Saturday morning Flopsy and I woke up bright and early to pick up Brian and Paul and head out on a ROAD TRIP (yes Scott, it IS a road trip even if we only drive an hour away) to Woodstock, IL. “Why Woodstock?” you may ask. Well, Woodstock, my friends, was the filming site of a little movie we like to call Groundhog Day. Despite the fact that the movie is fifteen years old and despite the fact that it’s Thanksgiving Weekend, I can see no better place to go then to see all the places the movie was filmed!

In case you’ve never seen it, here’s the trailer:

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So I picked up Brian and Paul and off we went to Woodstock, IL/Punxsutawney, PA. The difference between the town in real life and the town in the movie is that in real life everything is so close together! The houses they used were almost next to each other and all the locations are almost right on the square. And the square seemed so much bigger in the movie!

It was kind of funny that even after fifteen years there are still plaques all around town showing what everything is from the movie.

Here’s what we saw:

We headed off to “Woodstock Square” AKA “Gobbler’s Knob,” where in the movie all of the festivities of groundhog’s day take place.

Flopsy saw his shadow :-( Six more weeks of winter.

One of the first random plaques we came across was “Ned’s Corner.”

You know Ned…Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing. Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn’t graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore? Well?

Yeah. That Ned.

We also found the bowling alley, where Phil goes in to bowl…

And the location where the festival banquet was filmed (although we only saw the outside, and it was filmed on the inside”

After touring around the town for movie memories we stopped for lunch at Woodstock Public House. It had nothing to do with the movie, but Paul said they had good food.

I got myself a meatloaf sammich it was yummy.

At one point a strange old man stopped at our table and started singing “Hail to the Orange.” But he got the words wrong.

After lunch we went to see the Opera House. In the movie the building serves as the Pennsylvania Hotel, and where, at one point in the movie, Phil throws himself off the top to his death.

Unfortunately, sometime life imitates art, and poor Paul plummeted from the top of the Opera House and died :-(

After that Brian was devastated and didn’t want to be in a car (or maybe just wanted to rack up more train miles) so he ran off to catch a train.

I decided to let Flopsy drive home (he argues that the groundhog in the movie got to drive, so he should get to too). But that was a big mistake, because he just managed to crash it :-(