My Christmas gift to Mer this year was a bit early. I took her on a date on Thursday the 10th. We went to Outback to eat, and then drove over to Kent to go to the Kent Stage (an old renovated movie theater) to see one of Mer’s favorite bands, Over the Rhine.

Mer has been following Over the Rhine since around 1991. The band members went to Malone College in Canton, and all had Mer’s father, Dale, for an English professor. So, Mer found out about them through her dad. The original four-member band is now down to two original members – a husband/wife team that is still creating really good music. The duo brought along three other musicians with them to flesh out the sound, and they were tremendous. One musician in particular was jaw-dropping. He played the pedal steel guitar, mandolin, dobro, guitar, and a mandolin-guitar hybrid that I had never seen before, and he played them all effortlessly. I spent much of the concert watching him.

The concert was excellent. It opened with Lucy Wainwright, the daughter of Loudon Wrainwright III (a well-known folk singer). She was by herself and played guitar. She was a very funny person with many stories (including a date in London where her date ended up in the hospital (not her fault)), and her music was very solid. She did a nice job of winning the audience over, and she played for about 45 minutes.

Over the Rhine came on after a 20-minute intermission, and they played for over two hours. Being December, they did several numbers from their two excellent Christmas albums, but they also did many songs from their other albums as well. They did not go back as far as their first two albums, but otherwise I think they did at least a song from all the others. The lead singer, Karin, can still sing, and her husband plays keyboards really well. They seem to enjoy each other on stage, and had a good time interacting with the band.

If you are interested in hearing what Over the Rhine sounds like, you can check them out for free at archive.org – start here – http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3AOvertheRhine&sort=-publicdate and see what you think.

Just to round out the Christmas gift, I did buy Mer Over the Rhine’s first-ever songbook so she would have something to take home and play on the piano. Turns out the arrangements are a tad tricky, but she is a game soul and did a nice (if slow) job at her first few attempts at them. Merry Christmas, love!

Saturday the 5th was “my” day, but it was not too exciting for most of it. We did start off well, by using up the last of a Bob Evans gift card to get breakfast at the restaurant. Then, we spent hours (and I do mean hours) running errands. Happily, we were able to run them together, and it was companionable. Plus, I was getting new glasses, and I did not dare to pick out my own glasses without Mer’s input. She (with the help of two store clerks) convinced me to get frames from the “go bold” collection. They look like updated hornrims from the 50s, and Mer helped cement the deal by saying they looked like the glasses David Tennant wears as The Doctor in Doctor Who.

A friend of mine had given me spare tickets he had to go see Weathervane Theater’s production Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge. I had a little money around, but not a lot of time, so Mer and I settled on splitting a sub at Subway, and then trying the ice cream at an ice cream parlor/laundromat called McMoo’s. It was especially funny to be getting ice cream since it was a very cold night out, but dessert is dessert. The ice cream was okay, not great, and we had to rush it because we were cutting the time too close to the start of the play.

Weathervane is a comuntiy theater, which means that most of the actors are amateurs. Still, I have found their productions to be well done, and they have been around for a long time, having started in 1935. It is interesting to me that I keep managing to see variations on A Christmas Carol, a novel/play/movie powerhouse that I have long since grown tired of. Last year, Shannon and Jo took us to see the story from the viewpoint of Marley, Scrooge’s partner, and it was a well-done show. Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge looked closely at Bob Cratchit’s family, especially his wife. The play was meant to be a good-humored look at the familiar story, and threw in many contemporary references to Enron and to It’s a Wonderful Life. As a play, it was smile-worthy, with a few heart-felt laughs along the way. It dragged a touch in the second half as some of the first-act jokes were re-hashed, but it held together okay on the whole.

The acting was fine across the cast. The actor playing Bob Cratchit was excellent – he shone every time he was on stage. He had very good stage presence, and was easy to hear and delivered his lines with ease.

There was no set to speak of – the play took place in front of the main curtain. The main stage was set for the teen production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so this play made do with a very sparse set. It worked just fine.

I think I would have liked to see the play head even more toward farce or satire. It could not quite make up its mind where it was going to land – a tongue-in-cheek play, a satire, or a farce. I think it could have been much fun if the author had pulled out all the stops and let the play romp. Still, it was an entertaining production, especially as a gift from a friend!

On Thursday the 3rd, Mer and I headed over to Actors’ Summit Theater to see Guys on Ice, a (are you ready?) musical about ice fishing. We were a little skeptical, but were happily surprised. It was a three-man show, mostly about two friends shooting the breeze while ice fishing in an ice shanty. Along the way, they sing about things. Odd, but it worked pretty well. It was all fluff, but who cares? It was entertaining.

