Wednesday (August 5th) was day two in Amish country for our little anniversary getaway. We slept in, and then took our time getting ready. I sat on the front porch some and started Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Once we were presentable, we headed back to Grandma’s Homestead restaurant because we had seen the night before that they had a breakfast buffet. It was quite tasty, but my favorite part of the breakfast was the homemade strawberry jam. They were not messing around with that – it was basically smooshed-up strawberries (and probably some sugar) and it was fantastic! Shockingly, we both ate too much.

After breakfast, we headed (via scenic back roads) to Miller’s Bakery. Miller’s Bakery is off the beaten path, but had been recommended to us by the owners of the B and B. It was certainly worth the trip! They had huge cookies and desserts for very cheap, and they had homemade chocolates for $6/pound. It was a pity that we went there when we were full, but we still managed to buy a few baked goods and chocolates. And, yes, you are starting to see a food theme in our vacation.

We stopped back at the bakery of Der Dutchman on the way back to the B and B to pick up a cake that Mer had wanted. She really had just wanted to buy a slice, but they only had whole cakes this day, so we plunked down the $4 and went home with too much food.

We went back to the cottage were we munched on our bakery goods, and I napped while Mer went on the back porch to read. Having fully rested, and having virtuously skipped lunch, we took a scenic drive out to Mrs. Yoder’s Kitchen, where we tried to order fairly light – we got sandwiches again. We were both still pretty full from brunch and snacking.

At some point during the day’s driving, we saw another smile-worthy moment. We saw a very cute little Amish girl in her traditional Amish clothing, and sporting bright pink Crocs. Mer and I both agreed that Amish children are all cute, including the boys. Neither of us is particularly parentally inclined, but the children we saw were just cute. They sometimes waved and we never saw them pitching fits.

After supper, we went home again and we played Dark and Stormy, a game about the first lines of books. I think I actually won this time – I can win about 1 out of 5 times when we play, but I may be remembering it wrong. Still, I’ll say I won. We played on the front porch, and were able to wave at a couple of Amish girls who rode by on horseback. The evening was quite nice, and it was pleasant to be on the porch with a good excuse to watch the sunset.

We ended the evening by beginning a six-part adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. I had recently listened to the book while running, and so wanted to see a movie version. The adaptation was decent. They cut some characters, and the changed a little bit of the ending (which we saw once we went back home – we did not watch all six parts that evening!), and made it a little more romantic, which I guess I can overlook. It was a good way to end a good day (nothing says “anniversary” like 19th-century literature!).

Mer and I took our second (of two) mini-vacations in August. Over a year ago, a friend of mine gave me a two-night stay at a Bed and Breakfast down in Ohio Amish Country. I had not used the gift certificate, and Mer thought it would be a good use of it to celebrate our 11th anniversary (which was on the 8th of August). I agreed that it was a fine idea, and so I took three days of vacation – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, August 4th-6th. It would have made more sense to make the vacation join up with a weekend, but the B and B was booked for the weekends around our anniversary. Besides, it made for a nice treat to be away from work during the week.

We slept in at home on Tuesday (why start a vacation with setting an alarm?), and got things packed up for the 90-minute drive to Holmes County. It was a pretty day, and we had no trouble getting to Amish Country. We stopped at our usual Amish restaurant, Der Dutchman, for lunch. It was more or less on the way, and we decided we could check in at the B and B after we had eaten. I had a very good but un-Amish stir fry (the chicken in it was quite wonderful), and we swung by the bakery after lunch and drooled over the cheap baked goods (they were selling pies for $6 and entire ho-ho cakes for $4). We held off on buying any, because I wanted to visit the chocolate factory down the street that we had never been to (and had not even known existed). Before stocking up on chocolate, we decided to poke around in the shops in Walnut Creek.

My favorite store there is a religious wood carving store. I am a big fan of wood, and while a few things struck me as tacky, on the whole the carvings were tasteful and made of beautiful wood. My favorite piece was a reproduction of a hymnal page of “Amazing Grace.” It would have fit nicely in a spot in our living room, but the price was way too high (more than some complete furniture sets from Amish stores).

I was poking around in the upstairs portion of the store when I heard someone talking. I pretty quickly realized the woman was not speaking English, and after a moment or two I figured it must be Pennsylvania Dutch (a Germanic language spoken by some Amish and Mennonites). The woman was in traditional dress – a white bonnet and a plain, light blue dress. The parts that made me smile were that she was wearing white sneakers and was speaking German into her cell phone. I don’t know all the “dos and don’ts” of Amish ways, but that was a special moment and made me quite happy.

