Road Trip to Woodstock & Beyond - Back Home

 Click HERE to go to Day 1 entry.

We had originally set out from Niagara Falls intending to stop in Rossford, Ohio to check out the shoes of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man. The shoes are on display in the Rossford library, but when I looked it up online the night before, I found the library is closed due to Covid-19. Crossing Rossford off our list, we drove on toward our next destination – Galena, Ohio. Galena has been voted the "World’s Best Downtown Shopping" and was featured on one of my favorite TV shows, “Small Town, Big Deal.”

I took over the driving duties, set my portable GPS for Galena, and off we went. Unfortunately, the shortest distance between where we were and Galena is right through Chicago and "Shortest Distance" was what my GPS was set for. I hate Chicago traffic. No matter what time of the day you are on any of the freeways, it's bumper-to-bumper backed up traffic. I had documented a route that was a little longer but it went around Chicago. Unfortunately, Chip wasn’t aware of this alternate route. We were talking and I, not really thinking about it, just followed the GPS directions. The next thing you know, we’re stuck in Chicago traffic. Crap! The street signs list the highways by name, but the map lists them by number so there we were, in stop-and-go traffic gridlock and we couldn’t figure out a shortcut or the best way to get out of there. So trust the GPS to get us where we wanted to go. After a while, we saw why the freeway was so backed up. On the opposite side of the freeway from us, an 18-wheeler had literally destroyed a passenger car. Firemen were standing around and there were coverings over the smashed windows of the car. Somebody woke up that morning never knowing they wouldn’t make it back home.

After miles and miles of heavy traffic, Chip, looking at the spiral-bound atlas we had brought along, asked why we were going west when we should be going south. I told him we were going west to get to Galena and then we would head south from there. “But Galena is way down south from where we’re at now.” “I don’t think so,” I said. “The GPS is saying we still need to be going west.” “But I’m looking at Galena on the map here and it’s way south, not west. Your GPS is wrong.” Chip put the destination in the car's GPS and sure enough, it indicated to go south. Long story short, after a lot of back-and-forth, with Chip and the car's GPS insisting we needed to be going south, I finally said OK, we’ll turn at the next highway going south. I don't know what's wrong with my portable Garmen GPS. I've had it for over 10 years, I updated just before we left, and it's never been wrong before.” Being a good navigator, Chip found the next highway going south and said, “Turn left here.” I drove for a couple more hours, but we weren’t going through any towns that I remembered when laying out the route beforehand. Several times I said, "Chip, I don't remember any of these towns," but Chip kept assuring me we were going right.

We finally stopped for gas, and he took over driving. Before pulling out of the station though, I looked at the map, but couldn’t find Galena anywhere near our current southern route. Pointing, he said, “it’s right down there.” “Sorry, Chip, but I still don’t see it.” He looked closely at the map and pointed at a little bitty town. I looked closely. “Uh, Chip, that’s not Galena. It’s some town named Galatia. You've been looking at Galatia on the map and you put Galatia in the car's GPS, not Galena!" I looked again and found Galena way back up north where we had been several hours ago. We had been within just a few miles of Galena when we turned south!

In addition to missing shopping in the "World’s Best Downtown Shopping," we had missed several other destinations I had planned for us – the "Field of Dreams" baseball field, the world’s largest truck stop, and a town, Casey, IL., which has the world’s largest golf tee, the world’s largest rocking chair, the largest mailbox, and the largest pitchfork. I consider Chip to be my brother. We’ve been friends for 50 years now and nothing is going to change that. We decided to keep driving south toward home rather than backtrack for 3 hours, but there wasn’t much talking in that car for a while. You better believe I'll be ribbing him over this one for a good long time! I’m sure we’ll laugh about it later. How much later is unknown.

We stopped in St. Louis for dessert at the famous Ted Drew’s Frozen Custard stand on Route 66. The weather was hot and the ice cream was cold and very tasty. Well worth the stop.

We were 345 miles from home and it was just 3:00 in the afternoon so we decided to keep driving for a while. The later it got, the closer we were to home and the more sleeping in my own bed sounded real good. Chip started getting sleepy and tired about 9:00 and by then we were less than 200 miles from home. We stopped for gas and some food and I took over driving. We finally made it to my house a little after midnight. Tired and sleepy, we pulled into the driveway, left everything in the car, and went inside to crash. Unloading the car could wait for the next day.

