A few months ago, Ron, Caymen, Ace, and Zac drove to Pennsylvania to tour the infamous Pennhurst Asylum and meet the cast of Mountain Monsters and Destination Fear. Caymen went because she'll never pass up a road trip and she has a crush on Dakota from Destination Fear. Granted, so do I, but not enough to road trip to Pennsylvania. Zac tagged along because somebody had to be the adult supervision.
A little side story. Bigfoot is not the only thing Chuckles and Ace have in common. If you're familiar with the old sitcom 'The King of Queens' they're both
much like Arthur Spooner who lived in their basement. That's how their nicknames Spooner Senior and Spooner Junior were lovingly born. Someday I'll blog about the Spooners and their
big feelings. That skipped Zac too.
But back to Bigfoot. We were scheduled to babysit Ace and Scarlet the first weekend in August and Ron suggested we take them to the Hocking Hills Bigfoot festival and stay in a hotel. Caymen was all for it because road trip, but zero part of me wanted to spend a day at a Bigfoot festival and a night in a hotel room with both Spooners. But with Zac out of town and our other kids having to work, that left me to be the adult supervision on this trip. A sad state of affairs, I admit, but that's how it landed.
My first job as the adult supervision was to refuse his demands to take his Sasquatch costume to scare people. I told him absolutely not and he threw a minor fit. Sorry, but watching my husband get shot in the woods of Hocking Hills is not on my bucket list. Oh, you thought I was talking about our grandson? Nope. That was Spooner
Senior, everybody.
So we loaded up in the van. Ron, Caymen, Ace, Scarlet, me, and our oldest dog Quincy, the only one who can travel on trips and be trusted not to act a fool. I wish I could say the same for the humans.
Our first stop was lunch. Most of us wanted Mexican, but Ace hates cheese which apparently disqualifies all Mexican food so we ended up at The Hungry Buffalo. It has a pet friendly patio and the waitress brought Quincy a large bowl of water, which Ace promptly stepped in and immediately had to remove his wet sock and shoe to dry on a nearby railing,
almost ruining the entire day for him. Then our nacho appetizer arrived
with cheese and he went over the edge.
Spooner Junior, everybody.
Next stop- our hotel, where a lady approached us in the lobby pointing at Ron and Ace's matching Bigfoot shirts and asked, "Why is this big monster thing so popular here?" Ron excitedly answered, "Because there's been SIGHTINGS!" Overhearing the conversation, the front desk lady quickly interjected before things escalated into who knows what, "Well, word of sightings happen anywhere there's heavily wooded areas..." and I finished her sentence, "or heavy populations of hillbillies." *points to the senior Spooner*
Note to front desk lady- I'm normal. I married into this.
We found our room and within 90 seconds of entering, Ace pulled the refrigerator out of it's cabinet and Caymen came out of the bathroom proudly announcing she'd found a hair dryer hanging on the back of the door that "someone forgot." Orrr, and stick with me here, maybe that's the complimentary hair dryer that comes with the room.
Good lord, what have we done?
Family meeting: "We've stayed in hotels before. Let's everybody get it together and stop sounding like a lunatic to strangers in the lobby while we're at it." *side eyeing you, senior.*
We decided it'd be best if Sassy everyone took a little nap before doing anything else. Ace looked at the 2 queen beds and asked "Where's Sassy sleeping?"
"Excuse me, sir? Chuckles and I are sleeping in this bed. You're sleeping over there with Scarlet and Caymen."
Flash to 10 minutes later when I was laying with my head on the bedside table while both Spooners lay cuddled beside me in the bed. I lost that war hard and fast.
The festival didn't have anything fun for Scarlet, so she and I stayed at the hotel pool. There was nothing there to play with, so I gave her some pennies to dive for and she was amazed. Welcome to old school dive toys, kid.
Apparently the festival was pretty boring and although they saw 'Wild Bill' from Mountain Monsters, "he was too hot and grumpy for pictures." I can only imagine how the two Spooners found
that out. So they came back to the hotel and started watching the Bigfoot marathon on tv. There's a reason I never leave home without a book.
Around 5:30, Ron suggested we 'go on a hike through the Moonville Tunnel down near Bubbawoods Trail.' Everything about that suggestion was alarming. He explained that it used to be a train track but now it's a hiking trail that leads to an old school a mile down, then we'd turn around and come back. Sounded easy enough.
In reality, what we did was take 2 of our grandchildren on an unscheduled and unsupervised Sasquatch Hike (aka; Squatch and Seek...I wish I was making that up) in a sketchy area with no phone signal that turned out to be far longer than 'a mile down each way' because my husband lies to get his way.
