I stayed at the Fulton Steamboat Inn, probably THE place to stay at if you’re ever visiting this area (and I don’t merely say that because of the sweet hotel girl I met here.) As soon as you come near you can hear folksy music playing in the background, and the hotel is especially a treat to the eyes at night:

Look at all the purdy lights!

Awesome rooms too:

LOVE

After catching a bluegrass show the first night, it was off to go geocaching for the remainder of my trip there. One of the things that I should have realized about this pastime is that when you go outdoors, you expose yourself to unpleasant, outdoorsy things. Like say, poison ivy.

And course, only me, would catch a BAD case of poison ivy by looking around for a geocache at a Walmart parking lot. Yes, seriously. A week later the rashes have left me weeping in a corner for several days now, while wishing death and destruction on the idiot douche monkey cache owner for hiding this thing in a jungle of this VILE, EVIL WEED. Seriously, who expects to run into poison ivy at WALMART? Oy.

I did fare better on future cache hunts though, the most rewarding of which was hidden at a covered bridge here:

Wow... it really covers!

You would thinking finding a cache here would be easy right? Well, aside from almost getting mowed down by passing cars who liked to drive 300 miles an hour over the bridge, when I realized where I had to look…

Errmm...

Are you kidding me?

Oh boy. There was a tiny ledge underneath the bridge, but the only way to get to it was to swing under by holding one of the wooden beams. I’m telling you, I came THISCLOSE to falling into the water. I was sure the wood was going to give way and I would wind up spending the night at a hospital with splinters and pneumonia. Somehow though I pulled it off, grabbed the cache while holding on to one of the beams, and swung out. Behold:

Who does your Daddy work for now, punk?

Inside were several items known as swag (trade items geocachers leave behind) and a geocoin that came from British Columbia, which I took as my reward. Due to their nature though I can’t hold on to it, so I’ll need to drop the coin off at another cache soon, where it will continue its worldwide journey.

After that near brush with death and swimming with the fishes, I decided to avoid the more riskier caches and opt for those that took me to various areas around Lancaster, preferably those places that didn’t require bushwhacking my way through the forests where evil, dangerous things like groundhogs lurked. Filtering those out, I ended up finding one near a game farm:

What are YOU lookin' at?

And one near an Amish store, where I bought a homemade sausage pretzel from a pretty Amish babe. Mmmmmm, mmmmmm, MMMM! She can do Rumspringa with me anytime.

But anyhoo, *ahem*, I have to say, geocaching is definitely providing some helpful fodder for my blogging, primarily because it leads me to places I normally wouldn’t go on my own. Usually I’m just driving around aimlessly when I’m unsure of what to do, (which is pretty much the case for me 90 percent of the time,) so it’s nice to finally come across a hobby that can provide some much needed focus to my otherwise meandering and boring life.

I have more pictures from the trip by the way, so if you’d like to see them you can check them out at my gallery or on Flickr. Enjoy!

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Mistletoes would be a bonus too.

It’s been a long, long time since Christmas felt like Christmas to me, and I’d like to recapture the joy and happiness I once felt for this time of year again.

Hopefully it won’t turn out like a Clark Griswold kind of Christmas vacation either.

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$150?!??! FOR A PARKING TICKET??? SON OF A___ YEEEEEEEARRFRBVGHHGh…

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be driving through that town again. Dillweeds.

I certainly seem to get a run of bad luck every time I put myself out there and try to enjoy life. If I just did my usual thing, instead of going out there and enduring all this misery, I could be safe at home, hiding under my bed while playing Nancy Drew games on my laptop and sipping hot cocoa. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pulled over by cops, or rolling in poison ivy, or getting mowed down by crazy drivers in the city, or wearing out an aging SUV that just cost me $1500 to fix up.

But then again, I wouldn’t have had beautiful women somehow find their way into my hotel room three times in a row either. Two that brought me room service, and one that helped get my fireplace going. Nor would I have enjoyed some of the beautiful scenery I came across either in my travels.

It occurred to me then that hiding under my bed and surfing eHarmony is probably not the best way to meet or find a nice girl. Besides, I was missing out on life, and even with all the dangers out there, the rewards often trump the risks.

So despite my itching all over as I type this post, I’m determined to continue living the life I’ve always wanted to live, to go places I’ve never been to before, to explore the world and meet new people, and maybe somewhere in all that I’ll someday meet my dream girl too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go put some ointment on and scream for a little while…

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And then, of course, it suddenly stopped working.

No matter what I did, the thing would NOT TURN ON at all, so I went downstairs to the front desk to seek help. It was around 10 at night, so I wasn’t expecting much though. A very pretty girl was there, with long raven black hair and mocha skin, currently taking a call on the phone. After she hung up, she asked what she could do for me.

“Yeah, I’m an idiot, but I’m trying to get my fireplace working and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I pressed all the buttons on the remote here and nothing’s happening.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry about that. Let me come up with you, and we’ll see if we can’t get it going again.”

“Uh… sure, that’d be great.” She was going to come with me to my hotel room??

