My family and I have two days to visit with each other. When I looked into what there was to do in the Warwick, NY area, I saw a lot of wineries on the map. It’s perfect. We often go out for wine tasting with my mom. I knew we’d probably hit some of the local tastes when she visited. First! My sister brought bagels. We ate breakfast and headed out to stop number one, a little winery where the tasting room was ran out of a house. We were hesitant to go in, but the people coming out said it was good. They were mostly right. Our second stop ended up being way too busy and loud. When we come out of the woods and back into society, it’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed. I want to blame it on that. However, my family was also starting to stress so it must have been bad. The noise mixed with the fact that they didn’t have anywhere easy for grandpa to get to, made our decision to leave a quick one. Instead, we went to lunch in town. I got a BLT with a fried green tomato on it. I always get excited when I see those on the menu! It’s summer and it’ll be my first fried green tomato of the season. I was in my happy place. Having family around helped that too!
After lunch we walked a couple of shops down to fix a couple of my earrings that I had lost pieces to. I’ve been hiking with them taped on with a bandaid for a couple of months. It was kind of tacky. This is the first shop that I’ve had the time and ability to get to. The earrings aren’t anything special, but they will get me through. It’s something off of the to-do list and it felt good to cross it off.
We wanted to take everyone to the same ice cream shop we went to yesterday, it was too delicious not to. Plus it had a great view! Everyone was full, but we managed to make some room for ice cream. This time, I only had a small scoop.
As we drove around we hit part of the trail. A couple of days ago we road walked for almost a mile right before the bird sanctuary. We pointed out the white blazes to our family and showed them where we started and stopped on the roads. We crossed a couple of hikers as we did. Warthog said, “I think that’s Roar and Sushi Roll!” Sure enough, it was! They are friends that we’ve leapfrogged since Waynesboro, VA. It’s been almost a week or more since we’ve seen them last. We stopped and talked through the windows. I’m sure it was weird for them to see us in a car. Just like it’s weird to see your friends in normal clothes, not hiker clothes.
We went back to the room for a few minutes to rest and plan our next stop. Turns out, we were headed for a distillery. A little ridiculous, I know. But this place was awesome. It was an old converted barn in the middle of a field. Everything was very culinary. The syrups, etc., were all homemade. The ingredients were from the farm itself or the local area. We sat at the bar and the manager served us. He loved grandpa. I’m sure that 90 year old man was the reason we got such fantastic service. Grandpa, who was an efficiency engineer, complemented the manager on his efficiency. Funny enough, efficiency happened to be something the manager has been trying to improve. We stayed for a while, enjoying the music and scenery. It was starting to get late, so we headed back to the motel.
Leftover pizza was dinner. I would say we wrestled over who got the tortellini pizza, but it wouldn’t be true. We were very cordial about it all. Then we hung out in the room and I started to show photos from the trip. People were tired and were falling asleep – I promise, not because of the photos! So we headed to bed. I was tired too, but I still didn’t want to sleep. I wanted every second I could have with the people that I love. But tired, cranky family isn’t fun to visit with. So I slept.
-ansel