Dominica and I did not wake up nearly as early this morning as we had hoped that we would and when we finally did pull ourselves out of bed and realized that we really had to rush out the door to be able to make it to Frankfort on time for Thanksgiving dinner I got paged out to help at the office. What a crazy morning. So I signed in to work from home and did some work to get them sorted out before we could leave. After that we got ready as quickly as possible and rushed out the door.
We tried to grab a quick breakfast in town before leaving but discovered that nothing, not even McDonalds, was open here on Thanksgiving. Which is sort of cool that all of those people were getting to spend the holidays with their families and had plenty of time to travel to do so but it kind of sucks too having the entire city shut down so that those of us who need to travel have no way to get food of any sort. It seems like Thanksgiving day breakfast wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of someone to be serving even if they closed at eleven or something.
Traffic wasn’t bad this morning at all. We got right out of town and onto the highway and were well underway quite quickly. We stopped in Great Bend, Pennsylvania for gas and a quick bite at the Dunkin Donuts there. We figured that restaurants would stay open in Great Bend as it is a pretty major stopping spot on route 81. Clark’s Summit was our original intended destination for breakfast/lunch but it was very busy when we went past there and we decided that it was not worth fighting the crowds there at all.
We made it to Frankfort in good time and it was barely half past one when we showed up. About an hour after our target time but long before we had been worried that we would arrive. My dad had arrived a little while before and was at the house hanging out.
Thanksgiving Dinner was at Dominica’s grandfather’s house in Frankfort as usual. Dinner started at half past two and we hung out there until it was time for me to head out to Rochester. Dad, Dominica and I drove out to Utica to get settled into the Hotel Utica at six thirty. Dad turned in for the night. Dominica just dropped her stuff and made sure that the room was all set and then drove back to Frankfort to spend the night visiting with her family and I hit the road for Rochester.
I got to Nick Tahou’s in Rochester on Lyle Ave. at a quarter to ten or so but a lot of the gang had all ready arrived by that point. We had a decent turn out this year. This is our tenth anniversary of our Nick Tahou’s Thanksgiving Run! Ten years, that is incredible. I can’t believe that it has been that long. Eight people turned out for this year’s get together. A number of people, at least five, were considering coming and didn’t at the last minute. This year we had Nate, Joe, Jeff, the Relyeas, the Ayers and me. Pretty much the core group who started the tradition. I am pretty sure that Nate, Joe, Josh and I have managed to be there all ten years.
Nate and I were the stragglers and didn’t leave Tahou’s until well after midnight. It was a long and tiring drive back to Utica after all of that food and such a long day of driving. It was about three in the morning when I arrived at the hotel and I was asleep in no time.