Today was the first day of the whole trip that I needed an alarm to get me up – 
probably because I didn’t sleep very well. Apparently, the word “Victorian” as a descriptor for a B&B means “AC doesn’t work very well” and our room was really stuffy and warm. It apparently also means “not up to date on the electronics” as evidenced by the TV-in-the-closet arrangement! Clearfield is also a town with bell ringer fever – the church bells on the Catholic church next door started ringing at 7am…. 46 times!
But breakfast with the proprietress Peggy and the two other guests was lovely: scrambled eggs with mushrooms and cheese, fruit salad, fried ham, home made bread (with GF biscuits for me), home made jam and banana bread. One of our fellow travelers works at RIT so Gillian got to hear more about that school from the staff side – bonus!
Then we packed up the Saab for the final time, put the roof down, and took all the back roads home. We did everything we could to avoid the PA Turnpike and the Breezewood interchange and got to see some of Americana along the way. It seemed fitting to have John Mellencamp playing as we passed little houses (not pink though), trailers, mansions, cute towns, not-big-enough-to-be-towns, all while going up and down the foothills through Pennsylvania. I confess that I never realized there were so many places with the words “Gap”, “Ridge”, and “Hollow” in their names! The drive was absolutely beautiful with few cars around, plenty of green trees, quietly flowing rivers and impossibly blue skies with fluffy white clouds. It was almost surreal.
But unfortunately, every mile was bringing things closer to an end. We stopped for one last break in Fredericksburg where Gillian got some guitar bits (she is suffering serious playing withdrawals!) and then we had our sights set on the one thing we really missed this trip: Ethnic food that wasn’t Chinese or Italian. We hit an Indian buffet that was delicious and just what we needed to bring us back to reality. Not that it would take very long for that to happen: as soon as we hit the Beltway, we realized there was one other thing we had done without and hadn’t missed…. traffic!
But we made it home – and on a single tank of gas from Buffalo! Frank is quite pleased that the 94 Saab made it 386 miles on a single tank. Here are some more stats from the trip:
Total miles driven: about 2100 (Frank isn’t as much of a numbers geek as I am!) Total miles walked: 66 miles
In steps: 153,018
(Miles San ran before anyone else was up: 38.8)
Number of calories consumed: at least double what was expended!
Number of wineries visited: about 12
Number of bottles purchased: about 18
Number of bottles brought home: about 12 (the other 6 were delicious!)
Number of places we stayed with an Episcopal church called St. Andrews: 2 (weird eh?)
Number of days until the next blog post: approximately 350. We think Gillian has decided on Italy for our next overseas destination as it is her graduation trip. Tune in next June for those adventures. Thanks for reading along.
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