The Lady of Mystery and Peggy Sue's

I saw a cool shirt at the Winchester Mystery House that said "The Lady of Mystery" . . . but it was really expensive!  If you haven't guessed yet, we went to the Winchester Mystery House yesterday evening.  But first we went out to eat.

One street to the right of the Hilton (right if you're walking out the front and left if you're walking into the building) is a little 50s diner called Peggy Sue's.  Dad and I looked into a bunch of other restaurants and they were like really expensive and some websites didn't even post the prices so that scared us a bit!  I don't really like fancy restaurants anyways and I much prefer places like Peggy Sue's.  My dad had a really spicy burger and I had a chicken burger with blue cheese!  Here are some pix of Peggy Sue's:

 This is the sidewalk on the way to Peggy Sue's--I thought it was gorgeous.

Here's dad at Peggy Sue's

And here's me with with my french fries . . . yum

Last, but not least, is the front of Peggy Sue's.  It's funny because it was practically sandwiched in between several huge expensive restaurants.  So, it looked really tiny.  Actually it was tiny inside, but I really liked it.  And, I'm so going back for a milkshake sometimes this week!

 So later that evening we went to the Winchester Mystery House which is only like 3 miles from the hotel.  The house is MASSIVE!!! . . . and weird.  Mrs. Winchester supposed built it to appease and/or confuse the spirits of the dead who were killed by the Winchester rifle.  Mrs. Winchester's daughter died and so did her husband.  When she went to a psychic she was told that the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle were haunting her.  So, she needed to build a house and never stop building it to appease them.  Construction started in 1884 and continued 24/7/365 until she died in 1922.  No joke, they NEVER stopped working on that house--not during a holiday, not during the night, not ever until she died.  The house itself is really kooky.  There's a seance room in the house and it's said she would contact the spirits to see what how they wanted her to build the house and that's where she supposedly got the plans (which sort of explains the strangeness of the house).  She was obsessed with spiderwebs, the number 13, and daisies.  Like I said, the house is really strange.  It's full of doors that open to nowhere, staircases that go right up into the ceiling, a cabinet with only a half inch of space on the inside, bathrooms with glass doors (seriously it's like the toilet was on display), windows in the floor, a room with only one entrance but three exits, and a four story tall chimney that stops one foot short of the roof (so all connecting fireplaces won't function), stairs that are 2 inches tall but two feet wide (for her arthritis--at least that has an explanation), stairs that are two feet tall but only two inches wide, and a bell tower with no way to get to it.  And there was no photography allowed indoors :(  but I got a few pictures of the behind the scenes tour (photography was allowed on that tour).

Here's dad with his hardhat on--we went into the basement and there were lots of low pipes so we were required to wear the hardhats.

Here's me with my hardhat on.  Now an interesting story about how this picture was taken.  I handed dad the camera so he could take a picture and he had his finger right in front of the lens.  So, of course, I said "wait don't take the picture, your finger's right in front of the lens."  But, as he moved his finger out of the way, somehow he ended up throwing my phone into the gravel . . . and now there's a huge dent in the casing.  Thankfully it didn't scratch the screen though.  We were both laughing because I've had the phone for years and here he has it just to take a picture and manages to do more damage in 30 seconds than I did in two years lol.  I did actually let him touch my phone again so here's the picture of me in my awesome hardhat.

I actually don't know why I took a picture of this . . . I think it's because everyone else in the tour group did and I just automatically took a picture of it as well.

The sun was behind the house so in the camera the front of the house looked black--here's probably the best pic I got of the front.  There are 160 rooms total in this house.

Here's a turret.

And here's the side of the house when I finally (stupid me) figured out that I just needed to play with the white balance . . .

That's it for now!  Oh, and I don't have any pictures of it, but after the Winchester House, we wanted to stop and get some water (and some Advil for our headaches) so even through there were little drugstores everywhere, we couldn't find a parking spot.  Lol, we drove around in circles for like an hour trying to find somewhere.  Finally we found some dinky corner store like a few miles out of the downtown area . . . and it had parking!  It's just funny how long it took us to find it . . .

Funny Story :)

So, this actually happened early in March . . . but the whole time I was thinking "If I had a blog I would so post this story on there."  Well, now I have a blog so I'm going to post this story.  And note that I'm not complaining--I think what happened was hilarious!