The two friends are fishing while waiting for a local reporter to show up to feature them on “that fishing show.” The reporter never shows, of course, but they spend the day fishing and trying to get rid of an irritating fisherman, The Moocher, who bums bait and beer. The play took place in Wisconsin, so there was fun with accents and some pokes at football – one of the guys was in trouble with his wife because he had Packers tickets on their anniversary (he rightly pointed out, “I’ve only knnown my wife 17 years – I’ve had a relationship with the Packers for 38 years!”).

The music was fun and lighthearted. It was backed by solo piano, but the piano was played very well. There was a fun number about being the King of Fishing, where one of the guys imagined himself as the Elvis of Ice Fishing, with the result that his friend comes back in the shanty wondering why the singer is standing on his bait bucket. My favorite number was a tribute to snowmobile suits. They guys were wearing full snowmobile suits, and sang about them, and they provided percussion by using the velcro flaps of the suits. That was great.

So, all in all, Guys on Ice was a big hit with me and Mer. It was not deep at all, it was all fluff, and it was great. It was a good way to spend a Thursday evening (excpet for the surprise of remembering that I had to work the next day!).

We had Wednesday through Sunday off for Thanksgiving, so we decided to head to Michigan to see Mom and Marc. It was also a fine excuse to pick up our friend Ellen who lives in Hillsdale, Michigan. We left Tuesday, but Meredith had to stay until 6:00 for parent/teacher conferences, so we got a late start. That worked out okay, because we had invited ourselves to stay the night at Ellen’s, and she was gracious enough to accept – she even promised to turn the heat up from absolute zero to merely frigid (actually, her house was very warm this time, but don’t tell her that). Ellen’s house is a nice distance away from Cuyahoga Falls – just about 3.5 hours, so we got to Ellen’s about 10:00ish and chatted briefly and marveled again at how pretty her house is. We did not stay up too long, but went to bed after procuring a lamp and 17 tons of blankets for Mer.

The next morning, Ellen served up a fine breakfast of baked pancakes, which I had never had before. They were very good, and she informed us they are also called German babies or Dutch babies, for reasons unknown to her. This was very fitting, though, since Mer was teaching Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” in her English class (a viciously satiric essay about solving Ireland’s starvation problems by eating babies). Many of Mer’s students were happy to be confirmed in their suspicions that she eats babies.

After breakfast, we packed up the car and headed out. It is about 2.5 hours to Mom and Marc’s place from Ellen’s, and the trip was uneventful. We were a bit surprised when we got there that the drive was blocked by a van, but it just turned out to be a workman. He moved so we could get in the garage, and we were able to unpack while he finished up his work on the front door. After the workman left, I went downtown to get some supplies to make bread as a welcome for Mom and Marc, and by the time I got back, Shannon and Jo had arrived and everyone was quietly reading or grading in the living room. I worked on my bread.

Mom and Marc arrived earlier than expected (they were allowed to leave work early since it was the day before Thanksgiving), and that was much fun, although it did ruin my plan of having hot bread for them as they walked in the door. We all talked, and I did finally get some bread on the table, which seemed to be a hit. Mom and Marc supplemented the bread with pizza (I think).

Meredith and I were in the middle of a fitness challenge that was issued by CVCA. If we exercised 30 minutes/day, and if most of the employees did it, then CVCA would get a break for insurance costs. I can’t say we always had the best attitude about the program, but we complied, which meant we walked 30 minutes every day that we were at Mom’s, incuding Thanksgiving. Several of the days were just a tad cold and windy.

Other than walking, much of the time was very mellow, with a lot of good food. Mom and Marc put out a wonderful spread, and we ate too much. There were also a number of games that were played – Shannon and I rallied from behind, but still lost to Mer, Jo, and Ellen in the book-identifying game Dark and Stormy. Various people in various combinations played Blokus, the Avalon Hill game of Shakespeare (I beat Mer by one space!), and Scrabble over the course of the vacation. Shannon and Jo had to leave Friday, but we filled in for them by watching the five-part mini-series Cranford, which is based on a series of novels from the mid-ninteenth century. The series was quite good – very funny much of the time, and touching in a few places. I was ticked because the author seemed determined to kill off everyone, but other than that little detail, the series was very good. Ellen said she had heard the TV series was one of those rare ones where the series was actually better than the books it was based on.