Except for the last couple of days, it was a great trip and we had a lot of fun. We returned safe and sound, only a little worse for wear. Bucket list items got checked off, we saw some cool things, and we did some cool things. We had several bad food experiences, but we also had some excellent meals. We reminisced, we told stories, we had experiences for future reminiscing, we solved some of the world's problems, and we laughed a lot. Best of all, these two best friends got to spend some quality time together and you just can’t put a price on that. I'm already looking forward to our next trip!

Road Trip to Woodstock & Beyond - Day 8

 Click HERE to go to Day 1 entry.

Our room at Lake 'N Pines Motel

After checking out of the wonderful Lake 'N Pines motel, we went back into Cooperstown for breakfast. Either Cooperstown doesn’t have breakfast eateries or we just didn’t happen to find any that was open so we got back on Hwy 80 and headed toward our next destination 250 miles away – Niagara Falls. Hwy 80 (known as Cooperstown Road in this part of the country) is a 2-lane, black-top rural road with beautiful open fields and groves of old-growth trees with little towns every now and then. Going through one of these little communities (it’s called a community because calling it a town would be ridiculous), I spotted a little Mom & Pop store with a sign that said, “Breakfast.” A wooden building with peeling white paint, it looked like it had been there for many years, but there was something homey about it. Chip didn’t see the sign as he drove by, but I got him to turn the car around and return to it. I figured at the least we could get some road goodies to snack on (plus it’s nice to help support little privately owned businesses).

As soon as we walked in, conversations ceased and every head in the place turned to check us out. There were only a couple of small tables along the wall and the tables were occupied mostly by old farmers and ranchers wearing overalls and Massey Ferguson or John Deere gimme caps. These are the old-timers who come to town every morning to have their coffee at this little store and grumble about the weather, wives, and the state of the union. One asked in a polite but warry way where we are from. After we told them we were a couple of old U.S. Navy buddies who temporarily left our wives and kids behind to take a road trip to see the Baseball Hall of Fame and we were just passing through, they all seemed to relax, smiled, and after a few welcomes, went back to their grumbling with each other. I guess we passed their test. Everyone was very nice after that and we actually had a pretty decent hot meal cooked up by an older lady in the open kitchen. It was one of those places where people know each other by a nickname, where everyone got up, refilled their own coffee, got milk from the cooler, and chips and candy from the shelves, and then told the cashier what they had and paid up or put it on their tab. It was a nice little interlude - an enjoyable slice of small-town USA. Back on the road toward Niagara Falls, our luck changed. To say things didn’t go as planned would be to engage in careless understatement.

Just a few miles down the road, it started to rain. I’m not talking a little summer shower. I’m not talking about a mist. I’m talking full-on rain. A few minutes later, the sky really opened up and it started a heavy rain. Impressively heavy. As in monsoon rain. And it continued to rain. Every now and then, it would slow to a heavy downpour, but then back to the monsoon. And it continued like that for the next 250 miles! Instead of the expected 4 hours of driving, it took 6. My back started really acting up and every time Chip hit a little pothole, or the road got a little bit rough, a stabbing, red hot pain shot up my lower back. I ate Excedrin Extra Strength like M&Ms to keep the pain tolerable. In short, it was miserable.

When we entered Niagara Falls, it was still raining. We were hungry and tired. Open parking spaces were non-existent unless we were willing to pay $20 or more to park for 30 minutes so we could eat. We finally came across a hotel a few blocks away from Niagara Falls Park with a restaurant that advertised Chinese Buffett. We got lucky and found an open, metered parking spot just down from the hotel, so we grabbed it, dropped a few coins in the meter, and squished our way into the hotel.

As soon as we entered the restaurant, we knew something was not right – there was not a single customer in the place. That's not good. Thinking maybe it was because it’s the middle of the afternoon, we went in. The food on the buffet looked like it had been cooked yesterday morning and left in the warming pans since then. Every item had a film over it and everything just looked old and unappetizing. We started to walk out, but a waitress came over and told us they also had pizza. With her assurance that the ingredients were fresh, we ordered one each. A little surprisingly, they weren’t bad, so we sat in a booth eating our pizzas and watched it rain.

