19 August 2003: Mountain Road Trip

The only thing more perfect than the new Fountains of Wayne CD is listening to the new Fountains of Wayne CD while you are heading to an inn in the mountains for a weekend away with your husband.

Greg heads back to teaching on Monday and I start school again next Wednesday and rehearsals for You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown start on September 2nd and we just decided we needed a weekend away. I did some web searches and luckily, the inn had a vacancy for Saturday and Sunday night. Our "B&B" rate was actually a "BB&D" rate which included not only a full breakfast each morning, but a five-course dinner each night.

They really did these dinners right, too - cheese and bread and soup and salad and sorbet and your choice of three different entrees a night (each served in two different sauces) plus a choice of four or five desserts. Each entry in the dinner was different each night (there was some repeat in the dessert tray, but nowhere else) and each dinner was very good.

The room was on the small side but was lovely and quite comfortable. The service was terrific and we were constantly being asked if we wanted drinks or help or directions or to borrow bicycles. The only disturbing thing in the entire inn was this bizarre little fake sleeping cat in a basket which really looked more like a dead cat in a basket. We had to look at this "cat" every time we climbed the stairs to our room, so I kept flipping it over. Someone kept flipping it back. Finally on our last day Greg took it and put it up high on top of the hall security light.

I wonder if they've found it yet.

We slept (glorious sleep...ten hours a night and I had two small naps on Sunday, one at the beach and one back at the inn), which was something we both needed. We drove up into the mountains and looked at beautiful things. We ate delicious food and had milkshakes and went to the used bookstore and spent a little time in the double hammock looking at the stars. We looked at houses and talked about having a big wraparound porch someday and we went for walks and held hands and it was just lovely.


This is the view known as "Canyon Vista." It really reminded us of Ireland.


Wyoming State Forest (no, I have no idea why it's in Pennsylvania) was hit by a bizarre series of natural accidents, which is why it looks like it does in this picture. There was some sort of bug infestation, and then a fungus infestation, and then some horrible weather; it killed off most of the sugar maples in the forest and completely changed the landscape. They have high hopes that the forest will fully recover but it will take decades.


Greg and I in front of a waterfall; we're sort of blocking it. The old "hold out the camera as far as you can" bit only works so well.


The waterfall itself, sans us.


On our way home we took the long way so I could look at covered bridges. This is me standing in the first one we found.