Saturday, Mom and Marc were going to see Marc’s family in Michigan, so we decided to get adventuresome and headed to a town we had never been to before – Saugatuck. It was a bit of a longer drive than I had expected (about 70-80 minutes), but it did turn out to be a cute little town, although we missed it the first time (it is off the main road about a mile). We wandered the streets window shopping. We saw a sign for a bookstore on a second floor of a bulding, so we tried the door, but it was locked. There was a gallery on the first floor (there is a law in Michigan that all towns near the lake must have at least one gallery on every block), so we went in to see if there was an inside entrance to the bookstore. There was not, but there were hundreds of paintings crammed in the gallery. The clerk informed us that he sold more paintings than any gallery in the entire country, and that everything was 70-80% off because it was off season. We looked around, and much of it was not to my taste or Mer’s taste, but there was one abstract piece we kept coming back to. We had a place in our living room that we wanted to fill with a big painting, and this fit the bill. The painting was only $80, and we had been given a gift of $60 earlier, so we finally decided to buy it. We left it in the store so we could keep wandering for a bit.

We went down to the lake. There were no boats around, but there were a lot of spots to moor boats, so I assume this is a popular spot in the summer. We were getting hungry, so we found (after a little looking) a reasonalbly priced restaurant where we ate. We then went and picked up the painting, which I am guessing is three feet by four feet. I was confident that it would fit in the trunk, just. I was wrong. So, lucky and longsuffering Ellen got to share her backseat with a painting all the way back to Mom’s. (On the return trip on Sunday, Mer sat in the back seat for the drive to Ellen’s.) I did try to mitigate the wow-what-a-great-time-I’m-having aspect of Ellen’s plight by stopping near home at a Culver’s Restaurant to buy frozen custard for everyone. Ellen assured us that the painting story would provide material for her Christmas letter (when it comes out in May).

We did go down to the lake several times, usually on our CVCA-insurance-requested walks. Ellen went with us a couple of times, which insured the next installment of the Ellen-is-cold-with-the-Riordans series. Mom and Marc joined the three of us (with Marc driving Ellen down to the beach and Ellen and Mer back to the house) for a very spectacular sunset on Saturday evening.

While Mer and I still have one more house than we would like to have, we do have many, many things to be thankful for. One of the biggest blessings we have is a pretty great family – not to mention friends who somehow manage to still want to hang out with us despite my best efforts at freezing and crowding them away. It is good to stop and take stock of these blessings once in awhile – we probably should do it more often.

One of my friends and running partners, Nate Gurnish, had been hinting and then outright telling me that I should run the Cleveland Fall Classic half-marathon with him. I was fortunate enough to get some extra money (as a gift) in November, so I did end up with enough money to pay for the $35 (or so) entry fee, and I entered the week before the race.

I wrestle with running on Sundays – Sundays are supposed to be a time of rest and worship, and running seems to be mostly self-worship (“look what I can do”). In this case, it was an easy decision. Nate had asked me to run with him as a favor, and especially where he trained with me for much of the fall, I wanted to do what I could to help him. Also, I wanted to push him. Nate had gotten just over 1:40 in the Akron half-marathon in September. I knew he could break 1:40, and I wanted to pace him so that he would break that mark.

Mer, always faithful in these things, came along to cheer and be the stuff holder. Nate’s wife, Rachel, was running in the 5k race that day as well, so Mer was once again by herself for the first 35 minutes or so. Rachel did achieve her goal that day in the 5k – she wanted to break 30 minutes, and she did so (getting a 28:58 time). She then joined Mer to cheer me and Nate on.

The Cleveland Fall Classic is well designed for spectators. It is a six mile out-and-back that we had to do twice (to get to 13.1 miles). This means that Mer and Rachel got to see us start, then come back, then go out, and then they saw us close to the finish, all without having to move very far. That was nice from their perspective.

Having an out-and-back that we had to do twice was not my first choice, but it worked out okay. I was able to break the race into 4 segments of about 3 miles, and that made for good goals. It was a little depressing to run over the same ground a second time, but not so bad as I had feared.

The day was quite wonderful for late November – it was sunny and in the high 30s or low 40s at the start, and warmed up nicely into the high 40s by the time we finished. The temperature, combined with a very, very flat course, made for pretty ideal running conditions.

Not everything was perfect, though. The race had almost 1000 people in it (counting the 5k people), and there were only 8 bathrooms for everyone (including spectators). I waited in line for a bathroom so long that I only got to the starting line (where Nate was waiting) about two minutes before the start of the race. That put us pretty far back in the starting pack, and so we spent the first two miles dodging people. Nate even cut a woman off right at the start, to the point where he thinks he may have bumped her leg (although he certainly did not mean to). It was a very crowded start.

