OUR 17TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY -- PART ONE

 Hello, friends!  Hope you are having a wonderful day.  It is really early here (around 3:00 a.m.) and I am usually awake between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.  Sometimes I sleep as late as 4:00 a.m. but seldom later than that.  Why?  I wish I knew.  When I was working, I couldn't get up for anything and was always late for work.  Now that I have all the time in the world, I keep waking up early.  Usually when I am waking up, Joe is just going to bed.  He is a night owl.  Not me.  Sometimes I feel as if we are ships that pass in the night.  Literally.

But I really wanted to tell you about the wonderful anniversary weekend we had.  Our anniversary was on Saturday, September 16th.  We had planned to go to Lancaster County for the weekend.  Actually Friday and Saturday nights.  About a week before we were going, I called the hotel to confirm our reservations.  This is something I do on a regular basis.  It's always good to know that everything is OK.  The person I spoke to said that she did not see a reservation for us.  Nowhere.  And there were no rooms available.  It just so happens that this weekend is when all the fall festivals happen in Lancaster and so getting a hotel room is hard.  That's why I had made the reservations at the end of June.  She did have a room available on Saturday and Sunday.  But it was more expensive.  Much more expensive.  So I took it for just one night -- Saturday.  Our anniversary.  I called several other hotels, but there were no available rooms.  And we really wanted to stay at the Fulton Steamboat Inn.  So that is how I left it.  I was so glad I had called and not just showed up and found out there was no room.

We were going to meet some friends for lunch that day, but as time went on I realized we would not get out there in time.  So I contacted them and told them it would have to be another day.  That was fine with everyone because I gave them a lot of notice.  We ended up getting to Lancaster around 2:00 p.m.

We were hungry, so we looked for someplace to eat.  But everything was packed with long waiting lines.  Festival weekend brings in lots of people.  We decided to eat where we were going to meet our friends, the Bird-in-Hand Restaurant.  It's one of our favorite places.  But since we had to pass it, we decided to go to the Bird-in-Hand Farmers Market first.

It was really crowded, and we had trouble finding a parking space.  This picture is from a couple of years ago.  But every empty place you see here, was filled.  I think we found the last empty space in the entire lot.  And fortunately, it was next to the door to go in.

We had a good time looking around at all the different booths.  We had decided not to buy anything perishable, so we went to the jam and jelly booth first.  And boy did we clean up there.  We got Chow Chow, Tomato Jam, Vidalia Onion Relish, Jalapeno Jam (for our friend who like hot things), Mango Salsa, and Tortilla Chips.  I got a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread (so good and so much cinnamon), and a pumpkin whoopie pie for another friend.  Whoopie pies are OK but they are not my favorite.  Joe got a couple of bottles of "Joe" brand iced tea.  Really good.  I bought a couple of autumn potholders from an Amish lady I was talking to about quilts.  And finally at the produce stand we got a couple of really beautiful (and delicious) beefsteak tomatoes, a bunch of bananas, and two sweet potatoes.  The tomatoes and bananas are gone.  I had one of the sweet potatoes for dinner last night and it was delicious.

We left there and headed over to the restaurant which was right next door.  My legs were really hurting, so I opted to get a dinner.  Joe went for the smorgasbord.  I had ham balls in pineapple sauce, applesauce and green beans.  Joe had rolls and a salad, meat loaf and mixed vegetables, and three desserts:  apple pie, cherry pie, and chocolate ice cream with hot fundge sauce.  He does like his sweets.  Everything was delicious.  Such a good dinner.

Then we headed over to the hotel.  The Fulton Steamboat Inn literally looks like a 19th century steamboat.  Both outside and inside.

We got to the front desk and the guy there said we had two rooms booked and four people.  What?  Here the person I had spoken to on the phone had not seen our reservation, but there it was.  And it was for Saturday and Sunday.  The other one was just for Saturday.  One was a room with two queen beds.  The other was a king bed suite.  Of course we chose the suite, but it was more expensive.  Because of the mix up, they gave us the suite at the lower room rate.  We didn't have anyone to take care of our cat on Sunday, so we opted for the one night.

We certainly made the right choice.  The suite was beautiful.  My YouTube video is going up today, so if you get the chance, take a look (Kathy's Happy Home).  Everything was wonderful there except the room was dark.  There was only one window and it overlooked the deck on the third floor.  If you look at the picture above, the room was right behind that big half-circle and towards the right in the picture.  Other than that, everything was great.

And now I have to stop because I need to get myself together to get out of here and get ready for Bible Study.  But I will do day two tomorrow.  I hope you come back for that.

The entire weekend was so wonderful and I'm so glad we got to go away.

See you all next time.

Kathy