I know you’ve been clamoring for the trip details, and I’ve finally taken the time to find the camera and snatch the pictures for uploading.
Last Saturday, Berta, Abby, and I trekked up to the Poconos to hang out with Berta’s family at her aunt Shirley’s place near Hawley. We were wary of rain, but held out optimism that we would see some nice weather and a pleasant stay.
We left home on Friday after work, and didn’t really get on the road until about 6:30. After stopping at a Burger King on the turnpike for dinner (hey, those fire-grilled salads are pretty good) we were a bit late. Riding around on the twisty roads in the dark woodsy mountains isn’t too fun, but we did succeed in finding the place before too late, around 10:30.
I think I had mentioned before about our plans to set up a tent and sleep outside. I may also have mentioned about the forcasted low for the evening being 48 degrees. Anyway, we didn’t really have to worry about that because they had arranged space in the house for us. I think that the entire idea of the tent was lost, though. We didn’t bring the tent so that we would have our own space - I think that’s the conclusion that everyone else came to, and how we ended up in our own room - but so that we could get a taste of “camping”. It was supposed to be fun. Oh, well.
As it turns out, everyone has a much different sentiment about staying at Shirley’s place anyway. I think that they all think it’s not rural. I mean to say, it’s not a house in the woods, it’s just a house on a road like anywhere else. It just happens that it’s not very close (hundreds of yards?) to the net house (which also looks rather rustic) and it’s surrounded by woods. I suppose I took that to mean that it’s kind of “out there”, but apparently not so.
Plus the concern for bears was high. Everyone is so convinced that bears are out there waiting to pounce, but I’m telling you, there is no food in the tent and so there are no bears trying to get in the tent. Anyway, enough with this tent business, in spite of the fact that it took up a large amount of packing space in the car and much effort in planning on our parts to assemble the “camping” supplies. Right. Anyway…
Saturday morning we all got up and ate. I think we did a lot of eating. Berta’s Aunt Shirley makes a good host and there was plenty to eat. People went for walks, and at one point we even took the bikes for a ride. I had to chase after Berta on my bike in my pajamas (sweat pants) because she had forgotten to re-attach her front brake after assembling the bike from the car. I ended up following them around on a short ride.
Abby fell asleep while waiting for more things to happen, so I took the opportunity to drive a bunch of people into Hawley. Hawley is a neat little town with an ice cream shop, a used book store, and a couple of small restaurants. The grocery store was very busy and was very low-tech compared to the ones around here.
We stopped first at the castle of Castle Reproductions. It’s a big building that looks like a castle. They sell reproductions of many things that you might find in a more expensive (ok, very expensive) home. They carry marble statues and fireplaces, fake mounted animal heads, furniture of all sorts from all eras, stained glass windows, carosel horses and carnival equipment, ivory and bone trinkets, and tons of other weird stuff. Check out the pictures of all of it. I wonder if any will ever be bought.
The sad thing is that there are very few things in the place that are affordably priced. Hmm, no… There is nothing in the place that is affordably priced. There are many items in the warehouse that are in the tens of thousands of dollars, and most items cannot be bought for a mere couple hundred. They had a couple of interesting poker tables and the designs of some of the furniture were unfamiliar to me. It was a pretty neat place, but I doubt I’ll ever have a reason to really shop there.
As I was indiscriminently taking pictures, I pretended (in my own admittedly psychotic mind) that I was the majordomo of someone very rich and I was photographing anything that might interest the lord of my house. Or something. Nobody seemed to care, anyway, and if you’re rich and see something in my pictures that you like, I expect a 10% finder’s fee.
So we took entirely too long at the castle, and then stopped in town to pick up some stuff for the dinner that was planned for the evening. Ok, we also stopped at the ice cream place, and I spent all of the money I had on me (and some of the change in the car) on a single cone of MooseTracks ice cream. Man, that is good stuff.
The whole time we were driving around, the Daria VCD that I had made was playing on the van’s DVD player. Everyone seemed amused by it, and when we stopped momentarily to buy crackers or some stuff, I tossed the guys (Mike and Jason) the wireless headphones so that the girls could gab over music instead of being interrupted by Quinn Morgendorfer’s voice actor.