We did finally get down to the chocolate store, and they make the chocolates right there. You can watch the small factory where the candies are made, and the store wisely leaves the factory windows open so you can smell the chocolate. If I recall correctly, we bought over 1.5 pounds of chocolate (most of it was mine, I have to admit). With our evening goodies well in hand, we made our way back to the car and drove the 15 minutes or so to our B and B, a cabin called “A Little Slice of Heaven.”

The “Little Slice of Heaven” cabin is very pretty, and only has capacity for two groups of guests. We had to share the place with another couple who showed up late on Tuesday and left early on Wednesday, so they were no bother at all. We had the place all to ourselves on Wednesday night. The cabin is small, but has lots of woodwork and all the features we wanted in a B and B – a TV with DVD player for movies, a nice stereo for music, and a whirlpool bath for luxury. We let ourselves in and unpacked, and Meredith polished off her book she was reading while I quality-tested the bed by taking a nap.

We decided to deliberately strike out and explore new places that evening. Usually when we go to Amish country, we just go to Der Dutchman. The friend who owns the B and B strongly encouraged us to get on the back roads and see things, so we did. It was good advice. We took a bunch of back roads through lots of farm country. We saw several horse-and-buggy teams on the road, and we had little trouble getting to our restaurant of choice, Grandma’s Homestead. I figured we had decided on a decent place when I saw a hitch rail with several horses tied up to it. I know that much of Holmes County is touristy, but I took it as a good sign if the local Amish ate there from time to time.

Mer and I ate another excellent meal, and we even tried to be light by getting sandwiches since we were still full from lunch and chocolates. I was thwarted in trying to avoid dessert when I found out my meal came with free dessert. I got some custard ice cream with Oreos mixed in. I was okay, but I need to remember to stick with baked goods when in Amish Country – that is where the desserts really excel.

We went back to the B and B where we relaxed by watching the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers classic Top Hat. The music and fun nature of the film suited my mood quite well, and it was a very nice way to end a very pleasant day.

July 4th was a Saturday this year, and nothing says “Freedom” like a road trip to go see outdoor sculpture. So, we headed off early to go to the Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids, which was about 90 minutes away. It was a fine day, with some clouds, but we figured that between the slight threat of rain and the holiday, we would have the gardens mostly to ourselves, which turned out to be pretty accurate. The rain never came, and so we had a warm but not sunburn-likely day, which is pretty ideal for me.

Getting to the gardens was uneventful, and Meredith was tickled to see that it was right across the street from Cornerstone University, where she has had several students go. We parked in the lightly-populated parking lot, and made our way inside. We paid, and used the restrooms, and saw that there were some inside exhibits, but made our way outside pretty quickly in case it were to rain. We grabbed a map from the inside info desk, and armed with this, Meredith was able to plan our orderly tour of the grounds. We immediately dismissed the idea of a guided tour via tram (neither of us likes tram tours since you cannot always linger at a place). Mer decided to circle around the outside of the park, strongly encouraged by me since it was a wooden walkway through some wetlands. I like walkways. The wetlands were pretty, and had some animal sculptures placed in the trees and bushes and that pleased us both very much. The gardens overall did a very nice job of incorporating the sculptures with the landscape, even when the sculptures were abstract.

The walkway ended near the “farm” area of the gardens, with pretty farm buildings and sculptures of farm animals. We poked around the barn (which had been moved to the gardens from elsewhere) and farmhouse (which really just held bathrooms), and then Mer kicked into gentle tour-mode. We took the wandering garden paths in a gentle stroll, but in a manner that would allow us to see the entire gardens without have to backtrack much. There are several areas of the gardens that are quite isolated, with sculptures down shielded paths, and the largest sculptures are spaced quite a bit apart, so nowhere does the park feel cramped or crowded.

We did end up seeing the entire park. I think it took about 5 hours, plus a little more to see the inside exhibits. I liked most of the pieces I saw, and I do not remember being made angry by any of the modern pieces. I do give much more allowance for abstract sculpture for some reason. I generally like it, especially when it is outside. I think the abstract pieces are better when surrounded by trees. Some of my favorite works included:

A horse sculpture that looks for all the world like it is made of driftwood, and it looks like a horse Death would ride. It is actually made of bronze, but it really does look like wood. It is pretty remarkable.

A huge horse sculpture that is one of the main works of the Gardens. Here we came across a family with two small children. They were running around under the sculpture, and the dad announced they had to move on. As they ran under the sculpture, the older of the two children (who was probably four) looked up and announced “Daddy! This horse is a boy horse!” I found that rather amusing.

There were a pair of very whimsical dragons in the children’s section of the park which made me think of a former student of mine and made me convinced that Mer and I need to kidnap her and take her to the Gardens to see these creations. 

There was a sculpture of an old man and a young girl, and I think it was just called The Storyteller. I’d love to be a good storyteller someday, so I liked the piece.

