The phone rings. Steph has a play in Ellenville. Ellenville? Where the heck is that? Near DeNada? Will we see the famous horse ride through the streets? Nope, Ellenville is on other side of the continent. Plans are made. Some plans are sadly canceled when it appears the flight path includes 6 layovers and the closest airport is STILL 5 hours away. So remote, it should be named Canada, but only in the nicest way.
The secondary travel plan was formulated via the Silver Bullet Super-Speedy White-Knuckles Shuttle. An un-planned detour through Auburn, Indiana at the Auburn Cord Dusenburg Museum allowed Auburn (the driver) to pimp out the ride for the remainder of the trip. The pit stop proved timely as she made it to the Cleveland airport just 10 minutes before Mickey exited the terminal. We are checking with the Guinness
people, but this could be a record! Auburn credited the ghost of Fred’s past with her professional timeliness. Once Mickey was safely ensconced in the passenger seat Mini-Purl was relegated to the back seat. Mini-Purl fancies herself quite the GPS navigator, GPS standing for Great Puppet Seatmate. Not content to relinquish the giving of advice, she was shouting suggestions to Mr. Steele and Laura, who also came along for the ride, but had retired to a carry-on luggage compartment for a little privacy. Talk about your baggage handling! Auburn and Mickey discreetly raised the privacy screen to quiet the enthusiastic noise emanating from the cargo area.One M-P quieted down (wonder if the foa gag had anything to do with it?), we made our way to beautiful and lovely Mill Hall, PA to a top-flight hotel with free continental breakfast. However, the wi-fi sucked. We cleaned off the silver bullet's grill due to the heavy damage from the 6 deer we hit on the 4-hour trip from the airport, but we had fresh venison for supper. Your venison jerky will be on its way to you shortly via FredEx. The next morning we were up early (why? odd, when our internal clocks were an hour behind!) and began making our way toward Ellenville. After missing exit 1 in NY State and having to turn around at exit 2 which is actually mile marker #14, we turned off the interstate for CR80 and US 209 - all 400 miles of it - to Wurtsboro where we found the Motel del Amor awaiting us. Think knotty pine instead of mosquito netting with no hairdryer, no iron, no cups, the handyman (Juan) had to verify that there were towels - which there were not. He returned with a cloth like sandpaper in various sizes. Wonderful exfoliating device! The wi-fi worked at that point so we could send out brief messages (of more than 8 characters for you Bones fans). By this time we were ravenous, so we made the 12 mile drive to historic and scenic Ellenville, where we picked up our tickets for the evening's sold-out performance of "The Price" starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Orson Bean.
We had lunch at a local deli where it took 3 hours to be served our Italian sub and Philly cheese steak. We then took the walking tour of Ellenville, which, remarkably, consumed another 7 minutes of our day. The Catskills are a lot like Wisconsin, only with taller mountains. This would have been a lot more scenic in the fall. Having seen all the sites, (and not having brought golf clubs) we drove back to the motel where we read, battled with spotty wi-fi service and napped, you decide who did which. Awaking just in time we got ready for our big night out and drove back to Ellenville, further reducing the local deer population by two. As we approached the restaurant, we found Pretty in Pink, who is actually now Ravishing Red, & Co. coming from the other direction. Here we learned the restaurant was completely booked. As we had no reservations, we all sat at the bar and got reacquainted with Red and intimately acquainted with Kevin, the cute bartender! Oh-Ho-Ho-Yeh-Heh-Hes!
After a delicious dinner of a sweaty tennis shoe insole colloquially known as a crumbled bleu cheese, pear and chicken salad (billed as grilled hormone-free-range chicken--- It was very good!), we went next door and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Orson was delightfully humorous as a 90-year-old furniture appraiser and Stephanie gave a compelling performance as the wife of a policeman. Her new haircut looks fantastic and she's looking sleek and toned. Once again, a reason to be envious of the Zimbalist physique! We stayed after the show chatting with the actors and catching up with Steph for hours, but in Ellenville that equates to about 10 minutes. Then it was back to the Motel del Amor (no romantic suites for us, just so ya know, it's where we could find a room). And it was bedtime complete with horror movie squeaky armoire door to haunt us through the night. Mickey eventually got used to the alternating sudden screaming snoring cycle and slept in 20 minute increments.
Sunday found us up early again, the bi-polar scalding/freezing, smaller than a Twinkie box shower was so small we had to use Vaseline to slide in & out between its sliding doors. However the water pressure was excellent! So between the Vaseline, high powered jet massager and the sandpaper towels, it was decided that we should add spa to the Motel del Amor title. With FredEx like efficiency, we’re out of the motel before 8 am and on the road again. We stopped in Scranton to get some breakfast, then had to backtrack 3 miles and blow a cleverly hidden red light before we could get on the interstate again! Never any good reasons to linger at the lights! One last stop for gas and then it was on to Cleveland well ahead of schedule. After a late but leisurely lunch, Auburn dropped Mickey off at the airport and she and her li'l silver jet took off for other parts of the Midwest. Mickey tried to get bumped (the voucher would have been enough for another flight!) but alas, nobody was desperate enough to get to her hometown tonight so she made it home as originally scheduled. Auburn was home roughly an hour later in time to release Kevin the hot bartender from the trunk. What??? Everyone brings home souvenirs from vacations! This has been so much fun we're doing it again next week - but with a MUCH shorter drive!
Skeeziks, it just wasn't the same without you!
