An Eight-Day Odyssey: Part Three

Hello! Hope you're not tired of hearing of my recent road trip, but I promise, this is the last installment! In this post I'll show off some random pictures and discuss a few places I didn't photograph. 

Purity Chocolates (near Allenwood, PA) is a must-stop when we're in the Williamsport area. Since it was a Saturday, no candy making was visible through the observation windows at the back end of the store. But it was plain to see that the workers had been busy the day before creating Easter goodies. 

Mega-sized chocolate bunny, still resting in its two-piece mold. An assortment of smaller bunnies are in rows behind it.

A mate to the big bunny, wrapped up in cellophane and decked out with a big bow and curly ribbon. 

Or maybe you just want an Easter basket filled with candies? Okay, then, how about this basket:

A basket made of chocolate, with chocolate Easter eggs and "carrots" inside. Yum!

Traditional clothing decorating a wall of Aromas Del Sur, a Colombian restaurant in Ephrata, PA. Had never eaten at a Colombian restaurant before and wasn't sure what to expect, but our lunches were good. My husband had a shrimp dish. I ate lighter, with a couple of empanadas and a house salad. 

After lunch we went to Shady Maple, a huge local grocery store. I bought some spices in the bulk food section, and we gaped at some of the bizarre offerings on the in-store bakery shelves, like whoopie pies the size of a small layer cake. And I always like the check out the pretzel/potato chip aisle, where locally-produced, small company versions of these snacks reign.

And the reason I ate so lightly at lunchtime was to fully enjoy my dinner that night in Cockeysville, MD (near Baltimore): a smoked beef brisket sandwich from Andy Nelson's Barbeque. I paid a bit extra to have my sandwich topped with some of the house-made coleslaw. Wow! I think it was my favorite meal of the trip, and we had a lot of good meals. 

On the way to Baltimore's Inner Harbor: chalkboard art at a lunch stop, Pratt Street Ale House. My husband's salmon salad looked very good. I had a crabcake sandwich. My husband thought enough of the made-there beers to buy a six-pack on our way back to our hotel. 

Painted on a sidewalk a block away from the American Visionary Art Museum: "Don't Pollute The Bay  Throw It Away". (Chesapeake Bay, of course.) Good message, colorful stenciling!

A library inside a library: "seed library" in a vintage library card catalogue, housed inside the public library in Berea, KY.  I peeked inside one of the labeled drawers (not all the drawers were in use) and saw small plastic bags of seeds inside. They are for the taking with one's library card. 

In a similar vein, I noted that various garden tools can also be checked out from the library. Like the seed library, this tool-lending program seems like a great idea! Don't know how widespread these gardener-friendly initiatives are, but I haven't seen them at other libraries I've been to. 

Also in Berea, KY:

Handcrafted walking sticks at a gallery in the Old Town section. They were reasonably priced so I would have considered buying one, but alas, the gallery was closed the day of our visit. 

Thrift store stop of the trip: Sans Souci, Columbus, IN; proceeds go to a local non-profit. We'd stopped in Columbus for lunch at Yat's, a regional chain with a Cajun fast food menu. I thought my chicken dish a bit overpriced, but it was pretty tasty. 

Anyway, since I hadn't been to a thrift store yet while on vacation, I wanted to visit Sans Souci after our lunch. My husband proposed walking there from Yat's, a distance of around 1 1/2 miles. That was fine except that the further we walked, the more rundown the neighborhood looked. But since we'd once lived in an Indiana town with plenty of rundown neighborhoods of its own - Terre Haute - we just felt like we were back in Terre Haute. 

So all was well until we heard a sound of breaking glass coming from a house we'd just passed. And just a moment after that we saw two large dogs come out onto the street and check out a man who was walking by.

Then they came after us, barking a bit. I wondered briefly if they would try to attack us, but no, they just wanted to check us out too. They followed us for maybe all of 30 seconds, then turned away.

Judging from the timing of their appearance so soon after hearing that broken glass, we figured the dogs must have broken a window and escaped their quarters that way. I couldn't help but wonder that if the owner wasn't home at the time, what he or she must have thought upon returning and finding that broken window - and two missing dogs! (I assume no one was at the house since we didn't see or hear anyone come out and start yelling at the dogs to come back). 

Sans Souci turned out to be worth the walk. It looked like there were a lot of great clothes, but I didn't have time to try any on. There was a good-sized used book section, and I did buy some of those books, plus some kitchen stuff.

(By the way, Columbus, IN is worth a visit beyond Yat's and Sans Souci - it's well-known for its outstanding modern architecture. I'd read a National Geographic article about it years before my first visit back in the early 1980's.)

Also visited during our vacation: Jungle Jim's in suburban Cincinnati, an even bigger grocery store than Shady Maple. Have been here many times before, but it's always worth a return trip. It is a fun place! And if you like Mexican food, there's a good restaurant, Taqueria Mercado, nearby. We ate there for lunch before visiting Jungle Jim's. 

Some of our vacation time was spent driving around from state to state, and we enjoyed pretty scenery along the way. It was nice to see the hills of Pennsylvania, western Maryland and West Virginia. But I confess, I also like the peaceful flat farmland of northern Ohio and central/northern Indiana.

Okay, that's finally it for my vacation posts. I have to admit, though, that writing them up made me wish I was going on vacation again!