Zooamerica

The town of Hershey has a lot of various sightseeing options. Eventually we will check most of them out, but today we were starting out with a trip to Zooamerica. As zoos go, I don’t think it’s huge. In fact, admission to Zooamerica is included with entrance to Hershey Park. But since we are here for two weeks, I didn’t really want to jam everything together. I think it will be more enjoyable for us that way.

We arrived at Zooamerica around 10:30, and I think it took us about 2 hours to see the whole thing. And we took our time about it – stood around and watched the animals at some of the exhibits for a while.

We were lucky. The animals were pretty active compared to some of the previous times that I have gone to zoos.

Here Schaun is watching a porcupine. He was pretty taken with the porcupine, and that was his pick at the gift store on the way out. (Pictured in the above picture)

After leaving the zoo, we went over to the nearby Hershey Town Square, where we found a great spot to eat the lunch I had packed.

We had a really nice time checking out Hershey for the first time, and after returning to the campground, we enjoyed the pool for the rest of the afternoon. I even went down the water slide. No pictures of that – yet!

Tomorrow we are going to have a relaxing day around here…play some cards, and spend some more time at the pool.

Off to Hershey!

For the past year, we have been planning this summer trip with our grandson Schaun, and yesterday was finally departure day!

We felt super lucky to have such a gorgeous day for traveling.

To make the trip easier for Schaun, we broke the travel day up into two, which made for a nice short trip. In fact, we didn’t even pull out until a little after 11, and we were still settled into our overnight spot at Woodland campground around 2.

This morning we pulled out around 10, and had another short trip. We arrived at Twin Grove Resort in Pine Grove, PA around 1:30.

We are in love with our site. We got the first site in the row, so only have a neighbor on one side, and the sites are definitely a good size.

We also like the placement of the fire ring.

We arrived early enough that we were able to fit in some pooltime this afternoon!

Both Schaun and Papa tried out the water slide at the pool.

Then the gentlemen shared a drink in the shade…

…and Schaun helped cook dinner.

We’ve had a great first day, and still have two weeks of adventures to come!

An Afternoon Adventure

Yesterday we wanted to have a fun day with Kenny, since we are taking his brother on a trip for the next couple of weeks.

We decided to take him out to lunch and then to see his first movie on the big screen!

Kenny loves having his picture taken. He is a master of the selfie!

Kenny thought that pancakes sounded good, but when our lunches arrived, he was more interested in the fries on my plate, so we “shared”. (AKA Kenny ate all Grammy’s fries for lunch. haha)

After we finished lunch, we still were a little early for the matinee. The really nice thing about spending time with a three year old is that everything is an adventure. The movie theater is right across the street from Joann’s Fabrics, so we spent a half hour browsing all the neat stuff in the store, and Kenny picked out some cool minion stickers in the scrapbooking section.

And then it was movie time! Cars 3 turned out to be a great choice. Lots of great action scenes with race cars.

A fun afternoon!

Today we are getting ourselves ready for company. Last year we emptied out a drawer in the bedroom for Schaun’s clothes. It made it much easier not to have a suitcase sitting around for two weeks, so we will do that again. The cats are unknowingly enjoying their last quiet moments, although Schaun has been here enough over the years that they are starting to get used to him.

Tomorrow is travel day. Even though our destination in the Hershey area isn’t far away, I divided our traveling up into two days just to make it a little more relaxing for our company. So we’ll be traveling a very nice 160 miles to our overnight stop on the way to Hershey.

Trip Prep and Fun Day Out

We have been having a pretty laid back week. It worked out well that we arrived the day before the holiday, since we were able to go over and spend time with Harry’s daughter Gretchen and her husband Will on their day off. Usually when we are here we don’t get a chance to see them too much. So on the 4th we went over to their place, and just spent a relaxing afternoon chatting, and watching the kids have a good time in the pool. Papa brought his suit along and had fun with Kenny in the pool.

It’s been a weird summer in the sense that we have spent so much time away from our place. We spent two weekends with our nephews when my sister was away. We spent another couple days visiting Rose. Then over the two weeks we were in the Adirondacks we were at my mother’s house for most of our meals. As a result, our fridge was practically empty! So yesterday we had a monster grocery shopping expedition to the local grocery store to resupply our food stocks. I even managed to find space for it in our fridge and freezer! We are all stocked up for our trip with Schaun.

In just a little bit, we are heading out to pick up Kenny at daycare. He’s a little too young to go with us on our trip to Hershey, but we want to spend some quality time with him while we are here. We are going to take him out to lunch and then to his first movie – Cars 3. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees that big screen!

