Reflections from The Road

Taking 4 kids under the age of 8 on a road trip from Maryland to Illinois for 3 days (1 day driving, 1 day doing stuff there, 1 day driving back) doing almost all the driving during the day without a DVD player is enough to make any parent want to drop them all off on the side of the road in interminable Ohio (sorry, Angi, but it takes forever to drive across OH, especially when they are apparently doing construction in every single major city and a couple of minor ones that Route 70 passes through) and drive as fast as you can in the opposite direction. But since I made a promise to my grandfather to make sure his wishes regarding disposal of his remains were carried out, and BigDaddyFish was short on leave, a speed run it was.

We actually left Thursday night and stayed at the Casselman Inn in Grantsville, MD overnight, and did the bulk of the driving on Friday. The Casselman is an interesting place. It is owned by a Mennonite family and is still family run, but the next generation has taken over a lot of the operations. It used to be that all the people that worked there were Mennonite, but that is apparently not the case anymore. BDF stayed there several times on trips with his church youth group as a teenager, and he had fond memories of those times and wanted to stay there again. We had two adjoining rooms, and the cost for both of those rooms was less than one room virtually anywhere else I've ever travelled. I was looking forward to a nice sleep with the kids in the other room and no one kicking me. It was not to be.

The kids had fallen asleep in the car and woke up when we got there, just shy of midnight, and proceeded to stay up until 1:30. BDF and I were exhausted and kept trying to get the kids to go to sleep. Sunny decided she was scared in the other room, even though she was closer to us physically than she ever is at home, and refused to sleep there. It ended up that she and BDF slept in one bed, Nemo and I in the other, and Trout and Little Man got their own beds. THEY were in hog heaven. I actually slept surprisingly well, considering.

The decor at the Casselman is an odd sort of combination of turn-of-the-century antique and hand-crafted mennonite, with 60s/70s shag carpet thrown in for kicks and giggles. The walls were paper thin and covered in busy, noisy patterened wallpaper that I can see inducing seizures in those prone to them. There were noisy room air conditioners that cooled very effectively and I thought provided a fair amount of white noise to help us sleep, but BDF insisted he was cold, and while I am forever arguing that he can add blankets and covers while I can only get so undressed, he won and we kept the air conditioner turned off. When we woke up in the morning he muttered that he was too hot. I wonder why.

Breakfast was inexpensive and plentiful. I got eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, and toast (I think it was all of $4), but I only ate the eggs, picked at the bacon, nibbled the hashbrowns, didn't touch the toast (it had margarine on it, which I don't eat). The eggs were great, the bacon was overly fatty but perfectly cooked, so I just picked the fat off, but the hashbrowns were the worst I've ever had, but I can't figure out why. They just weren't good. BDF had buckwheat pancakes, and after a taste of those I wished I had ordered that instead of trying to stick to my efforts of eating more protein and less carbs. If you go there, get those buckwheat pancakes. Awesome.

People watching is fun, even when it's just you and one other person. When I went to check in it was late, and the woman who came out to check us in was in her late fifties, I'd guess, and apparently not Mennonite as she was dressed in regular old American Consumer attire. She mentioned that they were just getting computers, and she was asking me if they were "hard to use." I didn't quite know how to answer that, but told her that it's like anything else new, it takes a while to learn and you need to practice, but once you get it the computer will make other tasks easier. She mused about what they would be doing with the computer, probably "typing in names and addresses, probably a lot of typing." I agreed that at first it would probably be typing and clicking.

"Clicking?" she inquired. "What do you mean, 'clicking'?" I peeked over the desk to see the computer there.

"The mouse. There. If you move it, you will see a little arrow on your screen, and once you move it to something you want, you can push the little button, or 'click' the button."

"Oh! You seem to know a lot about computers." Not to hear my husband tell it, but enough. She was cute.

She tried in vain to process my credit card, because apparently she had to enter the room number in the credit card machine, and she couldn't figure out how to put in two room numbers at once. I suggested that it was okay with me to divide the total in half and just process it twice, with each room number, but for some reason she didn't want to do that. She just asked me to come back in the morning and pay then. Then I had to pay $2 in cash as a key deposit for the room. Good, old fashioned keys.

