Philadelphia

The stairs from the "Rocky" movie!

Today was a great day in Philadelphia!  We started the day with a double-decker tour bus ride that lasted for 1-1/2 hours.  The bus's second floor had no roof so we sat up there and kids really enjoyed being outside.  We had Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches for lunch and then found some soft serve ice cream.  We then walked around and just took in all the unbelievable architecture!  City Hall was Karen's favorite, she discovered she loves French 2nd Empire Architecture and the Mansard Roofs.  Disney World's Liberty square is modeled after this.
We finally saw the Liberty Bell toward the end of the day and got a few pics of it with the kids! 

The city was amazing with all its history and beautiful buildings!  We could easily take another 2 or 3 days and not even scratch the surface of what this city has to offer. Its becoming clear to Karen and me, that there is so much to see in this country that we have to get a general overview of each place, then move onto the next, so that we can stay on track of seeing the west before the bad weather starts!  Its a rough life-- but someone has to do it!

Another beautiful day!

 Well we started off today by taking a few pictures of the campground grist mill and covered bridge.  There are so  many things to see here I think we will be extending our stay a few extra days.  From there we went to Hershey Pennsylvania to visit The Hershey Chocolate Museum.  We did the "Chocolate Lab" tour, where we all learned about the Cacao beans and where they are grown. Then we got to taste all the beans from different parts of the world.  At the end we all were able to make our own candy bar!  This would be the reason we are wearing the stylish hair nets!  Boy I picked a day to let the goatee grow out!  After the lab, we went over to "Chocolate World" and rode an amusement ride similar to "Pirates of the Caribbean", but all about chocolate production.  Everyone enjoyed the ride!  On the way home, we went to the Intercourse Pretzel Factory, where the kids got a brief tour on how to roll and twist the dough to make pretzels.  This was a good time for me to take a short bench break and watch all the Amish ride from place to place in their horse and buggies.  As the day winded down we headed back to the campsite and cooked some brats and locally made sweet sausage on the grill for dinner. Right before we sat down at the picnic table to eat dinner the Amish people came into campground selling home baked goods and quilts!  I thought some home made root beer and pumpkin bread we be good for an after dinner snack! 

Good Bye Lake Anna Virginia & Hello Lancaster Pennsylvania!

Well I'm typing to you from a campground so full it feels like its infested with people!  Don't get me wrong its a very nice campground, but very very busy.  I guess because its Memorial Day weekend and its the official start to vacationing for the northern states. 

We went to Fredericksburg one more time for some barbecue and ice cream before leaving Virginia.  I had started seeking out the barbecue joints in each town to try the different types. We left Lake Anna yesterday and we had the park with a beach practically to ourselves.  We met some really nice folks @ Lake Anna.  It seems like every place we stop the people are very friendly!  The trip from there to here was a long drawn out one through a lot of back roads and severe traffic around Washington DC.  We left the Lake Anna campground @ 2:00pm and finally landed here in Lancaster @ 8:30pm in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.  We only traveled 210 miles in 6 1/2 hours, but I was beat from hauling the monster through all the traffic and small back roads.  There was one part of construction that had us traveling down a bridge with concrete barriers only 10' apart leaving a measly 1 foot for error on each side.  Talk about a white knuckle ride. I think Karen was more afraid then I was. After finding the campground in the pouring rain, we proceeded to our site which was occupied by someone else so we took one of the open pull through sites for the night.

Today we awoke to sweet smell of cow poop, as we are right next to an Amish farm.  I have already gotten used to the smell and we already took a horse drawn Amish Buggy tour today.  The kids loved it and I think its really interesting to see how these people live and the farmland in which they do it is beautiful.

Houston...... We have a problem!

Well it wasn't as big a problem as we thought.  Last night we moved the RV to Lake Anna SP and while setting up for the evening Karen and I were on one side of the RV connecting the water hose and electric and Karen heard a clicking noise and asked me what it was.  I removed the panel where the clicking noise was coming from and found the back of our refrigerator.  The sound was the igniter trying to light the propane for the fridge, because we hadn't yet hooked up to electric.  Karen asked if we were out of gas and I thought we couldn't have gone through 60lbs of propane that fast but I looked anyway.  What do you know!!!  The tanks are empty!  Not because we used it all, but because one of the hose connections to the propane bottle cracked and all the propane leaked out. We found an RV parts store local to Fredericksburg so we went into town and replaced the part and $42 worth of propane!

After that stop, we went on into Fredericksburg and spent a few hours seeing the town and going through a tour of Rising Sun Tavern and Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop.  It was very interesting to hear how the people lived back then and the medicines they used.  Kaylee and Bryson really enjoyed the part where they got to touch the live leeches that were used for medicinal purposes.  They also had fun in the candy store where they found this 5lb gummy worm! All in all it turned out to be another great day!

Richmond Riverfront & Maymont park.

This morning Karen said she wanted to visit the city of Richmond and initially that made me a little uneasy as I used to go into the city for the last 3-1/2 years! My excitement for this trip was to get out of the city and the hustle and bussel. Normally, I grin and bear it through the city tours, because I'm the driver which tends to be stressful.  We are driving a Dodge Mega cab Dually - this is no small vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, as a matter of fact, its like a small land barge! There are also a lot of instructions that come last minute like "we need to make a left now" as we are in the right lane or we should of turned there. Today on the other hand went smooth as silk!  We started off going to the Riverfront in downtown Richmond where they explained to us, via a boat tour, the very interesting way in which goods were shipped inland through a series of canals and locks.  They went on to teach us that George Washington was instrumental in planning and building the canal system in which goods that came in, via the James river, could be transferred and shipped as far west as the Mississippi river!  While on the tour Bryson decided to pull out his front tooth and hand it to me! After the boat tour the family was hungry, and Bryson needed a container for his tooth, so we decided on a local hot dog shop called City dogs.  It was a great little restaurant right in the city on a cobblestone road with really good hot dogs and brats! 

From there we went to a park called Maymont Park, which turned out to be a diamond in the rough!  The park was like eye candy to everyone.  It had exotic gardens like you have never seen.  A beautiful Italian Garden, Karen's favorite, a Japanese garden with bamboo forests that had little trails through them, and coy ponds with stepping stones in the pond.   There were a many great climbing trees for the kids too.  There was also a zoo/animal rehab center, so there were many animals for the kids to see and a beautiful mansion at the center of it all! We spent a good 3 hours there and the best part was it was free to the public with a donation box if you wanted to donate which we did!  I would highly recommend this park to anyone as day trip with the kids!