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Sauntering, Our travels around the country Maple Syrup Symposium (2007) Terry's cross country bicycle trip It happened to us, crazy but true. So how did I end up in Texas updated videos) |
April 21, 2006 When we toured Montincello in March we were there early in the morning and were the first tour group to go through. On the tour with us were a couple of adults and some high school kids. Turns out they were the entire graduating class from Riverside Christian School in Jackson, Kentucky and they were on a class trip to Washington DC. That was on a Friday. The following Monday after spending the day in DC we were in Union Station. Hundreds of thousands of people go through Union Station a day. As we were making our way from the Metro to the trains to go back to where we were staying, Terry spotted the Kentucky folks and yelled out to them. They kind of looked at him like "how do you know us?". He reminded them about Monticello and they remembered us. Four days later when we were touring Mount Vernon, we were on the first floor waiting to go upstairs when someone yelled from up on the stairway, "Hey! Arizona!". Sure enough it was our Kentucky friends. We caught up with them outside and met Tommie Miller (one of the chaperones and the owner of Miller's Amish Bakery). We exchanged stories about our respective trips and he invited us to visit them if we happened by Jackson Kentucky. We drove into Jackson early this morning and stopped at a gas station to look up his bakery in a phone book. It wasn't there so we asked the cashier if she knew him. She did and directed us to the school just around a couple of corners from the gas station and said he might be there helping out. We arrived in the school and talked to a couple of the staff we found in the hallway. We told them about meeting the Millers and the students in DC and that we were looking for them. They said they had heard about us and gave us directions to the Millers' home. They also invited us to come back at 1:30 for an annual play the parents and faculty put on for the students. We went across the highway and up a hill and stopped at a house. Turns out that was Tommie's mom and he lived just on up the hill. Everyone had called Tommie to tell him he had visitors coming but not who. Since we'd stayed longer in DC than we'd planned he had figured if we hadn't stopped by already we weren't going to. So he was surprised and happy to see us. They run their bakery out of their garage and he put us to work filling some orders. Then we had lunch with them. They have a Chihuahua with an attitude (don't they all have an attitude!) named Rocky. Apparently, he's always barking and snarling at people but he loved us and kept rolling over for belly scratches. Tommie sent us on our way with a box of goodies. We had a great time for the next week mulling over which delicious item we wanted to sample. We went back to the school for the play. The school is k-12 and each class only has a few students. But there was a full house for the play. At intermission one of the seniors stood and made an announcement about how they'd run into us several times on their DC trip and that we'd made a point to come visit them. After the play we had our picture taken with the senior class. It was an amazing day. We felt so welcome. Just goes to show you never know when or where you're going to make a friend (or several).
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