I know I haven't posted anything on this blog regarding my grandmother, but she's been in and out of ICU since December (I posted more info on my other blog Never Surrender).  Right before Spring break we were told she was doing much better, but that weekend she took a turn for the worse (this part of the story is definitely not funny).  So, in less than 24 hours we got all seven people of my family ready to leave and got someone to take care of my animals.  So we left early Sunday morning.  I was only able to go in the first place because it happened to be the week of Spring break.  But, because it was Spring break, I was only able to stay one week before classes started back up again.  Ok, now's when the story gets funny :)

Since I absolutely had to get home by Monday so I could go to class, we looked into several different methods of traveling home.  At first Dad wasn't going to come with me, so I was going to fly home by myself.  Then Dad decided he would drive home on Sunday, stay a couple of days so he could go to some meetings at work, and then drive back down Thursday evening.  He wanted to spend as little money as possible, so he looked into whether it would be cheaper to rent a car or see if he could borrow one of my Papaw's cars.  The car my dad wanted to borrow was an '84 Sunbird.  And, it hadn't been driven more the 2 hours at a time in 20 years.  We wanted to drive it on a 15-20 hour trip . . . I didn't think that was a good idea.  But, it was cheaper than renting.

About halfway through the week, a friend asked me if I could bottle feed her baby goat while she was out of town (the mother wouldn't nurse it).  So I told her I would pick the baby up Sunday evening on the way home from FL.  I was supposed to be there around 8:00.  So we needed to leave from FL pretty early in the morning.  Dad and I decided to leave around 3:30 AM.  The GPS said we'd arrive at my friend's farm at 6:59PM.  Although we're usually really late, we actually left on time!  (I think we may have actually been in the car at 3:25).

The car ran fine for like 15 minutes, but as soon as we were on the freeway, I knew we were in trouble!  The speed limit was 70, but anytime we went over 65 the car kept hesitating.  So . . . I could not go back to sleep (and I did not want to take a turn driving that car . . .).  Even though it was hesitating a lot, dad kept going (it must be a guy thing . . . I would have turned around and rented a car the moment the car started hesitating.  Which would have been really close to my grandparents home.).  I was really worried until like 6:00 AM.  Then I thought "well, we've made it safe so far.  I guess we'll be ok."  Then I prayed thanking God that we were safe and that the car was still running.  No joke, that exact moment the engine gets really quiet and the car starts to slow down.  I ask dad what he's doing and he said he was pulling the car over because the engine died.  Haha!

Ironically, dad didn't have his AAA card with him.  But, thankfully I had mine!  So, we waited for a couple of hours for the tow-truck to get there.  We only had 5 miles of free towing with AAA, but my Uncle's family was right behind us and they have like 100 free miles so we got towed to Savannah.  So the truck driver was really nice and even pulled over for a few minutes so that dad could make a few more calls (to try to find the cheapest place to rent a car).  On the way to Savannah the truck driver went 90 the entire time!  And there were cops everywhere.  I'm guessing that they didn't pull him over because he was going so fast that they couldn't even see him.  lol :p It was really hard to find a place to get the car fixed that a car rental place really close by (there were lots of car rental places but they either weren't open, or they didn't have any cars).  So there was a expensive place near the airport and we left the car there to be fixed.  So even though we didn't rent because it was cheaper to borrow the car, we ended up renting anyways . . . and spending way more money.

The awesome thing was that because I'm under 21 I wasn't allowed to drive the rental unless dad paid a ton of extra money, so I didn't have to drive the rest of the way.  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful until we got to Ohio.  At this point we're like 4 or so hours behind schedule.  As we're getting close to my friend's farm (we still had to pick up the goat) it's around eleven and it randomly starts raining . . . really hard.  I didn't have any shoes besides flip-flops (hey I was in FL!) so I tied plastic bags around my feet lol.  So, I went into the barn and got the goat (and the bottle and milk) and then we went home.  It's funny because the rental car agreement said we weren't allowed to have any pets in the car at all.  But, the goat's a "farm" animal, not a pet (by the end of the week though, the goat was pretty much a pet :p).

When I got home, it was after midnight, I still had to bring everything inside and get everything ready for the goat (I couldn't get anything ready beforehand because I didn't know until I was already in FL) and I had to get everything ready for school the next day!  So, by the time everything was done it was probably close to 3 AM.  In the car I didn't sleep at all, so I had been awake for like 42 hours.  I had to leave for school by 11:45 the next day so I could have slept in a little bit but I had to get up at 6:30 to feed the goat.  Thankfully I didn't fall asleep in the car (or in class :p) and I caught up on my sleep the next few days.

My dad drove back on Thursday and picked up the Sunbird in Savannah :)  So, I just thought that was really funny and you might enjoy reading it :)  What are some of your interesting vacation stories?