Writing on the Road....

...while I can, because tomorrow I'll be home! I'm going to synopsize here (well, it may not be a word, but I just used it so there. Neener) and devote a proper post to talking about the trip when I'm back in my nest home. I'm also going to try to do me a tutorial or wossname, because I do have lots of pictures and want to share some with you.

I can also tell you that, on these journeys, Mr Dearling drives. Every mile, every hour, every inch. I passeng. I also read, knit or sleep. It is not lost on me that this is yet another blessing I have in Mr Dearling: he likes to drive, for one; also he reads maps the way some folks read romance novels. (More to the point, he understands them. I am strictly a "turn right at the tree that looks like a possum and go until you find that building that used to be a gas station, back when the Olsen farm still had all them cows" kinda girl.)



You'll notice that he does have help from Earnest-the-dashboard-dog. Earnest is not just another pretty face, he's a working dog - it's his job to hold onto those little cards you get in a parking garage, because if you lose that little card you have to pay as though you'd been there for twelve hours. Which is a LOT of money.

I have to say, my intention was to write the day's events every evening, being as the house we all stayed it did in fact have WiFi. And surely you may have noticed...that did not happen. Why not, Dale-Harriet? Are you a lazy slacker easily distractable? Funny you should mention. As it turned out, there were side trips to take, meals to enjoy,sights to see, sites to see, relatives and friends-of-relatives-now-friends-of-ours on the premises. There were a couple of days when all of the above, being a largely healthy-outdoors-y kind of crowd, went out for hikes in the beautiful environs, and I, being largely sedentary less inclined along those lines, spent the day in solitude either knitting (one day I discovered a "Firefly" marathon on the teevee) or actually, really, genuinely writing ! I polished a story I'd written in class, found and continued a story I'd begun a long time ago, and got a start on a couple of other inspirations. By the time everyone had gone to bed, I read all my daily blogs, IM'd with the Lovely Daughter or others, did a little research for above-mentioned stories - and then got to the point where it was either Go to Bed or explain having the keyboard imprinted on my face - and a whole page of whatever letter my nose happened to land on. NOTE: it has really and genuinely and truly happened, and is not a pretty sight and probably wasn't good for Daisy either!

So these words are being written from my bed in a Super 8 in the vicinity of Cleveland, OH and I will sort my notes, tidy up my pictures, and recount the high points of a very pleasant Time Away for y'all. Some thoughts to ponder while you wait:

Walnuts and dried cranberries are GOOD (and no doubt healthy as all get-out, from a "at my age I'm supposed to get a lot of fiber" viewpoint).

Our family members are patient, and didn't complain when we hung around Fort Carillon for what must have seemed like nine hours. (It was actually something over two hours - oh, and for those of you of the British History persuasion, that's "Fort Ticonderoga" to you.)

It is possible to spend five days with eleven people ALMOST "24/7" and enjoy all of their company all of the time.

Price Choppers are good grocery stores.

Mr Dearling (and sisters) (and helpful friends) make terrific gnocchi. By hand. From scratch. And if you ever want to taste better you're going to have to wait until you get to heaven, because their grandma's was reputedly better. Speaking as a nice little Jewish girl from Minot, North Dakota - you're not likely to find better gnocchi on this side of the Great Beyond, so fuhgettaboutit.

Visiting yarn shops randomly across the country is as much fun as I thought it would be. "Details at 11:00".

The gods really ARE skeptical about my visiting Ste Marie among the Iroquois; after three times going only to find it closed, today we actually made it! And it was genuinely cold with a very stiff wind, and we couldn't stay in the outside Mission site very long at all. (But the inside museum part was great and I got some fabulous pictures - digital cameras don't care if it IS cold and windy.)

And lastly: I do most earnestly and sincerely wish we had a Wegman's grocery store out by us. I most earnestly and sincerely do wish that. I even got some Paul Newman wintergreen mints in a tin with a polar bear on it. I am not making that up.
This is a RED trillium (!) as seen by Mr Dearling on a hike on Hadley Mountain.