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Published: November 6th 2010
I had my high school classmates, Anna and Cath, over in Chicago for a couple of days. Then we all went on a road trip to Dayton, Ohio. It was a 5-hour drive heading south east passing through Indiana. We passed by acres and acres of corn. We passed by a lot of
silos, which, I learned, were used to process corn into cattle feed. We also passed by a huge wind farm that had dozens of huge wind turbines stretched out as far as the eye could see! We arrived at Dayton in the afternoon and met Anna's husband and their beautiful baby boy. Ravishingly cute boy!
An Amish Experience
I wish I could really say we had a glimpse of an Amish life. But all we really had was a decent meal at an Amish restaurant called Der Dutchman at
Waynesville, which was about 30 mins away, south of Dayton. The buffet table was filled with old-fashioned, made-from-scratch country cooking. The spread offered the classics — fried chicken, country-cured ham, roast beef and turkey. Hard-boiled eggs were colored red with beets. They had fresh creamed corn, stuffing (I'm not quite fond of this though), and mashed potatoes.
Amish Buffet Dinner
Locally, organically grown -- that's for sureThey had pies and cakes baked on the premises using traditional recipes.
The meal was amazing in it's own right because the food that we ate were all grown organically in old-fashioned farms. We had eggs from chicken that roamed freely in the farm, and not caged. Honestly, after this trip, I had started to buy organic eggs as well. But I must admit that for baking, I use the commercial eggs in the popular grocery chains. Everytime I pickup a carton of those eggs, I imagine the chickens being caged all their lives, laying eggs, and maybe wondering how it would be like to use their legs. Yes, I cringe, yet I try to distract myself.
At the gift shop were furnitures and home decors built by hand. I particularly took interest at the arindorack chairs which reminded me of the
tumba-tumba of my childhood.
At the United States Air Force Museum
This could be the largest museum I have every seen! Ofcourse, it is filled by so many airplanes since the early 1900s. We've spent a couple of hours here going back to history, pre-war, during the war, and post-war. Occasionally, the Philippines is
mentioned on sections about the second world war. We got the chance to sit on the cockpit of a retired F-4 jet plane to our delight!
Pretty impressive how humankind has evolved from food hunter and fruit gatherer, to colonizers, to mass murderers. Sorry to mention such a tragic thought but that's what got into my head when we saw the eerie section about the Nazi concentration camps in Europe, and the hydrogen bombs detonated in the 1950s at the Bikini atoll.
On a positive note, we had breakfast at Tim Horton's that morning -- pretty nostalgic for me. It reminded me of my stay in Canada when every morning, we grab a cup of hot coffee before going to work. We did the same routine after lunch. I didn't know they had "Timi's" in the US Midwest.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! It's the Renaissance Fair
I have never been to a Renaissance Fair before. I am glad they took us to the fair to experience the flair and ruggedness of that era. We watched knights jousting with the audience cheering like it was all for real. It was hot and dusty. But that's all part
of it!
After all these fun, we had some more time making ourselves huge glasses of Margaritas. I made a roll of Brazo de Mercedes, as per Anna's request... all these while skiing and struggling with the hula-hoop on the Wii.
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