Rhinebeck Hangover

Sorry, it's been a week since Rhinebeck and I'm just now getting around to uploading photos and posting. I've been suffering from a Rhinebeck hangover; too much walking, bad food and a tooth that decided this was the week to throb.

So rarely do I get to go anywhere fun, that I could hardly sleep Friday night. I have a tooth the dentist cracked when he pulled my wisdom tooth a couple years ago. The filling has since fallen out, and I'm a chicken about dentists since the previous incident. At 2am, this tooth decided it was going to make it's presence known. Not that you care to know this, but it goes along with the story.

At 8am we are finally on our way, just Mom and I. This is our first trip together in 32 years.



A couple hours into the trip and my tooth decided to say hello in a severe throbbing sort of way. The Thruway shop sold everything except for Orajel. Since Mom has her GPS she named Sam and EZ Pass she does not mind getting off at the next exit and search for a drugstore. Sam plays a annoying character at times over the weekend. Much to my step-father's chagrin, Mom programmed it with a female voice. We bought the maximum strentgh Orajel, which numbed half my head, but took awhile for the tooth to notice.

We arrived sometime after 1pm, in spite of "Sam." The GPS is good for long distance Interstate Highway travel, but get on "local" roads and she will have you going in circles. Mom programmed Rhinebeck fairgrounds when we got off the Interstate, only to have "Sam" tell us to take a U-turn at the front gate.

First we saw some poor Lemurs huddling in front a heating light trying to keep warm.




There was a free horse drawn carriage ride, which was quite packed. We decided to save that for Sunday. The crowd was bigger on Saturday.


I got to see the famous Golding spinning wheel in person. I explained to Mom that at $5000 and a three year waiting list it is the Rolls Royce of spinning wheels.



We saw the Knitting Curmudgeon over by the food stands and we did stop her to say hi. I've been a long time lurker of her blog. While she did say on her blog to say hi if anyone saw her, I can't help but think it must be weird to have strangers come up and know you but not the reverse. She is very nice in person. I worried she might have thought I was really strange, being half my face was numb and no sleep, I didn't really act my usual self.

This Cashmere goat tried to convince me that I should take him home. He gave me those Dammit bunny eyes, that Dammit used on me at the pet store. I actually considered for a minute if I could get a discount on my rent if I provided 24 hr lawn mowing service. Realizing the landlord probably wouldn't appreciate the added fertilizer, I scrapped that idea.



There were angora bunnies for sale. As much as I would have like to bring home a herd, I knew Duane, Dammit, Lexie and the five cats would have shoved the lot of us out the door, I settled for pictures.



There were alpacas.



By that time it around 5pm and we were freezing cold. We decided to head out in search of a motel. After an hour of driving down Rte 9, which way, I have no clue, as I started nodding off, and finding no vacancy signs everywhere, Mom decided to pull into a gas station and ask for the help of some locals. I took the opportunity to tank up on some much needed caffeine. A local gave us vague directions to a Motorlodge near the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, told us to skip the Sunset Motel, as it wasn't the decent lodging. Being I listened to these vague directions pre-caffeine the only thing that stuck was to skip the Sunset. This was good as Mom wanted to pull in as soon as she saw a vacancy sign.

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the tale, if your interested that is. Did we eventually find decent lodging?