May 8 Missing sock, dry washer and Side-by-side adventures

We ( Butterfly and I) stayed at Burke’s Garden Hostel, an Amish built barn nestled in a beautiful valley surrounded by Amish farms.  ( I’ll post pictures soon on my fb page).  

Slept great in the bunk room.   Got everything dried out from our two days of rain.  There was frost on the ground this morning!   So glad  to be inside last night.   As the morning progressed, all the other hikers left except us.   I did my laundry and couldn’t find one of my socks.  I know how socks are!   It will show up somewhere!  🧦 

🦋 Butterfly had laundry trouble too.   She couldn’t figure out why her  clothes weren’t wet when the buzzer went off after it was through cycling.   Then she discovered she’d put the dirty clothes and laundry pod in the dryer instead of the washer!   The washer & dryer are positioned opposite of what you would think.   I was fortunate enough to recognize the washer because it’s just like my mother- in -laws. 

We finished our hiker chores and waited for the owner to take us to the little town of Burke’s Garden to the Amish store.   He texted me in the afternoon he wasn’t feeling well. He asked by text  if we’d like to take the side-by-side to town.   🤔😳👏We told him neither of us knew how.   I asked if it was stick shift or automatic.  He said it’s auto and it’s” easy to drive”.  So we agreed.   How nice of him to trust us with this vehicle!  We didn’t even know which direction town was, but we were ready for adventure.   I grabbed my Sambob hoodie and wallet.  We climbed in.   

🦋Butterfly decided to drive- she was braver than me.  I’m trying to find out where this town is by googling it.  Here we are,  surrounded by horses and barns and on a country road in the hills.   No town in sight.   

Meanwhile, she is trying to get the thing out of park.   Too many buttons and shifters.   The heat was on from the early morning shuttle, but I found the switches to turn it off.   The light on the dash said park.  We wanted reverse.   Oh brother!   🤷🏻‍♀️We kept fiddling with it.   I got hot and took off the hoodie.   There was the sock!   🧦Well that mystery is solved!😂😂

We shut the thing off.   I called Kenneth and Butterfly starts googling how to start this Kawasaki contraption.  Kenneth gave us a couple of pointers.  We tried it and the Google suggestion.   No luck.   I thought to myself, “ If we can’t get the thing out of gear, how we ever going to drive it to town and back??!!   🧐

We went back in the hostel.   I decided I’d clean the place up and get it ready for new guests.   Then the owner came out.  I had called and left him a message about not being able to get it out of gear.  He showed Butterfly how to do it.  Then he shut it off and went back in the house.   We hopped in for “ take 2”!  I started googling again for how to get to the town.   Butterfly turns the key and nothing.  She tried and tried.   Then we start pulling knobs and shifting gears.   Finally, we get the combination just right!   

I’m thinking, “ ok we will have to do this again, to get us home!”   So, we start moving in reverse down the driveway.   So far, so good.  Then I can’t decide which way Google is telling us to go.  So we start to turn one way then it looks wrong.   So she pulls forward to go the other way.   Finally we are on the road.   Now she’s having trouble getting it to move forward more than 1 mph.  The vehicle is going ggggrrrrrrrr.   Like it doesn’t want to go.   We decide it’s right.  We were concerned we’d tear up the transmission or something.   

Since reverse was better ( faster) she backed it all the way back down the driveway.  We made it about 10 feet down the road toward the Amish town!  🏆 

They do have e-bikes 🚲 here, but since neither of us have done those either, we decided to play it safe and stay on solid ground!😂😂

We cleaned the hostel instead.

When I get home, Denny Duzan is going to have to give me lessons on a side-by-side just in case I have opportunity to go to an Amish town in one!