'd visit them both, and then go on a tour of Penn Cave. But that's not what happened.

What happened was I had breakfast at Perkins restaurant. They had SO MANY PIES. But I was there for breakfast, so, alas, no pie. But I did have cinnamon French toast and it was delicious. Plus a side of sliced bananas to make me feel better because I've been eating like crap this whole week.

Fueled for the morning, I set off for the first antique store. But there was a Christmas store right in the way so I spent a good amount of time in there browsing two whole floors of Christmas, and buying several ornaments. Whoops.

At the first antique store, I found a pretty cool treasure: a civil war-era tin cup for Mountain Man! Now, he already has a tin cup, but THIS tin cup belonged to a soldier at some point. Maybe even one who fought in Gettysburg or Antietam. Who knows? Now he can take a piece of civil war history with him on his rendezvous.

Speaking of Mountain Man, he specifically asked me to look for powder horns at the antique stores, so I browsed very carefully. There were none at the first store, but the next store, in a town about ten miles away, was a possibility.

The town was Bellefonte, and it was adorable! It's a Victorian town and has such charm and so many churches, plus a darling town "square" which is really a roundabout headed by the courthouse. I browsed several antique stores there and found not one, but two, powder horns for Mountain Man. He was very happy with his prizes today.

I had lunch at a corner cafe. It was a meatloaf sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. There was a LOT of gravy poured over everything. Yummy! Plus, homemade applesauce. I was very full. I drove around town after lunch, taking pictures out my car window while I was driving (don't worry, it's a very slow-moving town). I couldn't get enough of the Victorian houses and imagining what it would be like to live in one. They were stunning!

I did not go to tour Penn Cave because I ran out of time. I was kind of bummed about the wildlife tour being closed for the season anyway, but I thought the tour of the caves by boat would be a good photo opp. But there just wasn't enough time to squeeze it in today.

I drove back to the hotel and waited for MM to arrive for dinner. Earlier in the day he had texted me the dinner choice - a nice restaurant near the golf course. We were going with some of his co-workers and other conference attendees. I looked up the menu, decided on what I was going to have, and got very excited about their large selection of "boozy milkshakes."

(Cue wa-wa-wa sound when a game show contestant give the wrong answer). I was informed that the dinner choice had been changed by a very pushy fellow conference attendee and we were now going to a brew pub. Yuck. I was very angry about this but of course I had to be pleasant and shake hands and smile. The pushy guy turned out to be somewhat obnoxious as well, and he sat by me! I ordered a fruity adult beverage to put a hazy barrier between us, but when it arrived it neither looked nor tasted like what I ordered. I drank it anyway, because 1. it clearly had alcohol in it and 2. obnoxious guy.

Dinner was what I expected - mediocre. Service was slow. I couldn't WAIT to get out of there and on to the boozy milkshake location. FINALLY we said our goodbyes and headed towards the creamy goodness that is ice cream and alcohol. One of my husband's co-workers joined us. We had a grand time sipping our very fancy adult milkshakes - except for my husband, who's "Death by Chocolate" milkshake did not include the promised brownie on top because they were out. He said he couldn't die then, just be seriously ill. He's funny.

Tomorrow I was going to meet up with a friend who lives three hours away but it's not going to work out so I'm sad. But that's one of the sucky parts of adulting - we have jobs and responsibilities and we can't always do the fun stuff. So, after we check out of the hotel tomorrow, there is one more little town I'd like to see, then we'll start our journey toward Alexandria. It's a 4 hour drive so we'll have plenty of time to take in the scenery, which hopefully won't be rainy the whole time. I can't believe our week is almost over!

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