There were three water stops along the course, which were plenty for a 3+-mile section, and the water was fine, but the Gatorade was so weak as to make me wonder if I had grabbed water by accident (twice). I finally gave up and stuck to water. This is not a horrible thing, but just an annoyance (Gatorade is useful for fuel on longer runs).

The last, and biggest, problem with the race was that the 5k runners shared the same course, but started 15 minutes later. Nate and I caught up with the tail end of the 5k runners for their last 1.5 miles, and it was frustrating at times. We had a whole road for most of that distance, but we still had to dodge a lot of people. There were numerous younger girls running as part of a get-girls-to-run group, which is great, except they did not know race etiquette. In general, in running, you should stay to the right so people can pass as needed. The girls were often running 3, 4 or even 5 abreast. Near the 5k finish, the course diverted onto a paved bike path, and it was very congested with young girls often taking the entire trail and blocking the half-marathoners behind them. Nate and I passed to the side, in the grass, but it was still frustrating and a little dangerous (one half-marathoner tripped trying to pass a group of girls, and got some road rash; happily, the girls were not hurt).

Anyway, those three problems aside, the run was quite good. I felt great, and I pushed the pace. The road was through a park system, and so the trees were very pretty. Nate was running well, although he started to crash around mile 9. I tried to keep the pace steady, and tried to give Nate advice. When I told him, with two miles left, that we would pick up the pace in the last half-mile, he laughed a slightly manic laugh, and asked me what I thought he had been doing. Point taken. Nate hung in there at that pace, and he even found a burst for the last 30 seconds of the race and finished a step ahead of me. I stopped my watch (there was no clock on the course), and we finished in 1:37:19, or a 7:26/mile pace. That was over three minutes faster for Nate compared to his Akron time, and was just two minutes or so off my best time. It was a great race. Nate had nothing left, and told me he did not enjoy the last four miles at all, but to me, that is how you want to finish a race. I am proud of Nate – what a great job.

Some official stats:

Nate finished 8 out of 24 in his age group (25-29).

I finished 16th out of 46 in my age group (35-39).

Nate and I finished 96th and 97th out of 327 male finishers (the women’s stats were separate).

I think this was a more competitive field of runners since it was in late November. That meant the high school and college cross country seasons were over, so we had a number of fast runners from area schools who ran as well (which they had not been able to do in the September Akron Marathon because they were still in season).

Saturday the 21st was Mer’s day, but it was on a slight delay. We started the day helping our freinds Zach and Londa move. The were moving from an apartment near our house to their newly purchased first house about three miles away. I had helped Zach move twice before, and he runs a very efficient move. It was even more organized with Londa – everything was boxed up and labeled with the location where the box was to go in the new house. We had a lot of people there to help, which included several members of the soccer team at one point. We probably had about a dozen movers, and we were able to get everything on the truck (and in cars) and over to the new place, and get it all unpacked, in about 90 minutes. Zach and Londa also always makes sure their help is well fed, so there was lots of pizza and cookies and such. Since I knew most of the people involved in the move, it was a very fun time, with good fellowship and good humor.

Once we got back home and got situated, Mer took me out for a surprise. We headed out, and went down several roads that I had not been down before, and we ended up in Solon. We pulled in to Solon High School and got out. I was a bit confused – there were several people in the parking lot, all of whom were Asian. I could not figure out what would be the draw for such a large number of a relatively small demographic. It turned out to be that Solon High School offers Chinese, but that is not what we were there for. I found out once we got to the doors – there were posters for a production for Hamlet. I was quite surprised, and a bit shocked. I had not thought that a high school would ever attempt Hamlet. I was quite interested in seeing how they would pull it off.

Quite well, as it turns out. We finally found the auditorium in the huge school. The entire production, including audience seating, was on the stage of the auditorium. This made for great intimate theater, but was a bit of a condemnation of Solon’s theatergoing crowd. There was seating in the auditorium for hundreds, but Hamlet was set up for seating for maybe about 80 or so. Since the cast of Hamlet was very large (about 20-25 students) and there were only four performances, you would have thought they could have had more people in the audience. In defense of the program, they did have to shift the starting time suddenly to 2:00 in the afternoon because of Solon going deep into the football playoffs, so maybe that threw some people off their schedule.