There were many more sculptures around, and they were quite wonderful. I strongly recommend swinging by Grand Rapids if you are ever even close to the area. You can spend a quite delightful 4-6 hours here.

We did also look at the indoor exhibits, which had a special exhibit featuring works by Calder, who invented the mobile (sculptures that hang and balance from string or wire), as well as huge steel sculptures that can be found worldwide (including Grand Rapids). There are regular indoor exhibits as well that included a carnivorous plant exhibit and a Victorian garden. It really is a wonderful place to visit, and Mer and I want to go back in the fall and winter to see how the grounds change.

Once we were back to the car, Meredith asked if we could swing by the three nearby colleges where she either had students attending or where she had known people who had gone there. She likes to be able to visualize the campuses. Since they were close, I agreed, so we popped across the street to the small but nice campus of Cornerstone University. We made the circuit of campus in just a few minutes, and so proceeded on to the other side of town to Calvin University. Calvin has a much bigger campus, and is more traditional- looking, with more brick buildings, paths, and many trees. Even driving, it took us over 10 minutes to get around the entire campus. It just seemed to go on and on.

We hit the highway and headed back south. Our last stop was to be in Holland, home of Hope College. We got off at the Holland exit and proceeded in to town, and it looked pretty bland – huge strip malls and nondescript housing areas. Mer’s friend had always talked about how cute the college and town were, and I have to admit that I was skeptical. We pushed on and drove into the real downtown, the historical area. It was charming. There were traditional shops that faced wide sidewalks, with restaurants and bookstores and music shops. We drove around Hope College, and it was fairly contained (about 1 block by 2 blocks), but it was very pretty. I needed to use a restroom, so we stopped and wandered around a bit. We found a great bakery that served unusual, large, chocolate desserts, and we were quite won over. We hope to get back to Holland again soon as well.

Once we got back to Mom and Marc’s place, we told them about our day, and then the four of us went downstairs to watch the movie Doubt. It is a film about a Catholic priest who is accused of molesting a boy in his school, and the film revolves around how one can prove something like that. It was quite excellent and thought- provoking. Oddly, Marc and I felt for the priest, while Mom and Mer felt more for the nun who was defending the child. A very good film – I recommend it.

We went home on Sunday, and picked up with a pleasant stay-at-home summer (including going to see The Winter’s Tale for free with our friends Matt and Lis). However, so that I can soon get back to live blogging, I’ll wrap up the entire month of July with this journaling of a very good vacation.

Thursday (July 2nd), we tried another Michigan parks trail. This time it was a small free park called Warren Woods. The trail head again had no map, but the trail was in okay condition and in a pretty woods, so we felt fairly encouraged. This was furthered when the trail began to border a small ravine with a stream at the bottom – it was pretty with the promise of getting much prettier. We crested a hill and found some stairs leading to a beautiful wide wooden foot bridge. This was a very happy find, and so we strolled across the bridge to see what awaited on the other side. Here, the Michigan trail fantasy ended. On the other side of this fantastic bridge the trail abruptly ended in a swamp. We thought that maybe things had been wet and the trail might continue on the other side of the swampy area, but we saw no evidence of that and were getting swarmed by mosquitoes. So, Warren Woods trail turned out to be a great 3/4 of a mile long trail. We headed back to the car.

We drove up to Silver Beach in St. Joe’s to walk around the town and the beach. The town was building a carousel and ballroom near the beach; I will be excited to see how that turns out someday. I support a ballroom! The day was very windy, and so the beach was not overly crowded, although there were quite a few people out anyway. We walked along the beach and headed toward the dual breakwater/lighthouses of Silver Beach. The pier cautions people against walking along it, but it is very wide and fairly smooth, so people walk and fish all along the structure. We wandered out to the edge and watched the waves come crashing over the concrete, and we got to see a sailboat go out on the very choppy lake. After a very leisurely time, we headed back to the car and headed home. Happily, Mom and Marc came in that night, so we got to see them some that evening.

On Friday, we headed out with Mom and Marc in their car. They agreed to drop us off at Weko Dunes State Park. If you walk into the park, it costs nothing to get in, and then it is about a two mile hike back along the beach to get back to the Weko city park. We thought that would be fun. It was a very pretty day, and the Weko Dunes beach was absolutely mobbed. It was funny – there were what felt like thousands of people all in fairly close proximity, but if you wandered a little ways along the beach, the crowds disappeared. I guess it is hard to walk to uncrowded areas with a cooler, beach umbrella, and a four-year-old in tow.

