Deadly Driving, Wine Tasting & Bison

What a nice weekend we had and we are feeling rested, relaxed, and refreshed...though I was afraid it might not go that way on Friday evening. My schedule was changed after we'd made our plans and I had to work until 8:00 p.m. I had everything packed and ready to go before I went to work but it was still kind of late to be heading out for a 3 1/2 hour drive. In the rain. We did it, though, so we would have all day Saturday for fun.

Tim wasn't able to get home early enough to get in a nap before we left, but he still insisted on driving. HE SCARED ME HALF TO DEATH!! He kept speeding up then slowing way down and I caught him nodding off or staring blankly at the road. Every time I'd ask if he was "okay" he'd grump that he was fine and refused to pull over. After it taking 2 hours to drive a distance that should only have taken 1 he finally agreed to stop and let me drive. We made it the rest of the way in a little less than two hours (the speed limit on I-79 is 70 mph and I may have gone the unwritten limit of 5 mph over the posted limit...or maybe it was 10 **wink*wink**). We lugged our stuff up to our hotel room and literally fell into the bed and slept until morning.

We woke to a damp, cloudy morning and the promise of more rain. Breakfast was french toast, eggs, and bacon at Cracker Barrel. My shopping in their gift shop netted a musical Paw Patrol snow globe for Colton and the cutest little blue bird ornament for our Christmas tree.

The mall is right by the hotel and Cracker Barrel and it has a huge Boscov's discount store so we checked that out (we don't have any locally) and I found these clogs....

They have great built-in arch support and are so comfy that I bought a second pair in black.

We were off to the wineries after that. We skipped going into New York state this time and only hit our favorites between Northeast, PA and the New York state line. We picked up a few bottles of old favorites, one bottle of a blueberry dessert wine, one bottle of concord/blueberry combo sparkling wine, and 2 bottles of sparkling peach wine. The last winery we stopped at required walking under a grape arbor loaded with clusters of concord grapes to get inside. Oh my stars did it ever smell good!

Lunch found us at my favorite little diner, the Freeport Restaurant. It is a little, out of the way place that is nothing fancy, but the food is always amazing. I personally recommend the clam chowder (or seafood chowder if they have it) and sweet potato fries with brown sugar/cinnamon dip. I usually have a sandwich or fish (they are well known for their Lake Erie Perch). We decided to try the pizza this time and ordered it with pepperoni and mushrooms. Would you look at how many mushrooms were on that thing?!!!

Funny story...as we were standing at the bar to pay our bill I noticed when the bartender turned away to answer the phone that here was a big bug on his back. When I let him know he got kind of upset and asked me to get it off of him. So I had to pick a Stinkbug off the guy. Tim's been teasing me ever since about how I didn't need to feel the guys pecs first. I didn't! But I admit he was a cutie! LOL

Stops at the Field & Stream store and a local bakery (we got some delicious pumpkin spice donuts) rounded out the day and we went back to the hotel for a little nap before meeting a couple of my cousins for dinner at Colao's Ristorante, a very pricey, upscale restaurant....but the food is to DIIIIIIIIE for so it's totally worth the once a year splurge. Tim didn't drink since he was driving but I enjoyed a salted carmel apple martini. I ordered lobster stuffed ravioli in a cream reduction with lump crab meat and Tim got a dish with several kinds of seafood in some sort of a red sauce. We each had a salad, but he upgraded to the spinach/tomato/mozzarella salad. For dessert we shared a piece of the most amazing pumpkin spice cheese cake. Sorry no pictures, but it isn't the kind of place people whip out their cell phones to take pictures of the food. So just check out the link for a peek.

We slept in a bit today and for breakfast we nuked up the rest of that amazing pizza from yesterday. After stopping at an amazing chocolate store (picked up a chocolate Thomas the Tank Engine for Colton, peanut butter meltaways for Tim, and chocolate truffles for me) and a local farm market to stock up on fresh veggies and apples we headed south, making our first stop in Edinboro to visit the Wooden Nickel Buffalo Farm.

The herd was being agreeable since it was nice and cool this morning and I got some fairly close photos as soon as I got out of the car.

This calf was curious and not at all afraid, but
Mom moved in between me and him very quickly.

This is Mom with the calf behind her...right before
she charged at another bison that got too close.

Here you can see a part of the herd stretched out across the
field and heading away from me and toward the woods.

The farm was a real cheesy, mom and pop kind of operation and we got a kick out of it. There was a diner attached to the gift shop and I had to take a picture of the sign on the front...

Our son-in-law, who is part Seneca, thought it was hilarious! We enjoyed bison burgers and fries for lunch.

This is the sight that met our eyes in the gift shop.

The little sign under the big guy's head tells the story. He is "Joe" the farm's first calf. When he was 5 years old he began to "test" the fences and broke out repeatedly. The owners had to make the hard decision to protect everyone and have him put down. We laughed because the mount job even included fake buffalo poo! That's it on the "grass" by his hind foot. They had him preserved since he was their first calf. There wasn't any story about the little guy. 

We made one more stop at the Grove City Outlets, but didn't stay too long as it had gotten quite a bit hotter and the humidity was about as high as it could be without being rain. It was miserable. I did find a couple of books, a few little gadgets at the Eddie Bauer 50% off sale, and I combined my coupons with a sale and cleaned up at Bath & Body Works.

It was soooo nice to get away for a couple of days and we enjoyed the time very much. Tim is even talking about going back up before Christmas to get away and do some shopping!