A Weekend In the Country

The weekend away was good. Restful. (Though perhaps not quite as restful as I might have liked, since sleeping in on weekends is a longstanding tradition for me and B&Bs are not known for their flexibility in serving times. So...despite late nights, it was breakfast at 8:30 or no food for you!)

Friday afternoon we left a tad earlier than usual, thinking to make it around the inevitable traffic and get to Lancaster in a reasonable amount of time. (Lancaster, PA is only about a 2.5 hour drive from here, so it's a good enough distance to be relaxing, but close enough that you're not spending your weekend in the car. Usually.) Two and a half hours later we had finished travelling just about 20 miles and were finally on I95 headed north. Five hours later we finally arrived in Lancaster. Traffic around here is nuts. (Though I suppose we can say this trip was better than our last excursion up that way, as that trek took us just under 8 hours to complete.)

R&C made it just about an hour after we did, having had to stop and drop of the little one with her aunt and uncle for the weekend. So much for doing anything Friday night, but at least we were there safe & sound and there was pizza close by.

Saturday morning found us up and at 'em for our early breakfast. Thereafter we headed out to see the crafty shops and quilty things for which Lancaster is known. Highlight of this portion of the day was, most likely, feeding the goats and miniature horse that were at a little mini-petting zoo in one of the shopping locales. (Well, that and getting a picture of Tim riding one of those little rocking animal things on a spring - this one was a turtle.) At about 2, C had found the perfect wall hanging quilt and our shopping mission was complete, so we thought lunch might be in order. Thinking we would've missed the rush, we stopped at one of the ubiquitous family style places and balked at the 45 minute wait. At 2 in the afternoon. Investigation into another restaurant showed a slightly longer wait, so Burger King it was!

From there it was covered bridge hunting. This involved much driving, backtracing of steps, getting lost, oohing and ahhing over scenery, looking for places to pull off the road to take a picture, etc. It was a good time. I did some playing with my "real" camera - once I get those developed I'll have some to post. Tim took some with the digital, I'll see about putting them up sooner.

After we lost the light, we headed back to the family style place thinking dinner might not be as crowded. Still a 45 minute wait. But this time we waited, browsing through the tourista gift shop and laughing at some of the weird things for sale therein. R&C found a few gifty type things, I don't think Tim or I were really seriously looking. (I saw a few things that I thought various people might like, but then came the inevitable, "What would they do with it?" And, as I know the people in question are on a quest to declutter not reclutter, I resisted. I think the sum total of my Christmas shopping this year may be "good intentions." As in, "I intended to get you something, but couldn't come up with an idea that was something you actually wanted and would use. So instead, please know I thought of you this year.")

Back to the B&B we went after supper to play cards and watch Royal Wedding. It was an earlishy late night (just about midnight) since we knew an early breakfast was again in store and we were already tired.

Sunday was breakfast and then clean up and check out and go pick up the kiddo and then go home. Thankfully the ride home was right around the 2.5 hour duration, and not another marathon of traffic madness. Picked up the puppies at my sister's, saw mom and dad who were down visiting, saw the awesome job sister did on her new basement bathroom with the tiling, and went home. Watched a little tv and was in bed by 8:30. And at 5:15 this morning I could open my eyes without the usual groan of exhaustion, though I'm still tired.

Still, in all, a good weekend in the country with friends.