Confession #50, Part 1

This is it...my 50th confession. I'm doing part 1, Bob will take part 2...


The Grouse Nest

Bob and I decided years ago that we were going to begin taking a cabin trip the first weekend in May to Hocking Hills. It's a fantastic place...so beautiful and peaceful. Our first year, we had gone hiking and bought some food for the cabin...but I just wasn't satisfied with frozen pizza and pop tarts. We wanted to be adventurous...so we set out to find the perfect mom and pop dining...something with some good home-cooking...a Bob Evans for the locals...Little did we know...

We remembered this particular sign just coming out of the area containing Cedar Falls as we were heading back to the cabin...It said The Grouse Nest and pointed us in the direction we needed to go. We figured that would be the perfect place to eat. I pictured rustic floors, little tables, checkered curtains...So we followed the signs, down this winding little one way gravel road...fear creeping in that we would never get back out.

We pulled up to this cute little restaurant all tucked away from everything...and we sat there....There were ZERO cars in the parking lot. It was dinner time and NO ONE was there. Should we turn around and try something else or attempt going to the door? I am one to run...but NO, we went to the door. Why come all this way and not go in? We walked in and looked around. Here I am wearing a mint green t-shirt with khaki capris and sneakers, Bob wearing a t-shirt and jean shorts, and this place has cloth table covers, cloth napkins, wine glasses...the works. Feeling so uncomfortable already, I was ready to bolt. But then comes the waitress. She asks us...get this...do we have a reservation? A what? Reservation? We look around at the empty room (The Shining comes to mind) and Bob says no. No problem, she says. She sits us down and asks if we would like anything to drink. Water for both. Then she hands us our menus. It only gets worse. The menu stinks (not literally), nothing sounds remotely good to me, and the prices are OUTRAGEOUS. The waitress comes back, we say we need more time, and when she leaves the room, we bolt. I ran to the car, and I mean RAN, egging Bob to hurry up. There's no elegant way to casually leave an empty restaurant after being seated. I wanted to fly out of that parking lot as fast as I could. I was fearful someone would chase us, charging us for the water poured into the glasses. We could have just said we changed our minds...we had decided against the restaurant...but NOOOOO, that would have been uncomfortable (thick sarcasm here). So we just ran. I bet they thought two young kids couldn't pay for the meal.

Well, we ended up going to a tiny pizza place and ordering a pizza that took a good half hour to make.

Visit The Grouse Nest here.

It didn't end there though...it gets better. They DID track us down...