In Which Road Trips Are Taken & Dreams Come True

Hello long lost blog readers!

I am currently sick so I decided to take this opportunity to write about a very important adventure I went on back in December. (Edit: I’m not sick anymore, I started this a couple of weeks ago and just now finished.)

Back in April or May (I think) I discovered that there is such a thing as a Pencil Sharpener Museum, and that it’s found in Ohio. I was overjoyed by this discovery but we don’t live all that close to Ohio, so I didn’t do anything about it.

I don’t know what brought it back to mind in December, but I remembered my discovery and was determined to visit the museum. I brought the subject up a few times and finally got my friend Chessie to agree to take a road trip with me to see it! Logan, my brother (and Chessie’s boyfriend), was added to the list of travelers and then so was my other brother Jeff so I wouldn’t have to be a third wheel. 😀 And ’cause the more people you bring along, the more ways you split gas costs!

The museum is located in Logan, Ohio, about 6.5 hours away from us. A pretty long stretch, but possible to do in one day. We decided to set out at 6 am to provide ample time for stops and disasters.

Everyone got up dark & early (especially Chessie who had to drive 40 minutes to get to our house), ate varying degrees of breakfast, and then we set off!

Bad selfies are a theme of this road trip, so beware.

Our first stop was about an hour or so into the drive, when I pulled over at a random spot on the road and Jeff and I leapt out of the car to take pictures of the sunrise.

Shortly after the stop we invented a game wherein we kept track of how many times each driver hit the rumble strips on the side of the road. We were all splitting up the driving, but I had the first and most mountain-y shift. I think my final count was 7.

It was exciting to see mountains, since we can’t see any from where we live.

At this point, about 2 hours in, my brothers and I (especially my brothers) were about ready for more than varying degrees of breakfast. We decided to stop at a Burger King, only to find that they opened at 8:00. It was 7:58.

We ventured over to the attached gas station where I got chocolate milk and Jeff got chocolate muscle milk (which was apparently as disgusting as we all told him it would be) and I wasted 75 cents on a claw machine. Burger King still wasn’t open, so we gave up hope and hit the road again.

We did get nourishment once we got to Charleston, WV, and stopped at a Wendy’s for lunch.

^^ me practicing my aesthetic food photography.

Jeff was driving at this point and unfortunately he hit 0 rumble strips. He did have an easier route though, in my defense.

This may have been taken when Chessie and I were telling Jeff that he would have points added to his rumble strip score even if he purposefully crossed over them to pass someone. He was not convinced in the least that that was fair.

And then, joy of joys, we arrived at our destination!

We were thrilled. Ok, maybe mostly just me.

We opened the door and were greeted by the sight of 3,500 different pencil sharpeners.

That is the face of someone whose dream has just come true.

In case I forgot to mention it, the whole museum is basically just a 10×12′ shed. My phone was propped on the door’s window to get this picture.

It’s truly amazing.

Don’t let the haters get to you, Pencil Sharpener Museum.

After about ten or fifteen minutes at our destination, we headed home! On our way back we decided to stop at Jefferson St. in Logan, OH to get a picture of Jeff and Logan at the street sign.

We followed Google Maps’ directions and wound up at a pretty sketchy neighborhood on a dirt road. There were no street signs whatsoever. We turned around and got out of there.

Our next stop on the return trip was Sweet Frog. Chessie, Logan, and I had gift cards to there from Sully (now my future brother-in-law!) from our joint graduation party. Which was like 7 months ago.

I attempted to get a selfie of the four of us enjoying our froyo, but…

Take it from me, kids. Don’t leave portrait mode on when taking a group selfie.

After that it was pretty smooth sailing home: Jeff and I had to endure Chessie and Logan’s country music. We made Chessie go around a roundabout 6 times. (Every time we came to one we went around an extra time and she had the sixth one. She was not happy.) We stopped at Cracker Barrel and Jeff got free refills on chocolate milk.

Oh, and I utterly lost the rumble strip contest. (0-0-1-7)

We made it back a little after ten if my memory serves me right. It was a very memorable trip to a very memorable museum!

have you ever been to the pencil sharpener museum? do you want to now? thoughts on chocolate milk and roundabouts?

Thanks for reading!