When we got back, Berta, Abby, Mary Ann, and Ryan had left on a bike ride, so we set about getting dinner ready. I was put in charge of cooking the vegetables on the protable grill. I cooked some portabella mushrooms and tomatoes, which turned out pretty well using Aunt Shirley’s recepie. We had barbequed chicken and kielbasa cooked over the open flame, along with potato-egg salad and corn on the cobb. I didn’t have any salad and I was pretty full.
After dinner, everyone decided to go on a walk. Actually, the original walk was my idea, since I wanted to take Abby back in the woods and walk around a little. She would never have that chance around home since there aren’t many woods to get lost in, and I wanted to take advantage of that. For whatever reason, everyone else wanted to walk on the road. I tried to explain to them that they were missing the point - there’s all these trees out here and natural stuff to see, so why walk down the asphalt other than it being an easier path? Anyway, everyone else took off down the road while Berta, Abby, Mary Ann, Ryan, and I wandered out the back through into the woods in search of bears.
We didn’t find any bears.
The woods were neat, though, and I’m glad we went in spite of everyone’s protestations. Abby had a good time looking out for bears, although next time we’ll have to remember to bring more sensible shoes and pants for everyone. There were all sorts of strange mosses and stones to look at; things that I was sure that Abby would enjoy, and she did. We found a couple of “bear beds” that were cleared ground where the bears sleep, and some other evidence that bears are out in the woods (yeah, right).
After our respective walks we stoked up the fire again for the evening. I took some pictures of the deer that came by to check out the corn cobbs we had thrown into the woods. While Berta’s family did their yearly pow-wow with percussion instruments, I grabbed up my telescope and pointed it skyward.
I was disappointed but not surprised for most of the weekend over how overcast it was. I didn’t think I was going to get a chance to look at the stars. But on Saturday night, everything cleared up and you could see the stars very well.
As usual in the Poconos, you can see so much more than at home. You could pretty clearly see the cloud of the Milky Way cross the sky. Unfortunately, there were a lot of trees, and since I had set up on the street, I could only see a sliver of the full sky, although the big dipper was clearly visible and quite bright at one end.
While I was setting up the telescope, I saw a shooting star, probably a precursor to the Perseids this week. Mike was hanging out with me and looking at the stars through the telescope. One of the neat things about telescopes is that you can’t just do it yourself. You really have to share it with someone else. I wish that we had a location clear enough and early enough to pick out some planets without obstruction, because those would have been cool to show off. But the stars were pretty impressive by themselves.
Sunday morning I slept a bit later than I might have, and I had the strangest dream I’ve had in a while, about the secret of the universe. I was telling Brian about it the other day, and he didn’t have much comment, but it was fairly interesting. Unfortunately, it’s not the topic of this post.
Before lunch we went down with Emma, Mary Ann, and Ryan to the pool and lake to check things out. We climbed around on the playground they have down there.
I was being a bit of a daredevil on the swings. I swung pretty high and flipped upside-down. Berta was fearful of me falling or something and told me to stop. Afterward, I went over and played on the playground a little. They had one of those old spinning things like a carousel, but with bars you hold onto and push. I spun around on that for a bit and got a bit queasy.
Abby played on the playset and enjoyed the springy animals that you can ride on. The playset was quite expansive. There were many separate parts and she tried out each one, testing out the various slides.
After I recovered from my spinning, I climbed up in the play gym and tried to slide down this fireman’s pole. Fearing the skin of my shorts-bare legs being stripped raw by the metal, I didn’t wrap my les properly, and when my hands started to stick in a similar way, I just let go. To my misfortune, I underestimated the fall and wrenched my back pretty good. Even though it didn’t bother me too much later, for a little while I felt quite like I was going to fall over and not get up.
After I had finally learned that I’m not 3 any more, Berta and Abby got in the pool and splashed around while the three of us looked on. I think they had fun.
Some time after lunch we packed up the rest of our junk and headed home. It was a pretty fun weekend, and I’m sure that we’d be interested in doing something a little longer and a little more rustic next year.
