Pennsylvania trip: The never-ending drive

We recently took a lovely long-weekend trip to Pennsylvania. We had so much fun -- we saw and experienced so many interesting things that one blog post couldn't do it justice. So I'll tell you about it day by day. This is Day 1. 

I stumbled upon this idea for a vacation by accident. 

I wasn't looking for anywhere new and different to visit, even though I have always LOVED going someplace I've never been. Exploring new sights, smells, tastes. 

A few months ago, a Facebook friend posted something about a train hotel in Tennessee. I checked it out online and didn't think it looked much like a train. Which got me to wondering if some other train hotels existed, and a little Googling determined that there are a handful of true train hotels. 

The closest and most interesting one was in Pennsylvania … Amish country, even. Ray and I made many trips through this part of the state when we lived in Connecticut, and I always wanted to stop and see more, but we were always in a hurry. I thought it would be a lovely place to explore. 

When I checked out the hotel, I was sold. The Red Caboose Motel is made entirely of old cabooses, lined up in the middle of farmland and converted into single rooms. The original owner won them in an auction after a lowball bid and then had to figure out some way to use them! The story of how he built the motel is astonishing. It looked like the coolest place, and I knew immediately that Sawyer would love it. (Frankly, through his obsession, I've come to like trains pretty much, too.)

I scouted out other things to do in the area, and it looked like there would be lots of new adventures to be had. I didn't think it would be Ray's cup of tea, and his business makes it hard to take off for five days. So I asked my mom if she'd like to come along. 

The trip was set, and I decided early on to keep it a big secret from Sawyer. 

I was about 98 percent recovered from my terrible ankle sprain two months ago, when two days before the trip I fell on the stairs and re-injured my foot. It hurt and was swollen, but I felt like I could suffer through the pain for our trip. 

We told Sawyer a few days before leaving that we were going on a special trip with Grandmother. The morning we left, we told him that we were going to Pennsylvania and that it was a long drive. But we never revealed the train part. 

The weather was beautiful Thursday morning when we loaded up Grandmother's new car and left. We headed into Virginia, cutting across the Blue Ridge Mountains on a road that didn't look this curvy on the maps I'd consulted. The winding drive through the mountains to tie into Interstate 81 slowed our travels. But we made it to the halfway point -- Harrisonburg, Va. -- about 1 p.m. I thought it would make a neat place to stop for lunch and walk around to let Sawyer burn off steam. 

We found a cute restaurant and ate lunch. Then we let Sawyer run around the majestic courthouse downtown. 

Getting Sawyer back into the car was a challenge, but I hoped he'd settled down and take a nap once we were back on the monotonous interstate. 

Sawyer was very interested in each new state we passed through, and we stopped for a bathroom break in West Virginia. He climbed around on the rocks at the rest stop and didn't want to leave. But we herded him back into the car and pressed on. 

Not long after our rest stop in West Virginia, traffic came to a standstill. We moved about 3 mph for miles. Sawyer was "soooooo bored." I told him to close his eyes and take a nap, but I feared the slowdown would kill any hopes of him sleeping. We crept along, finally deciding to get off for gas just about where the wreck occurred and was starting to clear up. 

After a quick fill-up, we got moving again but we were way behind schedule now. 

We finally hit Pennsylvania, and all three of us cheered. But we still had a ways to go before the hotel. A couple more bathroom breaks were required -- including one where we thought we might have to just pull off on the side of the road. The sun was sinking lower and lower. I was afraid we might not find anywhere around to eat dinner after getting to the motel so late. So I bought some extra snacks to suffice for dinner if we didn't feel like venturing back out for a real meal. 

By now, it was after 7 o'clock. My goal had been to arrive by 5 and have some time to explore and play. I was keeping a close watch on the GPS when I noticed that our arrival time had doubled from 15 minutes to more than 30. I knew something was wrong. 

Mom pulled off at an exit for me to figure out where we'd gone wrong, and we were stuck facing a tollbooth. We had no choice but to go through it and then pull over. Sawyer was asleep by this point, and I was majorly frustrated. We checked another GPS, and it said the same thing. We now had an extra HOUR before we'd arrive. (We didn't learn where we'd gone wrong until we made the trip home!)

Luckily, Sawyer was sleeping peacefully. The drive was mostly on back roads through the countryside, and the sunset was beautiful. I was still mad that our arrival was blown, but it was, at least, a peaceful detour. We passed lots of horse-drawn buggies. Lots of farms. 

And finally we were there. 

Sawyer was too asleep to really notice, and it was a little dark to get a good view of the cabooses. But we were all thrilled to be off the road! Thankfully, I'd had to idea to call ahead and say that we were running late. The lobby/front desk closed at 8 p.m., and the woman left our door key -- the old-fashioned real key kind -- in an envelope taped to the door. I might've broken down in tears if we'd arrived to a dark, closed-up front office.

We lugged all our bags in, ate our makeshift dinner and crawled into our sleeping berth bunk beds. After an eight-hour trip stretched into almost 12 hours of travel time, I hoped that tomorrow could only be better.