Somewhere in Ohio

Last Saturday, I learned about another way that going to church activities in Indiana is different from going to things in Provo.

We had a regional activity on Saturday - pretty standard, just a corn maze and dinner (plus a dance, which was never part of my personal plan). We didn't find out until about two days before that this corn maze was somewhere between 90 and 120 miles away in a little town called Connorsville. Keep in mind the fact that we're in Indiana, which has no shortage of corn or mazes. And yes, I realize that it's a regional activity and we have to accommodate the entire region, but most of the region isn't actually in Ohio. Most of the people who come are from the other side of Indiana, and it was a little silly. But we were being good sports, so we got together a nice little carpool of people who a) were awesome and b) didn't want to stay to the dance, and off we went.

After several detours and a fairly ridiculous route, we arrived at Crazy Acres and did some wending of our way through the maze. We also drank hot chocolate and lukewarm chocolate and had s'mores and all kinds of exciting things.

I kept looking around for dinner, but apparently that was also a memo I missed, because dinner was in Richmond, which they said was 18 miles away. (Back toward Bloomington? Nope. The other way.) So we started following Sarah toward Richmond, and we really were starting to question the decision to go ahead to dinner about half an hour later when the road we were supposed to be following ended. (It's okay. We found another one.) It took at least 45 minutes to get there in all, and the food wasn't good, but hey, it was funny, so whatever.

We asked someone how far we were from Ohio at this point - turns out it was less than five miles. We ran out before the dance could start (we could tell from the preliminary music that we weren't going to be regretting that decision) but not before I got stopped by some guy from Indy whom I'd been talking to back at the corn maze who said he "forgot to get [my] number." Um . . .

So we drove to Ohio, listened to some Ohio songs ("Ohio" by Bowling for Soup, "Somewhere in Ohio" by The Jayhawks) stopped and took a picture (Luke had never been in Ohio, so we really needed to go, but the funniest picture was Steve in Ohio, since he's been there dozens of times) and then we got gasoline in Ohio and turned around to drive back to Bloomington for three hours. Good times indeed.

On the bright side, Indiana is currently gorgeous and absolutely dripping with fall colors, so the long crazy drive ended up being quite nice. Plus, there was a coffin in the middle of the corn maze even though it didn't get haunted until after we left. Neat.

Now pictures:

With Jill, Ross and Steve in the corn maze.

Steve stuffing his face with marshmallows

A very blurry picture of Luke and me in Ohio. It was dark, okay?