By Brian M. Boyce
TERRE HAUTE — One can only imagine what she’ll do when she turns 70.
But Friday afternoon, Indiana resident Patricia McDaniel was heading east on U.S. 40 through Terre Haute on the 19th day of a 60-day road trip commemorating her 60th birthday.
Inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Eat, Pray and Live,” the antique store-owner from Dublin began planning a cross-country road trip last year, seeking to travel one day for every year she’s been alive.
After heading out west for the first leg, she’s doubling back now to hit Baltimore, Md. by the middle of March.
“One guy gave me a free room at his bed and breakfast because he said it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard,” she said, waving off the time she spent planning as “the time I would have spent watching two television shows over those months.”
But McDaniel is no stranger to the old National Road, U.S. 40.
This year will mark the fifth annual Historic National Road Yard Sale she founded from Dublin, spanning 824 miles from St. Louis to Baltimore and drawing “bumper to bumper traffic” each year.
This year’s event will be the weekend of May 28 to June 1, from dawn to dusk, where U.S. 40’s roadside will be covered with everything from antiques to furniture, glassware and fresh garden produce.
“This benefits everyone on U.S. 40,” she said, noting that state officials in Illinois have called the annual event “one of the biggest money-makers for the state.”
Some area businesses have made record profits in conjunction with the sale, and McDaniel laughs about the bank president in Cambridge City who still tells the story of a day all his ATMs went dry due to the customers.
And since she’s keeping an online journal on her Web site, www.oldstorefrontantiques.com, and telling the stories of every place she stops, she hasn’t had to pay a nickel out of pocket for what she calls “the time of my life.”
“I’ve bartered for food,” she said, joking that she doesn’t appear to be going hungry either.
There was the bed and breakfast she visited that served her a chocolate overdose of chocolate chip cookies, hot cocoa and what they called their “chocolate mess” consisting of hot fudge brownies, bananas and fondue.
Then Uncle Huffy’s BBQ in Lebanon, Ill. where she got “the real thing” by way of a heaping sandwich, arriving only a day too late to try the fried cabbage special.
“I have eaten my way through Illinois,” she said, recounting her President’s Day experience in Lebanon.
McDaniel discovered that the town’s library was closed for the holiday, so she prevailed upon the local chamber of commerce to open the library doors so she could find an organic pecan farm located there.
McDaniel noted she’s getting a spectacular deal due to it being off-season, but so far she’s stuck to her rules of no chain restaurants or hotels, veering off the highway occasionally to check out the various sites in each little town.
“It changes every day,” she said.
And there are games to play as well.
McDaniel asks people in each town questions about their home and is always surprised when they don’t know.
“It took 34 people in Effingham (Ill.) to tell me where Lakewood Drive was,” she laughed, recounting asking each of them if they were from the area, and upon them saying yes, asking how to get to the relatively prominent street.
“They don’t know their own hometown,” she said, adding that many people in the various communities don’t even know how to get to U.S. 40.
But she’s also quick to describe “the generosity of people,” most of whom get excited when talking to her about her trip and why she’s taking it.
While eating at a small-town restaurant, she happened to notice an elderly man whom she later learned was 83-years old and had owned that establishment since 1946.
A conversation quickly sparked forth and he told her the tale of the town from World War II through the 21st century, describing the ups and downs of a small-town restaurant, through good years and bad, into a modern era where people work through lunch.
But it was in Granite City, Ill. that McDaniel met Samantha the sauna dog.
“It was the coolest thing I’ve done this trip,” she gushed, explaining that the owners of a bed and breakfast there own a dry heat sauna, and their two-year-old boxer, Samantha, likes to sit in it when she’s tired.
The owners regularly let the dog in and leave the door cracked open so she can exit on her own.
And so it was that the 60-year-old woman with a master’s degree from Indiana University got to hang out with a really hot dog in a rather cool way.
“The dog loved it and I loved it,” she said with a you-had-to-be-there laugh. “You don’t get that in a chain hotel.”
But the Dr. Jazz Soda Fountain and Grill in Lebanon, boasted to be “the oldest in Illinois,” was up there in the rankings.
Sporting an old-fashioned slate pool table and Wisconsin ice cream, guests can come after hours and dress up like 1950s “soda jerks” and make ice cream sundaes.
And while some women along the way have marveled that she’s traveling alone with only a cell phone for emergencies, many men have envied her.
But anyone can do something like it, going “out into the wild,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to cost a lot,” she said, explaining that the regular rates for many of the beds and breakfasts range between $50 and $150, and the family-owned restaurants are certainly no more expensive than the chains.
“You’ve got the esoteric and then you’ve got the crazy,” she said, adding that her Indiana Web designer back in Richmond, Erin Abney with PAN, “enjoys the crazy.”
But being born and raised in the Midwest, she said she’s been in familiar territory for most of her trip to date.
Coleman’s Fish Market in Wheeling, W.Va., is one of the spots to which she’s looking forward, although she’s excited to head back to Dublin where a friend is going to play along with her as they pretend she’s a “tourist there for a day.”
All stops and visits along the route are pre-planned, as McDaniel sent handwritten letters to each of her proposed stops with a self-addressed envelope explaining her journey.
And while in Illinois, McDaniel said she’s racked up around $800 worth of door prizes for the National Road Yard Sale kick-off scheduled for May 28th back at the Dublin Fire Department.
Judy and Vernon Brazle of the Brazle House Bed and Breakfast in Brownstown, Ill. donated an old Crosley radio worth $250.
Other businesses have donated gift baskets with business cards, gift certificates, grape juice and horseradish to be used as well, and McDaniel said she hopes the winners use them and prove the gifts to have been good a business move for her hosts.
Friday night McDaniel stayed at the McKinley House Bed and Breakfast in Brazil, and will be back on the road shortly thereafter.
“My mom is probably smiling,” she said, noting that her mother passed away 10 years ago, an event which prompted her to take a trip to Australia while she could.
McDaniel opened her own antique store in 1985, much to some family members’ amusement as she likes to tell people all about it in front of them.
“I said I was a junk dealer,” she said proudly.
And with only 19 days down on the 60-day trip, McDaniel said the journey has just begun.
Brian Boyce can be reached at (812) 231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