The walk was quite nice, all in all. It turns out much of the walk was easiest if we walked in the water. There, the sand had been compressed into a hard surface that was pretty easy to walk on, plus the water was cool. On the occasions where rocks drove us back to the sand of the beach, the walking was much harder and a lot hotter. I’m not sure how long it took us to walk the whole way back to Weko Beach, but it was long enough that I was glad I did not have to turn around and do it again to get back to a car.

Back at the house, Aunt Linda and Uncle Kenny showed up, and so we had quite a crew for dinner (six in all). After dinner, we headed down to the beach to see the sunset, and as a bonus, the beach had three trumpet players playing “Taps” as the sun set. It is tradition for someone to play “Taps” at the beach when the sun goes down, but it is very unusual to get three trumpet players on one evening. It was a very pretty way to end a pretty day.

Okay. After weeks of being depressed at how far behind my blog had gotten, I have made the radical decision to skip most of the summer. Imagine I did lots of fun things and ate too much, and you would not be far from the truth. I have decided that I did need to blog about a couple of summer things, though. We took two trips this summer – 6 days in Michigan at Mom’s place over the Fourth of July, and 3 days in Amish country in August for our anniversary celebration. I’ll get to the August trip in the next day or two.

Since this was the second summer of trying to sell our old house, we needed to look for a vacation on-the-cheap. Mom’s place in Michigan is very beautiful and has the wonderful merit of being free. Also, Mom and Marc would be there on the weekend and that would be fun, so off to Michigan we went.

We left on Monday, June 30th. We had stuck around until Monday because Mer’s parents were in town over the weekend for Aunt Mary’s 70th birthday party on Saturday the 27th (a big shindig I wish I could blog about). At any rate, we left on Monday. Mom’s place is only five-and-a-half hours away, so we got there in good time. At this point, I’m not sure what we did that evening, but my guess is we played games for the evening.

The next day (Tuesday) we started off with our usual visit to Sammie’s Diner for breakfast. Sammie’s has huge breakfasts that are pretty cheap, so we are fond of the place. Later in the day, we headed down to South Bend to see our friends Gen and Dan. We had not seen them in almost two years, and they had added a new member of the family in that time. So, we got to meet Ellie, who is very cute and seems very good-natured. Gen’s dad came over, and we all headed over to a very good Mediterranean restaurant, Elia’s. Gen and Dan were excited that we wanted to go there; it seems that their South Bend friends are reluctant to get Mediterranean cuisine. We had a good time together, and headed back to Gen and Dan’s place for a little while. Since we still had a 40-minute drive, we had to leave around 9:00 or so, but I do have to say my addiction to dessert, especially after eating out, got the better of me. After getting gas, I pulled in to the Perkins restaurant next to the gas station to get dessert. It was yummy.

Wednesday was the first of July, and it was a nice day. Mer and I wanted to find some places to hike in the area. We like hiking in Ohio, and the parks around us are well maintained and free. So, we set out to find a park. We landed on going to Grand Mere state park. It had a slightly confusing gate. It was supposed to cost $8 to get in, but there was no ranger. The information kiosk was stuffed with a diaper, and the lock-box-looking thing seemed to be in disrepair and looked as if the money might just fall out. I felt bad about it, but given all of that, we just went into the park.

I’m afraid to say that Michigan parks (we checked out another one or two over the week) make Ohio parks shine. Grand Mere was the best of the parks we found, but there was no ranger, there were no trail maps, and the main trail was next to a swamp and so the place was swarming with mosquitoes. We walked along for about a half a mile, and had resolved to turn around and leave shortly if we did not get away from the bugs, when we found a trail that went (very steeply) up a sand dune. So, we took that. The dune was very difficult to get up, but once we did, there was a breeze and no bugs. The dunes kept going up, so we kept climbing, and were given wonderful views of the lake. We tromped around the dunes and headed down to the beach. We meandered around the beach for some time and had fun watching the lake and people and a very happy stick-fetching dog. We eventually returned back up the dune and went back to the car.

We headed further north and went to South Haven. It had been recommended to us as a very cute town, and it was. It had turned cool and was spitting rain, so I don’t think we saw it at its best. We did duck into a diner/ice cream parlor for lunch, and then headed over to the South Bend Chocolate Factory for dessert. A huge piece of chocolate cake caught my eye, so we got that. It turned out to be a pretty shocking $12, but we split it, so that was less shocking. The cake weighed in at over a pound and was quite delicious. Certainly not a treat to have on a regualr basis, but it was nice on vacation.

We headed back home from there, and in approaching Silver Beach we had the happy timing to be the first in line at a drawbridge that went up for a huge freight ship. It took about 20 minutes, but I liked watching both the bridge and the boat, so I did not mind (I was actually pretty excited about it). We made it the rest of the way home and, in the mood for it, we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I’ll write more about the other three days tomorrow. For now, it is good that the blog bridge has come back down and I can proceed again.