Anyway, the production of Hamlet was very good, with some excellent aspects to it. It was a modern production, where Denmark was set as a video game company. Cladius had recently taken over as CEO after the death (murder) of Hamlet’s father. The stage was set up as a board room on one end (with two levels), and a video game testing area on the other. The action of the play happened mostly in the open space in between, with some thiings happening in the board room area. As such, the set was simple and clean, but worked very well.

The set had clever aspects. When Hamlet was looking for the ghost of his father, he walked past the portrait of Hamlet, Sr. Very suddenly, a face and hands started to come through the portrait – it turned out to be made of some kind of stretchy fabric, and an actor was pushing against the screen. It was very creepy and effective. Then, Hamlet charged out into the open stage, and the entire stage became fogged in using fog machines that were located under our seats. It felt as if we were there with Hamlet, and it was great. Later in the play, when Hamlet kills Polonius, Polonius was hiding on the second level of the boardroom, Once he was shot, he staggered out from behind the curtain where he had hidden, and he crashed through the handrail of the balcony and fell onto the boardroom table. Very high energy and well done.

The acting was very solid all the way around, especially for high school students. There were a few students who did not sound natural in their lines, but the major characters did quite well. Casting was interesting and worked. Horatio (Hamlet’s good freind) was cast with a girl in the role. It added some sexual tension to the role. Mer put it well by saying that Hamlet and Horatio were good friends who could have been more, but were not. It also allowed Horatio to act in a more stereotypically feminine way – she could cry when Hamlet died, and it was very moving. Rosencrantz (Hamlet’s schoolmate) was also a girl, and she played Rosencrantz as a woman who flirted with anyone in power (including the king, Cladius). It was very effective, and added to how Rosencrantz was not really on Hamlet’s side.

Ophelia was very solid, except I thought her mad scene was too over the top. It came across as almost comical, when it should be a very piteous scene. Still, she did a nice job in her other scenes, especially with Hamlet.

The real gem of the show was the actor who played Hamlet. He was amazing. He may very well be the best actor I have seen under the age of 25, and maybe under the age of 30. He had a full grasp of what he was saying and infused his lines with proper emotion and energy. He had such command of his lines he was able to recite an entire scene with Rosencrantz and Guildernstern while actively fencing against both of them (and winning). It was just remarkable. I would stand this 18-year-old’s performance of Hamlet next to any that I have seen.

I was also very pleased with the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy. Many people think this is Hamlet musing on committing suicide. It is not – it is a speech about how Hamlet will probably die if he tries to kill the king, and how he could live if he stays quiet. This production got it right, and added dramatic tension to it. Hamlet gave the speech while assembling a gun, and at one point he points it at Ophelia (who is on stage) before putting the gun away.

All in all, it was a very good production. My guess is the directors decided to do Hamlet because they had an actor who could play Hamlet (not something that is a given at a high school level). Still, it proved me wrong in my suspicions that a high school could not pull off Hamlet. Kudos to Solon High School.

You might think the day was done, but you would be wrong. We headed south to Canton, and Mer took me to our cheap movie theater so I could see Julie and Julia. Mer had seen the film with her folks when we were in Maine in October, and she wanted me to see it. It was quite good. The movie is the story of how a young woman decides to cook through all of Julie Child’s French cookbook in one year. The film is cleverly interspersed with telling Julie Child’s story, played stunningly well by Meryl Streep. It was an entertaining film, but I still came away from the movie with a poor opinion of French cooking (too many weird things for my taste).

In rebellion against French cuisine, we ended the evening finishing up a gift card to Red Robin, a restaurant that specializes in burgers and fries. It was a fulfilling day.

Mer and I got to see CVCA’s fall theater production, Treasure Island, on Friday the 20th. I am always impressed by CVCA’s theater, and it is much fun to know some of the actors on the stage, and to be part of a community in the audience. Just the experience of being in the theater is pleasant, and that is independent of the play being done.

There are many adaptations of Treasure Island, and the production that the director chose for the students was a very loose adaptation, with a huge cast of characters with many roles for women. It had several tongue-in-cheek moments as well, which I think is a wise thing for high school theater,

The set was excellent, as always. Our stage is oddly shaped, like a triangle. The troupe took advantage of this, and decked out (ha!) the stage as the prow of a ship. Granted, the wheel of the ship would have been facing the wrong way (it was facing the audience), but it worked very well. For the first act, they added various objects on the stage to indicate a tavern.