We then drove to Niagara Falls Park and looked around, but the paved walkways in the park were pretty much underwater. Plus, it was cold. Here it was May and the temperature was in the lower 40’s with rain and a strong, cold, persistent wind. We had on t-shirts and single-layer windbreakers. We saw a couple of hardy souls walking down the sidewalks. They had umbrellas and raincoats over their heavier coats and were walking in ankle-deep water. We were not prepared for the weather and with my hurt back limiting my mobility, I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk very far. In this case, “Skooter” (my mobility scooter) couldn’t be used. It runs on battery power and not only does water and electricity not mix but running it in water would cancel the warranty and I had only had it for about 6 weeks. That thing is too expensive to take a chance like that so Skooter stayed folded up in the back of the SUV. I had intended for us to take the Maid of the Mist boat excursion, but it was closed due to the storms and high water. I had also thought about us taking a helicopter tour of the falls, but it too was shut down. We checked the weather and the rain was forecast to last solid for the next 3 days. We reluctantly decided to put off seeing Niagara Falls until some other day. Big disappointment. Really big disappointment.

We entered our next destination, Rossford, Ohio into my portable GPS and set out for the Rossford Library where we could see the size 37AA shoes of Robert Wadlow. Standing 8’11” tall, he was the tallest man in the world. Turning onto the bridge the GPS told us to take, we were surprised to find halfway across that we were going into Canada! There are signs telling you to not turn around and walls on the side of the road to prevent it. So here we are, going into Canada with no passports (we both have one, but didn’t have them with us), a big bunch of packages in the SUV backend, and an illegal weapon (illegal in Canada anyway) in my possession. I knew it didn't matter in Canada that I have a carry permit and we just knew we were going to jail and there was nothing we could do about it.

The Canadian border guard was actually pretty nice – where are you headed (“back home to the U.S. hopefully”), why did you come to Canada (“we didn’t intend to”). You followed your GPS, didn’t you? (“Yes, sir, that’s exactly what happened.”) Is it just the two of you? (“Yes, just us 2, sir.) Where’s home? (Texas and Oklahoma, sir.”) Do you have any drugs in your vehicle? “(No sir, no sir. We don’t do drugs.) Are you carrying any firearms? Oh crap, what do I say?! I replied as calmly as I could - “No, sir” while thinking, please don’t check my bag, please don’t check my bag. "Oh, that gun? Gee, sir, I’m really sorry. I forgot that was in there. Silly me." I felt bad about the little white lie, but I would have felt worse being thrown into jail or even just having my gun confiscated. Fortunately, he just smiled at us, asked for our driver's license, and said, “This happens all the time. Pull over there by those doors and I’ll bring your licenses back in a minute with some paperwork you’ll need to fill out to get back in the states.” Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! Several minutes later, I guess after he verified we were not terrorists or wanted criminals, he gave us our stuff back and said to make a U-turn around the building, drive safe, and have a nice day. He seemed rather amused about the whole thing. We were not.

Getting back into the states was, what with the open southern border, inexplicably tougher. We explained what had happened and then the questions came. Where are you going? (“Back home.”) Are you U.S. citizens? (“Yes.”) Were you born in the U.S.? ("Yes.") Do you have passports? (“Yes, but not with us.”) Why do you not have your passports? (“Because we didn’t plan on going into another country.”) Why were you in Canada? (“It was a mistake. We didn’t mean to be.”) How long were you in Canada? (“About 10 minutes.”) Why do you want to come into the U.S. (“Because we live in the U.S and want to go home.”) Are you bringing anything back from Canada with you? (“No, we accidentally went into Canada on that side of the road and basically immediately came back on this side of the road.”) Are you bringing any plants into the country? ("No, we were just over there and now we're here and we didn't go anywhere else to buy anything.") Turn off your car, give me your license and wait here. 15 long minutes later, he came back, gave us our stuff, and told us to drive back across the bridge. No smile, no amusement at our predicament, no welcome home, just suspicion, and gruffness.

Driving across the Niagra River in
the rain

Driving back across the bridge, and low and behold, we saw the falls! I didn’t get my camera out in time to take a picture, but we both actually got to see Niagara Falls. From our vantage point, it wasn’t as impressive as I’ve been led to believe, but I’m sure it’s much different up close and not partially obscured by heavy rain. We were happy to be back in the good old U.S. of A. and we saw Niagara Falls after all!

For some reason, my back didn’t hurt as much if I was driving, so I took over those duties and Chip became the navigator. We headed on down the road, being very careful to stay away from the Canadian border! Our next destination was 300 miles away, back toward the middle of the country. From there, we could head south, catch a couple of interesting things along the way and be on our way back home. There’s an old saying, “Man plans and God laughs.” Too bad for us, God wasn’t finished laughing.