Amish Country Revisited

Deb's Golden Bear in Apple Creek

The day after Thanksgiving, the spouse and I headed back down to Amish Country. (Remember our hijinks with the GPS last time?)

Well, we still managed to get lost this time. Although I printed out a nice MapQuest itinerary showing how to get to Kidron from Berlin, the spouse revealed at the last minute that she wanted to stop at Lehman's Hardware in Kidron first.

We tried using the MapQuest instructions in reverse to get to Berlin, but we still got lost and ended up in Apple Creek. Three maps that we had didn't help either, as none of them seemed to have the obscure numbered road we happened to be on!

While turning around in Apple Creek, I happened to notice this cute little ice cream stand called Deb's Golden Bear drive-in. It looked like it was shuttered for the season, which is fine since I didn't need ice cream after my usual Thanksgiving overeating.

Lehman's Hardware in Kidron is a great place if you are into nostalgia. Besides carrying tons of old-fashioned merchandise, the whole place is decorated with antiques. We only spend a couple of hours there, but you could easily spend the day there exploring every nook and cranny.

Along with our other purchases, we picked up a couple of bottles of hard-to-find root beer: Dog N Suds and Frostop. (Do you remember that the Berardi's in Huron used to be a Frostop drive-in with the huge rotating root beer mug on top?)

Lehman's also had dozens of other rare soda pops, including Kickapoo Joy Juice.

After our usual trip to Berlin, we stopped at the Everything Rubbermaid store in downtown Wooster on the way home. The store is located right on the square in a four-story historic building with wooden floors. It's crammed with great Rubbermaid products (lots of close-outs) so we stocked up. What did I buy? A manly Rubbermaid mini-cooler to replace my (ugh) soft fabric purse-like First Federal Savings of Lorain lunch bag.

As usual, instead of dinner at Der Dutchman or some other Amish restaurant, we headed over to our favorite Perkins on US 250 in Ashland to have a nice supper with the locals, and even got our favorite server (April) again.

I still think that Perkins outlet is the best one we've ever been to in Northern or Central Ohio. We saw the same manager hustling around again as usual; he's always there every time we go. The service and food is always great and April even sent us home with coffee to go for our one hour drive back to Sheffield Lake.

All in all, a great day trip – and we did it without the GPS!