My first clue that we should leave was when there was what appeared to be a woman living in her car in the parking lot. The second clue was the 4 people walking toward us through the tunnel singing 'Take me home country roads,' a song I
used to like until I heard it being sung Acapella through a tunnel by people who looked like the cast of Children of the Corn. I took my phone out and started recording so someone might find it as evidence if we disappeared. Not even kidding.
On top of all that, it was 6:45pm and trying to walk a mile each way with a slow mover (Ron, not the children), we'd be racing sunset. The last thing I wanted was to end up somewhere on this Moonville path in the dark and the flashlights we carried weren't nearly as comforting as Ron thought they were.
If this had been a movie, I would've been calling us idiots through the screen.
The tunnel singers turned out to be a harmless family who ended up wanting to take a picture with Ron and Ace and their Bigfoot shirts. The Spooners have obviously hit celebrity status. Once their fans left, we started on our way.
As expected, Ace and I walked faster than Ron and the girls, so we ended up quite a ways ahead of them. I told Ace at first sign of that school, we're turning back. While we walked, Ace filled me in on the back story of the school. He explained that the old school burned down a long time ago and some children died and some children got out and they rebuilt a new one. (The following day, I confronted Ron about filling an 8 year olds head with tragic stories. He didn't know anything about a fire. Caymen googled it):
Meanwhile, sitting on Chuckle's shoulders, Scarlet was having a nonstop conversation under her breath. When Ron finally said, "I can't understand what you're saying."
She answered, "I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to my flashlight."
For future reference, it's not our place to take the grandchildren to places that could scare them and/or possess them. File this under things I shouldn't have to say.
Eventually giving up on finding the school, we turned and met back up with Ron and the girls. When you've walked so far you have to carry the dog, you know you've walked too far.
Ron and the girls were busy taking pictures of broken trees, because Bigfoot,
obviously. As we trucked along the ever-darkening path through the woods, Quincy darted after what I thought was a long black stick, but then it slithered across our path, and that's when I peed my pants. Like, abruptly. Straight down my leg.
That's right, the adult in charge is the one who peed her pants. The irony is not lost on me, I assure you, and the Spooners will never let this go.
Before anybody asks me why I didn't Kegel, let me remind you that A HUGE BLACK RAT SNAKE SLITHERED IN FRONT OF ACE, ME, AND QUINCY. There was ZERO Kegel time! Also, my Kegel game is weak, but mostly there was no time.
It's not like my bladder completely emptied, so I real casual like dropped my shorts for a quick little Squatch and Pee, when I glanced up and found Ron taking pictures of me. Oh now dude walks fast and catches up. He said if the roles were reversed, I'd be taking pictures of him and I'd blog it. He's not wrong. So here I am forced to be on the receiving end of my own hilarity.
He earned back some marital points when he stopped to carve our initials on a bridge and we made it back to our van right before we lost all daylight. The kids didn't seem too traumatized as they babbled on the whole ride back to the hotel about how Sassy peed her pants.
I don't even care. Whatever stopped Ace from his telepathic history lessons and Scarlet conversing with inanimate objects was fine with me. Just add it to the list of things we'd have to explain to their parents.
The following morning, we got up early for the hotel breakfast before heading home. AGAINST MY WISHES, Ron brought Quincy with us to breakfast. I know better. I need you to understand that. So I wasn't at all surprised when he and Quincy both got kicked out of the breakfast area.
Ace wanted to bring his peanut butter bread with us to eat later, so I reluctantly asked the nice employee if he had a ziplock bag. I'm a huge stickler for buffet etiquette and you don't ask for take home bags. But you also don't bring your dog in there either, so may as well ask since we were already in the thick of it.
He very kindly brought me a gallon size bag, which was all he could find. Ron appeared back in the breakfast line, minus Quincy, and as I cleaned up our area, I noticed the breakfast line backing up at the pancake station and looked up to see both Spooners overly involved with the pancake conveyor belt. I'm not a fan of being a spectacle at hotel breakfasts, so I loud whispered "Ron!" They turned around with a plate overflowing with pancakes and I growled "Ronnn!"
As if it made it better, he hurriedly explained "Half of them are Ace's!"
Just as the employee began to approach us again, Ace grabbed a handful of pancakes off the plate and tried to force feed me one before dropping the rest of them into his 'to go' bag.
I waved off the employee.
We'll show ourselves out.
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| Our 4 little Bigfoots |
