Life and Love with Anna and Matt

Whew! What a month it has been. On Easter Sunday I fell about 6 feet and broke a few ribs and had a brain bleed. Worst pain I've ever experienced! Ugh. My own fault. I finally have to admit I am too old to clean the gutters! A few weeks later we headed out for an adventure. We had a plan to drive back roads up to Ohio, visit with friends and family, then more back roads to Corning New York, then Stockbridge Massachusetts, Salem, Cap Cod, Connecticut then back to Florida.

We took I95 into Georgia and then just told the phone to route us and avoid highways. Well it sure took us on some SERIOUS back roads. We stopped at every antique store, flea market, garage sale and junk shop we saw, and slowly the back of the car started to fill with antique treasures, mostly paper ephemera, Matt's special eBay interest. One of our first stops? Buc-ee's! Love those pork sandwiches and sugary nuts and their clean bathrooms!

https://buc-ees.com/

We found ourselves in rural Georgia and were getting hungry. We looked on "Main Street" and saw nothing, so we asked someone. Said the best, and only, restaurant was across the railroad tracks in a yellow building. We found it and the sign said SOUL FOOD.

Turns out we were pretty much the only white folks in town, but after the strange looks, we had some of the best Mac-n-cheese, bread pudding and sweet tea and we were all friends by the end of the meal.

More antique stores....

I have to brag about Matt a moment - because he did eBay sales with his antique expert mother, and dealt with paper ephemera - old post cards, ads, matchbook covers, stuff like that. Well he found an old scrapbook made by an old Navy guy from the 1920s and 1930s. Postcards, photos, beer labels, luggage tags, Chinese paper money, old train tickets, stuff like that. I thought he was nuts for paying $300 for it. After getting it home and carefully taking it apart, he's already had a $900 offer for just one of the old Chinese paper bills!! its up on eBay now...he knows his paper!!

We continued to drive, up through the Smokies, with gorgeous views and a million shades of green!

When we got to Ohio we went straight to my adopted son's house to see the cutest little boy that ever lived and had such a good time. I was still not allowed to lift because of the broken ribs, but we managed and poor Matt had to schlep all the stuff in and out of the car all this time.

We also got to spend some time with the Lemons family, attended one of the great-nieces bridal showers, spent time with my BFF Jean and was able to get together with high school friends!

Then it was onward to Corning! We took I-70 to the West Virginia border, and then re-routed ourselves onto more back roads. We were in Wellstown, Pennsylvania on a Sunday, so many shops were closed, but a bright and colorful shop at the corner drew us down the street. So glad it did! It was called Pop Culture (https://popscultureshoppe.com/ ) and I've never seen a store with so many puzzles and games! We're talking thousands!! I love puzzles! So while I was looking, Matt got to talk to the guy behind the counter, which happened to be the owners! They started telling us about Wellsboro and how it was the "town that saved Christmas". When we said we had never heard of it, she asked if we had been to the local history museum. We said no, we saw it, but it was closed. So she said follow me and told us she happened to be on the board of the Historical Society, so she opened it up for us, switched on all the lights and proceeded to tell us all about how the area had many glass factories and made the majority of the lightbulbs for the entire country. Then when WWII came along, they could no longer import the pretty glass ornaments, so the Wellsboro factories started to produce America's Shiny Brite ornaments and saved Christmas! To read more about it, check out https://ebm.mzk.mybluehost.me/history-of-glass-making-in-wellsboro-pa/#lightbulb. And of course more antiques!

The Pop Culture store had a back room where you had open versions of some of the games so you could sit back there and play a game to see if you like it before buying, do a puzzle or play some cards. A very nice shop with very nice owners!

We wound our way through Pennsylvania and getting to Corning New York. Such a great little town with a cute and busy downtown area and lots of art galleries. We toured the Corning Museum of Glass as well as the Rockwell Museum (Not Norman Rockwell), and were not disappointed. The glass museum was gorgeous and their gift shop just as pretty as the museum! I bought a few things I could't live without (including from their clearance rack!)