The HOF Road Trip--Spontaneity

 Saturday's afternoon could not have been more beautiful. We had just finished watching Ohio State narrowly beat Indiana (a win is a win) and with the sun shining brightly and illuminating the rich autumn colors, we set out to take a walk through the neighborhood. The conversation went something like this:

"So we're all packed?"

"Yup."

"What are we going to do tonight?"

"I don't know."

"Is there any reason we shouldn't just start our road trip tonight?"

"What?!"

Now, you have to understand that the last time Bob had a spontaneous decision to start out a road trip early we ended up sleeping in the station wagon with three young kids at a rest stop between home and Erie, PA, because we couldn't find a hotel. (Years before the internet could have helped us.) Ever since that Niagra Falls debacle, I have insisted on knowing where I was going to sleep each night on a trip. 

I thought it over for a few moments. No kids. Just us. An iPhone to help us locate a place along the way. Why not? We did a quick about-face and quickly got our inflatible Brutus and the OSU flag put away, the suitcase thrown in the car and we were on our way. I must admit. There was a bit of an adrenaline rush. Spontaneity is not one of my best traits though.

We had decided when we planned the trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown that we would take the backroads rather than the highway. We wanted to enjoy the fall colors. And enjoy we did. The sun followed us until it came time to eat dinner. Just before the state border into Pennsylvania, I began searching for a place to eat. The closest place I could find was in Andover, OH, called the Town Tavern. I put it into the Google Map route and we found it easily enough.

There are places to eat you might call "a hole in the wall" (our son has a way of finding them) but they turn out to have the best food. This was one of them. It was a bar but rather quiet for the most part, not many people. We ordered BLTs on Texas toast. Best BLTs we've ever had. 

While we ate, we searched for our favorite inn--the Hampton Inn and there was one in Meadville, PA about another half hour or so from where we were. It was going to get dark soon and those beautiful colored trees would go gray in the dusk of nightfall so we booked a room and traveled on to our first stop on the road. 

Sometimes spontaneity isn't so bad.