A younger woman, probably the daughter of the nighttime woman as she was younger than me, processed my credit card the next day, and gave me back my $2 when I turned in the keys.

While waiting for our food to come, I people watched in the dining room. A woman came in with her husband and two sons, I'd say about 12 and 10 years old. She was dressed in an off-the-rack, bright red dress, and she had a traditional Mennonite head covering on her hair, which was put up. She had the most impressive posture I've ever seen on anyone, including a friend who had had surgery to fuse some of her vertebrae; ramrod straight, so straight you could have used her as a level. The husband and sons were dressed in American Consumer clothes, looking much like the boys' section at Kohl's where I shopped today for Little Man, who apparently had a growth spurt on this trip. Anyway, at one point she got up and went to talk to the woman working in the kitchen, who was dressed in traditional Mennonite attire, complete with pinned apron and head covering, and I overheard them talking about teaching Sunday school at their church.

Here's where I reveal what an idiot I am. She apparently was in a mixed marriage, where she is Mennonite and her husband/children are not. Somehow my small brain never made allowances for such a thing to occur. Mixed race? Of course. Catholic/Jewish marriage? Easy peasy. Athiest/Southern Baptist? Not likely, but I can picture it. Gay marriage? Why the hell not? Mennonite/Non? No way. I guess it's just that I see Mennonite not just as a religion but a way of life, which of course if you are a believer in any religion it should be a way of life, but...I guess I just never saw the Mennonite way of life as ever being able to coexist with the typical wasteful, consumer-driven American culture as it exists now. I am glad that this woman and her family were there to help open my mind. I saw them as we were leaving, and they drove off in a red Toyota Prius. It was neat.

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Just over the line into Ohio from Wheeling, WV, the usual reflectors that are at the end of the guardrail were replaced in one section with a simple orange metal placard, with a blue cross inside it instead of reflectors. No name or other information on it, just a simple blue cross, maybe 3 square inches total. I imagine it was a more permanent memorial to someone who died at that spot, rather than the usual wooden cross or flowers, but it was cool to see.

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Sunny got a hamburger at one point instead of her usual chicken nuggets, but I think she's a bit unclear on the concept. She pulled the hamburger patty out of the bun, put the bun aside and said "Yum, chicken. I don't want the bread, Mommy, I just want the chicken part. It's good."

I didn't enlighten her.

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On the way out there and back we had a couple of instances where the ABS light came on and the little doodad lit up to show that the traction control was off. At the same time we leaked a bit of coolant at every stop we made, then the ABS light would go out and the traction control doodad turn off, too. We never overheated; in fact the temperature gauge never moved. It was worrisome at the time, but we never did figure out what the heck was making it do that, and the van performed fine the whole trip, even the brakes. It was a good thing, too, because for the last 3-4 hours of the ride home on Sunday it rained so bad sometimes we couldn't see right in front of us. And it was night. But we made it home okay, exhausted, but safe and sound.

We did have a WTF moment at the hotel in Illinois, which I'll be writing about over on Props and Pans, and the memorial itself was lovely - more about that later.

Comments

[angi]

Do you have a Montana? My ABS & traction has been off for MONTHS...I keep pretending that it is going to just fix itself.

Hubby growls every time he gets into the van "UGH! We HAVE to get this thing in the shop before it is completely RUINED!"

Umm, I am afraid it is prob too late for that!

Sorry you did not like Ohio, construction in the norm here *sigh*

[FishyGirl]

We've got a 9 year old Dodge Grand Caravan. It actually doesn't seem to be a problem with the van itself, just the light, as we never lost the ABS function.

Ohio itself is fine, lovely even, but it easily took us 7 hours to drive across it, thanks to the construction. I was just at the end of my rope.

I hope you aren't affected by any of the flooding in OH.

[angi]

No flooding here, but extreme HEAT instead. They even are letting school out early tomorrow & cancelled Ellie's first day of Kindergarten!

[cry it out!]

A key deposit! Sorry to take just that from this wonderful post -- the road trip sounds like my personal nightmare -- but the key deposit evoked somany wonderful memories of cheesy hotels and good times with the family. Thanks!
Mike