She followed me up the stairs, and I could feel my ears burning the way they always do when a beautiful girl gets in close proximity to me. We talked a little on the way up, though my mind was racing as I tried to furiously remember where I had left my teddy bear, and if I could get to it fast enough to hide it before she saw it.

We finally entered the room, and I showed her the fireplace. She looked around and tried the remote a few times while I watched her. I noticed the teddy was on the bed, so I casually moved back, and quickly tucked him under the covers. Whew. Sorry Koko, but I gotta be a man tonight.

I walked up beside her again as we both looked at the nonworking fireplace. She started laughing.

“Well it’s definitely not you. I can’t get it to work either. Let me call maintenance and then go see if I can get an instruction manual. I’ll be right back.”

“Sure!”

When she left, I quickly ran to my laptop and IMed to whoever I was chatting with then:

“OMG there’s a beautiful girl in my room and she’s trying to light my fire!!!111 BRB!!!”

She came back a minute or two later with the manual, and started reading the instructions. I went around the fireplace to see if there were any switches too, then went back to her.

“What does the manual say?”

“Well…” She leaned her head over and shared the manual with me, her hair brushing over my arm and shoulders.

Oh mercy mommy.

I looked at the manual but I couldn’t see any words.

“Hmm,” she went on, oblivious to the fact that my body temperature had gone up 100 degrees, “It says to pull the plug and leave it off for 5 minutes. Sometimes it just needs to warm up before it will go on.”

Oh we’re warmed up here, believe me.

“Oh, ok, I’ll go pull the plug then.”

While I pulled the plug she got on her knees and felt around for a switch, then looked at the manual again. Completely girlie-like, completely adorable. I resisted the damned near overwhelming urge to drop beside her and play with her hair. My goodness, so adorable…

As I watched her in loving adoration, it struck me just how trusting she had been. She didn’t mind being close to me, didn’t mind that she was alone with a strange man who could have just as easily locked the room to have his way with her. And she didn’t mind… talking to me either.

The experience was completely new to me. I was too used to seeing women refusing to even acknowledge my existence, and those few times when they did acknowledge it, my presence was always welcomed with derision and scorn. But this? What was this about? I know it’s her job and all, but she was certainly going above and beyond anything I ever expected. Did she not find me hideous? Am I not repugnant and disgusting to behold? Indeed I had glanced at the mirror in my room a few times since she had been here, and I hated what I saw. Yet she didn’t mind my company at all.

After I pulled the plug we both sat and chatted for a while. She had been working at the hotel for a few years and was a local. She gets bored at times, but she does prefer and enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside. I talked a little about my background and she showed genuine curiosity about me and what I did. A few minutes flew by, and we tried the fireplace again. Still no luck.

“I’m so sorry, I really hoped I would have gotten this fixed for you.” She patted and held my arm. Somewhere in the distance I could hear a chorus of angels singing.

I love you, marry me please?

“Oh it’s no problem, you really went out of your way to help me, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”

“It’s no trouble at all. I’ll leave a note for the manager to check again and if it still doesn’t work we’ll have it replaced. You’ll be here for a few days?”

“Yeah, till Wednesday.”

“Great, we should definitely have it fixed or replaced by the next morning.”

“Thanks so much.”

She smiled warmly as I held the door for her, and then she was gone.

I thought about chasing after her. But what would I say? She was a local, and thus hundreds of miles away from where I really lived. And I was so love starved that I wondered if I was reading far too much into her behavior, and if I had asked her out for coffee or whatever, she would have given me the cold shoulder then. The rejection would have crushed me.

I replayed her sweet smile in my head, her hand on my arm and squeezing ever so gently, choosing to enjoy the hospitality I had received and simply accept it at that. I happened to look up and just about jumped out of my skin when I saw the fireplace was on again.

What the!??

It had just inexplicably turned on again. She had lit my fire after all.

I haven’t seen her since though, and I leave for home again tomorrow morning, but before I check out I’ll stop one more time and see if I can’t get her email at least.

But even if not, I don’t think she’ll ever realize the impact she had on me. Indeed, since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed I don’t draw the kind of reaction I see from women back home, and I wonder if the reason it’s been so difficult to find a sweet girl has more to do about location than any character flaw of mine (which are too numerous to count). Even at restaurants here, I’ve seen one or two pretty looking girls actually… smile at me. And not platonic either, I mean the kind of smile I would see from someone when I’ve just made their day.

And all I can think to myself is: why the @#$% aren’t these girls using eHarmony? It seems that if I’m going to find a girl who is sugar and spice and everything nice, then I was going to have to do this the old fashioned way: get up off my sweet love biscuits and travel to meet these women in the real world instead. The further away from home, the better.

But at least for now, this country girl with her sweet demeanor and hospitality helped me believe again that women like her still existed, full of life and innocence and wubbie wubs. She gave me hope again.

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So I go into Sheetz to use the restroom, and I almost put change into the slots here thinking these were dispensers for Purell handwipes.

A morning at Cracker Barrel begins with frustration.

I love this town already.