Oh, oh, Ohio!

Yesterday we made the very long trip back to Virginia. We drove through Ohio again, which is just surprisingly beautiful to me. I guess I'd never thought about Ohio before, but it's a very green and foresty place. Great stuff.

 We stopped for lunch at Elder Mautz's sister's farmhouse. Um, I can't say that I have ever had the desire to own a farm or even spend any amount of time on a farm, but this one may have changed my mind. I think I could overlook the bad parts if I could have this view every day. Not only did we have a delicious lunch of quiche, blueberry muffins, salad, with apple pie for dessert, but we donned some boots to take a little tour of the place. So picturesque and beautiful, I just loved it!

Yes, they have their own lake and everything. It's so picture-perfect it was almost unbelievable. But they do have to work really hard to maintain everything, and it seems like a whole lot of work to get all the pipes and everything worked out to have that little lake in the first place. Bro. Mautz's sister and brother-in-law must have a lot of energy, to be able to keep up this place while at the same time serving as one of the counselors in the Columbus, Ohio temple. Craziness. 

 The land is theirs; the cows are not. But they are sure cute, especially the baby ones!

Bro. Mautz and his sister, Kristin

 Meet my new goat friends, Buzz and Woody. They liked me. 

 And I believe this little guy's name is Billy Bob, or something silly like that. 

 As I said, such a beautiful, calm place. They had lots of bird feeders also, so it's a given that there are lots of beautiful birds around. Lots of cats too. They even had an owl family living in some of the trees on their property!

And apparently, this is Amish country! Too bad we didn't see any real buggies. 

 Drove the rest of the night on through PA (I got a good picture of the sign this time!), WV, and VA. 

We listened to this borderline-blasphemous LDS teen book on tape. It kept us well entertained. I'll be honest though, I fell asleep a couple of times and had to be woken up when we finally got in at ten. I think I'll be holding off on the road trips (as well as train mix... bleh) for a while!