Travel Day to Ohio

Happy Independence Day! I hope all of my American readers have a safe and enjoyable holiday!

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Yesterday dawned as a bright and beautiful day. After all the rainy days over the past month, it was nice to get packed up without the prospect of being rained on any minute.

Although we did have a really nice site, which was a pull through right up by the office, because of the location of the site, to get out we had to drive down the hill to our left (shown in the above pic) and around a big loop which included 3 decent hills. I always find it nerve-wracking to have to go up a hill at 5 mph pulling the fifth wheel.

So I was happy when we were out of the campground and on the road, enjoying the wonderful blue sky.

Thankfully there was nothing really noteworthy about yesterday’s trip.

We traveled about 335 miles in total, going through Pennsylvania for about an hour and then…

…on into Ohio!

We said “so long” to NY as we won’t be back until early June next year!

The cloudy skies appeared to have followed us to Ohio, but it didn’t rain until after we got set up, so we were thankful for that.

We are here for just a few days. On Saturday we will pull out with Schaun for his first road trip in the rv. He has stayed with us for a couple weeks before but that time we went and picked him up. We will be having some good times in the Hershey area. Lots of fun planned!

Seymour Mountain – Part 2

The hike to Seymour Mountain starts out as a nice hike in the woods. For the first five miles or so, it’s basically a nice gradual hike with a few small water crossings. (Although I saw some Facebook photos a couple days after we went, and those small water crossings had turned into impassable raging rivers, so it was a good thing we went when we did.)

Once the climbing starts, you are climbing with a vengeance for the last two miles.

Up, up, up!!

Probably the most challenging part of the hike is the two thirds of a mile or so of slides.

We all said more than once how grateful we were for trees, tree branches, and tree roots to hang on to as we climbed up these rock faces.

It was challenging and tiring, but great at the same time! I was thankful that these weren’t the wide open kind of slide. Being surrounded by woods as opposed to open makes it easier, in my opinion.

Almost five hours exactly after we started, we arrived at the top! Another high peak accomplished!

We didn’t stay at the top long because there was a cold fierce wind, and right after we started down we had a quick rain shower move through, maybe fifteen minutes or so. We found out the next day that we lucked out because there was a line of thunderstorms with hail that moved through about that time. Other hikers on different peaks posted pictures. We must have been right on the edge of it. (Storms were NOT forecast for that day.) We were so grateful that we didn’t have to deal with that.

The little bit of rain we did get made the slide areas slicker. It took us over an hour to make our way down the 2/3 mile.

Here Harry is giving some tips to one of the hikers in our party about what to hang on to, and where to step.

Once we got past that two miles, we had a nice walk in the woods. Well, we were tired so maybe we weren’t noticing the “nice” quite as much, but still it was the easiest part of the day.

It took us four hours and 40 minutes to get back to the trailhead.

High peak #7 accomplished.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blog Post

I will be getting back to Part 2 of my Seymour Mountain climb post (spoiler alert – we made it up and back!), but first wanted to catch up on today’s events. Not that they are earth-shattering, but well, they happened today. haha

We woke up to once again cloudy skies. Today was departure day. Our fast two week visit up in the Adirondacks came to an end very quickly. The forecast today was for rain, but starting late in the morning, so we were hoping to get an early start and not have to hook up in the rain. We were successful. We actually got out ahead of schedule as we were pulling out of the campground at just a few minutes before nine.

As we were heading down the Northway (the nickname for the interstate that runs from the Adirondack area to Albany), we got our last view of the rocky mountain formations. Until next year.

We really lucked out. Although there was rain all over the state, we basically drove on one side or the other of it until we got almost all the way to Utica. Had a bit of a scare when I saw on one of the facebook groups I belong to where someone had posted pictures of flooding in Utica (when we were about 15 miles away), but I checked the thruway authority and I-90 was still open. It was raining heavily though. It was the one part of the day where we really had to contend with driving through pelting rain. We were glad to get past it.

Once we got past Syracuse, we actually saw this pleasant view ahead of us. We really were under a lucky star today as we were able to hook and unhook under dry conditions.

This is our first time staying at Cheerful Valley Campground, and although we haven’t walked around yet, I do think we got the best site in the place!

As the campground is really full with all of the 4th of July campers, we love this site that is kind of off by itself with this huge yard. And tomorrow is even supposed to be a nice day!

We are here until Monday, and then we will be moving on to Ohio. We will spend a few days there before we leave with Schaun for a trip to the Hershey PA area.