The first act was the main characters looking for a ship and crew, and involved a long flash-back to fill in the details of the story. Once the crew had been signed up with the promise of treasure, the first act ended. The second act took place entirely on the boat, and was full of action – the heroes finding out about the crew’s plan to rebel and take all the treasure, the capture of the protagonist, his release by an insane man who swam over from the island (who had a fully staged fantasy about cheese!), and the ensuing fight to recapture the ship. In my opinion, the first act was a bit slow because things moved more slowly, but the second act was great and moved right along.

I enjoyed seeing the students act. I am biased, but I was especially pleased by two of my Fools (my improv group). One played the insane man, and he played a high-energy character that was very physical – nice job. My other student played Long John Silver, and while he is an excellent actor, this was the first time where I thought he became his character (as opposed to playing a character). His Long John Silver shone every time he was on stage. It was great to see him do so well.

The overall cast was immense – there were at least 25 people who appeared on stage. The director did a nice job of sorting them all out on stage so they all had highly visible moments, especially early on when the characters were being introduced.

CVCA’s next production is the spring musical, which this year is going to be Annie. I’m looking forward to it – the CVCA theater is a good organization

Cascade Valley – Saturday, Nov. 14th

Saturday the 14th was a beautiful day, and it was “my” day, so we clearly needed to tromp around one of the excellent area parks. This day, I decided for an ambitious plan, and so we headed out to Cascade Valley Park.

Cascade Valley is on the edge of the Valley (there is only one major valley in Northeast Ohio, so everyone just calls it “the” Valley), and it is a circular trail that has the option to walk all the way down into the Valley, where it joins up with the Towpath trail. This was the longer and more difficult trail, so of course that is the option that I wanted to do.

The initial trail was beautiful. The leaves were down, but the trail staff had blown the leaves off the trail, so there would be no wondering where the trail went this week! Also, it was nice to be able to see the few rocks and roots that were around. There is a special beauty to a large forest with all the leaves down. It is stark, but striking, and you can see a lot more than you normally can. In the case of Cascade Valley, that meant that we could see the other side of the valley in places. We headed along the trail, which decended before too long, and rather steeply. We came to the point where the circular trail diverged from the Valley trail, and so we continued to head down. The Valley extension of the Cascade trail was not so well maintained – all the leaves were still on the trail.

It continued to be a fine hike. We laughed about how we were going to have to tromp all the way back up to the car. I expect Mer was laughing through a little worry, but she is a game soul. We stumbled across some very cool plants that still had all of their leaves, and they were all green. It was a moment right out of a fantasy film – everything around was grey and dead looking, and here was one tree-shrub that was still vibrant. Very neat.

We got all the way down to the Towpath, where I confidently struck out going right. I wanted to get to some restaurants in the Valley, and I was pretty sure they were in the direction I was going. After about a third of a mile, I was not so sure anymore, so we went back and I consulted a map on the trail. We struck out going back the same direction, and after about a half a mile, I could see some buildings that did not look right. We turned around and I confidently headed back in the other direction, passing the trail head where we had come out. After an additional half mile or so, we came up on Big Bend trailhead, which is next to the Towpath, and in the wrong direction. Ooops. We turned around and walked the full mile back into the area we had been aiming at the first two times.

Once we actually did get into the right area, we headed over to the Valley Cafe, which is a very pleasant little restaurant that we have been to from time to time. I was delighted that the menu was advertising whoopie pies, a dessert that I grew up with in Maine. The hostess informed us they were “huge.” When we passed them in the display case on the counter, they were about the diameter of a coffee mug. This is not “huge” in my book – I would have classified it as “small.” Anyway, we had a tasty, but whoopie-pie-free, lunch, and headed back along the trail.

The “up” section of the trail was not too strenuous. We took our time, and did not get too winded. We stopped along the second part of the Cascade Valley trail to look at the view over to the far side of the Valley. November was continuing to be the October we did not have, with beautiful sunny days and fairly warm temperatures.

Later that evening, we headed over to visit our friends the Gurnishes. Nate had invited us over for fried turkey, which I had never had before. There were some other people from CVCA there as well (LT Newland, Dubbs, and the Bollenbachers), so it was a festive little crowd. Nate and Rachel (the Gurnishes) are hospitiable folks anyway, but they had tons of food, all of which was available to be dunked in the fryer. I passed on most of the fried vegitables, (although they looked good), and ate a good amount of fried (wild) turkey, which was really tender and tasty. Mer and I had brought bread, so I ate a good amount of Rachel’s homemade jellies with the bread. We sat around a fire and ate and talked and laughed – it was a good time.