WAL-MART AND NORTH

After a morning roaming the peaceful, but cloudy Pennsylvania countryside and the annoyingly chaotic Wal-Mart. (Could I just say that Wal-Mart in Washington, PA is NOT a good place to go on a Friday morning – the lines were crazily long and we waited at least a half hour for Kelli to get a toothbrush and three kids’ t-shirts for a Great Grandma craft project!)  Whoa – talk about traffic – except it was people traffic not car traffic.)

OK, so I didn’t actually finish the sentence I started with – but anyhow after the peaceful countryside and the chaotic Wal-Mart, I left the Illinois fam with the PA fam and headed north to Grove City – about 100 miles away.  Once there, I checked into my motel and then headed out to the CMA church where I found, not only the official Awana crew, but Lauri (semi-official Awana crew person), who had driven over with the official crew to do a workshop and to see me.  How fun!  We even got to room together. (Lauri, by the way, has become a great friend even though we’ve never lived by each other. Our connection is Awana and her parents who attend Central. Her dad used to go to woodworking meetings with Ken.)

After we set up, the missionaries told us we were going out to eat at The Iron Bridge. Immediately, I knew this would be a good experience. A restaurant called The Iron Bridge tucked into the hills of Pennsylvania had to be something special – and it was.

The Iron Bridge (so called because it is built by an Iron Bridge was absolutely packed. Of course, it WAS raining outside, so what better to do on a cold, autumn Friday night than to go out to eat.

I had an apple-stuffed chicken breast with a cider sauce that was SUPER GOOD!  The baked potato that came with it was humungous and the salad and bread were also delicious.

Lauri and I drove back to the motel which was right across from an outlet mall. I had a last-minute thing I needed for the conference so we decided to visit the mall – it had every outlet imaginable from Gymboree to The Steelers Store.  Mostly we walked around in the rain, using up the calories gained from the apple-stuffed chicken breast with cider sauce, the humungous baked potato, salad and bread.

A good and busy day.