Trip to Amish Country

Alright, two full days in the Amish countryside of Ohio. It actually was nice, relaxing and not nearly as expensive as Palm Beach of course.

First, on our way down we stopped in Canton, Ohio to visit the Classic Car Museum. Our whole reason for the stop here was to get a photo of my husband in front of Johnny Carson’s DeLorean for a photo contest.The one that Johnny was caught drunk driving in, and offered the cop a $50 bill to let him go. But guess what? The DeLorean was taken back by the rightful owner to be auctioned off on Ebay after DeLorean’s death. Bastard! Canton is a miserable and horrible place I will never go back to — sorry it is — but luckily the museum was weird enough that the stop was worth it despite no Johnny Carson car.

Not only were there cars, but oddball displays, old games, mannequins and every piece of junk you could find. Many strange celebrity cut-outs and Muppets were to be found, watching us closely…

I did see one sight in Canton that made me happy, a funny old Motel sign..

Anyways, the town of Sugarcreek wasn’t far and our plan B for the photo of my husband we decided would be the cuckoo clock we had heard so much about. Our hotel was awesome and so nice for the price. Really, I have stayed a fancy-pants places with rooms a quarter of the size our “standard room” had. In fact, I think our room was about the square footage of my apartment. There was an indoor swimming pool/jacuzzi with farmland views all around from large windows, and the breakfast and library areas were really cute. I have never seen hotel so new and clean looking, not a hint of wear and tear. I was also won over by the little things such as a small fridge, two bathrooms with his and hers sinks, and this view of Amish farmland off my balcony…

The only problem we had in these towns besides our tires being covered in horse poop, was that everyone eats dinner at 4:00pm and everything shuts down at odd early hours. That didn’t stop us from eating too much pie, roast, cookies and cheese though. Luckily the hotel owned a restaurant and shop right next door. We had no trouble finding a pub in the deserted downtown area but the lack of any service turned us off; being that we looked a bit out of place I think they wanted us out of there altogether. So, we decided to head to the local winery spots to get our drink on. Ohio wine, the idea freaked me out not to mention the color. I also didn’t like the fact that when we got to the main winery, many white trash old folks were screaming, “I want one that tastes like grape juice!” during the tastings. Really, I think my husband was the only tourist under the age of 50 who didn’t have the mullet and mustache combo. Raspberry wine and cherry wine also seemed odd to me, but we decided to at least try it considering this was our only real alcohol option.

I won’t say that Cherry Wine tastes like wine, or like sherry, or quite like port…honestly I don’t know what it was like but definetly not bad and definetly in that arena somewhere within the booze family. The raspberry and blueberry wines however I would steer clear of. So damn sweet, it was like Robotusin and a sugar cube mixed together. So with our cherry wine and a bag of Amish cheese we decided to chill for a while.

We then spent the next day trying to find the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock! It was not easy. We got to know those back country roads real well, thanks to locals who give incredibly vague directions and signs that have worn away. We did find this road, that I now want to build an Addams Family style mansion on…

There were also cool motel signs such as this…

You can’t go wrong with a cowboy and his puppy now can you? But really, the amount of driving done trying to find this damn clock was stupid. You’d think they would have a big sign advertising the location, right? No instead it was all advertising for the bulk cheese and meats stores. Or quilt, lace curtain and doily girly-grandma decor shops. Hey, if I had a larger car I probably would have picked up an Amish made box spring for my bed, but that wasn’t important, the clock was what we came here for — we needed to see the damn clock! We finally discovered where it may be on a tiny map. On the morning before leaving, we ventured up into no man’s land again to the shopping area and restaurant I believed the clock to be located. We got to the huge faux Swiss Chalet building and walked around, no friggin’ clock. If this clock is so big you’d think it would be obvious right? I was sick of looking, I went inside the gift shop and asked a little girl where is the big clock? She pointed to the restaurant further inside, was it indoors? How? And what do you know, we came upon an outdoor patio where the silly thing had been surrounded by the Chalet complex…

There were also little silly fun sights indoors too…

So yep, that was about it. We ate too much cheese, drove around aimlessly, watched too much of the Lifetime channel on cable TV and slept a lot. No being shunned by the Amish for taking photos, no getting punched by undercover cops that are pretending to be Amish ala “Witness” and no joining in on the teenage meth parties I hear so much about when they do rumspringa. I would like to check out one of the crazy malt liquor fueled parties those kids throw in the middle of fields and hundreds of them come from different states just to drink together. Though growing up in Michigan, I think I’ve been to enough of those malt liquor in a field parties as a teenager. Mickey’s baby!