Sunday, May 22, 2011

I was up until 1:30 this AM, then awake as planned at 5.  I was bound and determined to get things straight from my Friends of Jug Bay treasurer’s records which were mostly on a table in our family room. A related goal was clearing up the papers from income tax that were scattered around my desk, along with a bunch of others.  I largely succeeded – my desk is cleaner that I have seen for years.  The related good thing is that while putting things away, I saw our passports and realized that we had forgotten to pack them.  It would have been a disaster to drive to Washington State, then be unable to enter Canada.

There are 3 basic routes to Chicago from our house.  The fastest is via the Pennsylvania turnpike, the next is via I-80 and the 3^rd via I-70.  I chose the middle one because I hadn’t been through north central Pennsylvania on an East-West route.   We stopped at the first rest stop in Pennsylvania along I-83 and were greeted by a nice display of flowers – a nice welcome.

One of our goals (well, at least Jim’s) on this trip is to not eat at any chain restaurants.  We started to get hungry around Harrisburg and began looking for places as we drove: a chain, local but not open ... Ardith began to be concerned that she wouldn’t be able to eat.  We saw a sign for the Ranch House Restaurant and got off the highway into the small town of Duncannon, PA.   The place looked fine from the outside.  The inside was very freshly and charmingly decorated.  There were nice design touches from the menu to the decor and even to the mugs for coffee and tea.  This was 10:15 AM.  We had breakfast 5 hours earlier, but their menu looked quite appealing.  Ardith had Cream Dried Beef on Home Fries.  The flavoring in the cream sauce was different and good. We couldn’t figure out the spicing.  The overall result was excellent.  Jim’s Raisin French Toast was also a bit hit.  The raisin bread was freshly baked and the frenchifying done just right.  A great start to the no chains principle.

After lots of driving (mostly Ardith) we ended up in Maumee, Ohio, a few miles south of Toledo.  We found a nice cheap motel room ($26+tax) with a bit of difficulty since the map in the coupon book was inaccurate.  I asked the girl who checked us in for recommendations of local non-chain restaurants.  She gave a direction and said that there were lots of restaurants there and started a litany of chains.  We headed that way and saw several chains and places that weren’t open (Sunday).  Then I saw a place called Mancy’s Bluewater Grille.  The first word after its name on its sign was seafood and Ardith doesn’t eat seafood.  The next word, however was steaks, so Ardith went along with my push.  When we got in, they asked about reservations.  To me, that was a good sign and we got a table.  The place was very well decorated and the aroma from their wood-fired oven was awesome.    Ardith ordered pork chops with leek mashed potatoes and baby green beans.  Jim changed his mind after the charming waitress described the crab cake with mango-pineapple sauce appetizer.  He had that and a Caesar salad with grilled salmon.  Ardith was almost ecstatic over her pork chop (really moist and flavorful) and potatoes.  The beans were also tasty.  Jim really liked the sauce with the crab cakes.  The crab cakes themselves were not as crabby as Jim prefers them, but he gave a forkful to Ardith who actually liked it.  Jim was still very pleased with the overall taste.  His salmon was tip-top and the Caesar salad was as it should be.  The combination didn’t work as well as Jim had hoped, though.  Ardith said she wanted dessert and agreed to the potential of sharing with Jim.  She ordered a vanilla crème brulee which Jim would normally be pleased to join.  However, the last thing on the waitress’ recitation was rhubarb brown betty.  Ardith isn’t a big fan of rhubarb, but Jim really enjoys it and the prospect of having it in a brown betty definitely pulled him away from the shared crème brulle. Both were very pleased with their choices.

We drove 572 miles today.