Monday, August 18, 2008

Epiphany, history, wine and a total bust!

Today Todd and I were both off of work. We decided to head north to Bedford County PA and beyond. While on the interstate I had an Epiphany. Let me preface this by saying that I've never been a huge meat eater. I know that I went through a stage when I was around 10 (this stage lasted a few years) where I ate very minimal meat. Today, on the interstate I looked over at the other lane and saw a trailer with a few cows in it. They were serenely looking out the window. Their chocolate brown eyes were so calm and it just hit me that they were heading to their death....for someone like me to eat! And All of a sudden I knew that I didn't want to eat beef anytime soon. I don't know what it is that caused this feeling. I'll also be the first to admit that I have no bad thoughts about eating chicken (I even saw chickens running around today...and they didn't bother me). I know that this makes no sense...I all of a sudden just can't bear to eat beef but I"m ok with other animals? Sooooo that was my epiphany. I've actually already figured out what I'm going to do for the few meals on the menu that are beef based for this week. Who knows what this epiphany will bring, or even how long this will last...but it has just been really stuck in my head all day!

We spend the morning at Old Bedford Village. This is a place that I had visited as a young girl and I know that it had a profound impact upon me and my eventual love of history. SO I was excited to go. We walked around and enjoyed all the aspects of history that was displayed throughout the village. (ok, I'm royally bothered, blogger.com will not let me load my pictures due to an 'internal error' blah blah blah! I'll post the pics tomorrow)

After the morning at the village, we ate lunch at a really cool old Tavern. Jean Bonnet Tavern, which is right on Route 30. The food was excellent and the building was really neat. From there we went to Helixville Winery, where we were able to sample some wines that were made on the premises (and bought some to boot). We left there and headed to the highly touted Gravity Hill. Uhhhhh what a bust! It gave me no illusion of being gravity defying....but to each his own!


The last thing we did before heading home was to go visit the Flight 93 memorial (temporary) in Shanksville, PA. It was sobering to visit this memorial and to remember the terror that we felt during those awful hours on 9-11. The picture on the left is the wall of things that people have recently brought and left. They leave them up temporarily and then they take them down, clean them up and catalogue them. The guide told us that they have more than 30,000 items that have been left in memory. They hope to use some in the permanent memorial that they are currently planning and raising money to build. The picture on the left shows the field in which the plane came down. (the only pictures it would let me post today were these. I guess that is actually a good thing...because these pictures are much more serious than any of my other silly pictures!)




All in all, it was a full day by the time you added the travel time into the mix. BUt it was well worth it to get away!!!!!