King's Highway: Discovering Amish Country

We don’t check into the IRV2 rally until Sunday morning, so today we will stay another night at the Mohican Reservation campground.

We took off this morning in the car to the town of Loudonville to find cell service………… but there was none!! We then drove to the larger town of Millersburg…….. still no service, so Patsy went shopping in the Amish stores, while I looked for a phone book and a pay phone (not many left anymore) to call AT&T. A nice Amish lady in a bakery let me use her phone, after I had an AT&T number. I guess bakeries are where you meet nice people……. I knew there was a reason that I visit them often!!

I made contact with a Cingular store, but the guy just told me that I needed to remove my battery and SIM card for 15 seconds and then re-install it. I asked if I should turn around three times, too, but he did not think that was funny! It did not work, and he finally told me that we were in a famous “nothing but Verizon service” area. I told him that since my 2 year contract was up last January, next month I would have Verizon……. then I hung up on him.

Since we had driven pretty close to the town where our rally was, I decided to find the campground while we were in the Honda instead of the Bus. Good thing……. the campground is listed in Dundee, OH, but we found it in Mt. Eaton, OH…………. about 25 miles away. Go figure!! That turned out to be good……. 4 bars of cell strength!!!!

By now, it was 1:00pm, so we began to look for lunch. We drove into Mt. Eaton, and found a grocery store and luncheon combination with a lot of Amish standing around eating sandwiches. We got a couple of burgers and some fries and joined them. I was taking Mom and Patsy’s picture, and some lady offered to take all of us…………….

Here is another of Mom and Patsy with the Amish rigs behind them…….

Mom did not eat all of her burger, but did opt for some of the soft-serve ice cream from the store. I teased her about not eating her meal and getting dessert, and she made a face……. so I captured it!!

We were tired from chasing cell service and dealing with idiots, so we decided to go back to the Bus and get it cleaned up for going to the rally tomorrow. Along the way, I found a car wash, and sprayed the Honda off. We had hit a lot of bugs in the 1450 miles up here and hit several rain showers, so they were both pretty dirty.

On the way to the Bus, Patsy wanted to stop at an Amish basket seller on the side of the road. Here are some pictures (the horse was tied up to a nearby tree):

Patsy found a basket with a design that she liked, but did not know where she would use it. I suggested that if is was a little smaller, it would fit under our pantry in the Bus. The lady said she could make on any size. She lives near the rally campground, and gave us her address. Monday, we will find her with our dimensions.

When we got back to the campground, Patsy and I decided to wash the Bus, while Mom took a nap. Washing RV’s in the campground is against the rules, so we did a ‘bucket’ wash. It turned out good, but took about 3 hours. Pictures tomorrow!!!

As we were working, a canoe came by, and I thought I recognized the guy in the back as my buddy, Mark Didelot, but he is supposed to be on his way to Alaska. Sure enough, it was not, but the two of them sure dress alike……