A weekend well spent....

Planning kills the curiosity of exploring a new place. I am so much for it. Well, that's like a motto for all the lazy bones :-) I hardly remember I have planned any trip in the US, big or a day-trip. Trust me even my honey-moon was impromptu, well the touring part of it ;-) Educating yourself too much about your next vacation destination blunts the beauty in uncertainty about the place. For the very reason, I would never like to have a GPS in my car. Expense is the next big reason :-) Of late, we been using just the traditional maps to travel, even google maps or mapquest steals the joy of finding the shortest distance that your navigator would constantly want to come up with. Our last trip to Toronto from NY and back was purely AAA map based. Another advantage is my wife is occupied for the most bit :-)

So far I may sound convincing, well trying to do one myself, this game plan back-fired last weekend. After playing Dandia for about 3 hours (I see it as calorie burning routine) on Friday night with legs in constant to-fro-zig motion and head and chest in fro-to-zag, it was ambitious to get up at 5 am. Well, finally we got up at 6 am and were in Madison by 8 am was in fact a courageous act in itself - on a Saturday morning! Even my weekday mornings start an hour late! Our friends who were planning to take "proper google maps" could not, Murphy's law had to set in - Internet was down. Trusting (and boasting) our past exploits with paper maps, we started our journey to Door County. It was not even half-a-mile that we realized it's not West but East we had to head. Thinking country road would be a scenic route by the lake, we confirmed how naive we were. Signals and more signals, detour, stink of cow-dung (Wisconsin is like Bihar of India) and single lane roads with dried grass and bald trees around, was certainly anything but scenic. We thanked our good deeds that we found a Taco-Bell (first snack place that we could comfortably recognize) in Sturgeon Bay. Pretty soon we realized that Door County is full of tourists - two reasons: Green Bay/Packers game on Sunday and Festival in Egg Harbor. The initial jitters of not finding a room to stay overnight soon turned into a reality. With time, intensity of searching the place to crash and clean beefed up. Three phones were constantly dialing each and every hotel in the County for almost 2 hours.

"Hi, Do you have any rooms available for today or tonight".
Reply: "No, we are full"
"Thank you"

I would have heard this almost 100 times, and we ran dry on luck. We decided to pass upon staying in Door County and started enjoying the festival, tid-bits, board walk and the groovy aerial view from the look-out tower in Fish Creek. Fall colors were at their best, trees were oozing rainbows all over amidst calm lake and birds were chirping, ambience was indeed relaxing. By the end of the evening, we were worn out, with just one thought, could someone let us stay here! Driving away from Door county for an hour, was still not good enough. All the hotels, motels and Inns were booked in Green Bay as well. Let's head back to Madison was the common call. We desperately hoped that Olive Garden would be open at 10:30 pm. It was a crime to even miss an exit, since we were crunch on time to make it to OG. An excellent dinner, followed next day by a poised walk on State Street by the lake side, some Jamba Juice, tour of Capitol, watching "Mariuana Activist" rally and unprecedented art of the road-side painter was far more refreshing. We sealed the Sunday evening with lots of exchange of banter, card-game and good home-cooked meal.

All in all, it was a very eventful, yet enlightening weekend. I enjoyed the uncertainty of it, as always and that's how I took it. For others, they are still holding my throat wishing had I booked things in advance!! I still very much want to go to Door County and stay there overnight. :-)

- Pankya