After living out of a suitcase for virtually 3 weeks, my bags are unpacked and things are beginning to calm down.
Since July 2nd, I watched as my little brother left for Iraq, Flew too and from Georgia, attended a family reunion, visited with my father for the first time in two years, drove more than 3000 miles, spent a week in the mountains, found myself, lost myself, found myself amongst one of the largest gatherings of Amish people in the United States, celebrated my 6th anniversary, and learned a bit about what I want out of vacation when I go next time. Whew, that was a mouthfull.
The family reunion was great. I realized I have a lot of cousins that I didn’t even know existed. My father was in attendance which was nice since I get to visit with him once every few years as he lives down in Georgia.
We left directly from the family reunion on an 800 mile road trip to the mountains of West Virginia for what was supposed to be a relaxing trip. It didn’t turn out as relaxing as I like my vacations but there were some good moments. I learned a little bit about myself on this trip. I learned that if I am taking vacation time away from work, I want to be able to do whatever it is that I want to do. That sounds like a very immature thing to say, but as I get older, I am becoming more and more possessive about my time. I was guilty of throwing a temper tantrum at one point which definitely put my maturity level into perspective. I guess I am spending too much of my spare time with children while twisting balloons.
I did manage to get out and play a round of golf. I don’t know why I play golf any more. Honestly I suck so bad. I know everyone says that, but seriously, I am bad. Having not played more than a handful of times over the past 4 years, my game has declined miserably to the point that I get too embarrassed to enjoy myself. And who has time to practice? Not this guy.
Coming back to Chicago we decided to drive through Central Ohio on a recommendation from one of my customers. Apparently if you drive through North Central Ohio on a Saturday in the right parts you can hit very active Amish Country. Having been fascinated with the Amish Lifestyle since watching the movie Kingpin, I was up for expanding my perspective on life. In regards to the Kingpin reference, I would assume that the Amish Community would have been upset with their depiction in that movie, but then again they don’t have electricity or televisions, so I doubt they ever found out anyway.
As we continued on our trek through scenic Ohio along the path we were told would lead us to Amish Country, we began seeing Amish shops. So we stopped at a few and did some shopping. We bought our 6th Anniversary gift for each other in one of the shops as we were both agreed not to do the gift thing for each other this year due to all of the travels. As I exited the shop, there was a stand with pamphlets that offered up touristy things to do in Amish Country. To my surprise, about 3 miles down the road in Berlin, Ohio there was a fireman festival going on (the only festival in Berlin for the year actually). So, we made one more stop on our way to the festival at Heini’s Cheese Chalet. No knowing what we were walking into, we were quite surprised at the line at least a good 200 deep just to walk through to buy something. I took many pictures because I was still excited to see the Amish folk working in this shop. No wanting to spend two hours looking at cheese, we decided to move on with our journey to the festival.
We pulled into Berlin and found a parking spot. We couldn’t see anything going on, but could tell by the mass number of amish horse drawn buggies coming from everywhere that something was going on. We hit a few shops on our way while we followed the crowd and I have to admit that Berlin is a cute little town. Our only regret was not getting there earlier because most of the shops had closed by 4pm on a Saturday evening. As we neared the direction of the crowds we realized that we were walking amongst thousands of Amish folk. We begun to hear music and continued on our path until large tents appared and throngs of Amish sat in tents and waited in lines to enjoy the fun things that go along with a festival.
The highlight for me was watching them churn real home made ice cream. I don’t know why that was such a big deal for me, but it was. I guess having never seen home made churned ice cream I always assume that ice cream is magically made and shows up in the grocers freezer. The firemen churning the ice cream had no issues with me stepping behind the lines to get a front row view of how it’s made. For 2.00 I had the freshest home made ice cream in my entire life.
There was a yodeling banjo playing band which was pretty cool as well. My wife doesn’t think I am mature enough to be around the Amish because I kept taking their pictures saying how cool it was to see Amish people. I hit the Amish Jackpot when I saw a midget Amish family and was shot down by my wife trying to get a picture of them. That was one of those moments where it would have have been great to have been with my guy friends and not so much with my wife. She is too kind hearted and quickly put me in my place.
After the ice cream, we headed back to the car and called it a fun trip. It was 6pm and we found ourself still in central Ohio and we had all intentions of pushing through to Chicago without stopping. 7 hours later we made it home pretty darn exhausted.
Exhausted is a good word. This post is way too long. I’ll end it here. Other fun things are going on in my life but i’ll touch on those later along with some fun photos from our trip.
Filed under: Amish; road trip, Brother, Iraq, Vacation, balloon
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