Starting Location: Tarrytown, NY
Destination: Hershey, PA
Dining Locations: Hot Bagels, Oakland, NJ; Red Robin, Hershey, PA
Travel Time: 4 hours (some bad turns in there)
After a beautiful night’s sleep for the three of us, we were excited to hit the road to Hershey, PA. We repacked our 12 bags, which has gotten to be the norm, and headed out the door just as Hunter was hitting his “I need some sleep” phase. Because we had not yet had breakfast we decided to look for a fun breakfast place along our route. We enjoyed our breakfast sandwich at the Tettambel household, so we decided that New Jersey would be a perfect place to look for a bagel shop. We are forever indebted to our GPS (Jeeves, as we like to call him) because he led us right to Hot Bagels and an absolutely heavenly breakfast sandwich. We devoured our sandwiches in our car before we got on the road. We got some strange looks from the cars next to us because of all of our groans of delight with each bite we took. Doesn’t take much to impress us.
After our delicious sandwiches (did I mention they were really good?), we got back on the road to Hershey. It was a beautiful day although it was about 95 degrees. Because it was a Sunday the drive was very smooth with little traffic. Along the way we decided to stop by a McDonalds to get some tea because we were sick of Diet Coke. We saw the golden arches sign and decided to pull off. Huge mistake. Apparently the sign was for the McDonalds in Texas because it took us about that long to get there. I swear I saw the Mexican Border patrol but that could have been due to lack of sleep. After we got our tea and two tanks of gas we were back on I-78 en route to Hershey.
We arrived in Hershey at about 2:00 pm and went on the never-ending quest to find our hotel. Jeeves made his first mistake of the trip and was unable to locate the hotel. He thought it was in downtown Hershey and insisted he was right. Turns out it was about 1 mile away from that. We forgave him, though, because we were still having happy thoughts of our bagel sandwiches. After locating the Hershey Lodge, we checked in, got our free Hershey bars, and went to the room. We unpacked our belongings and gave Hunter a chance to stretch his legs out and run around the room. Turns out he enjoyed that quite a bit. He was feeling a bit goofy and wanted to show off for the camera. The kid is a ham! This is his new face when you tell him to “SMILE!” for the camera.
After wearing a trail in the hotel room carpet, we felt it was time to explore the rest of the hotel. It turns out that they have “characters” that will do meet-and-greets in the lobby for all the kids. I wasn’t sure how much Hunter really cared about meeting a giant Hershey bar but who knows with this kid. When we got down to the lobby sure enough Ricky the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (or whatever his name was) was there to say hello to the guests. Move over Mickey! It turns out that Hunter has a new favorite animated character, the Reese’s thing-a-ma-jigger. He was literally standing on the stroller trying to get down and see this thing.
After the love fest with the chocolate cup guy we headed to a local eatery that Emily was craving, Red Robin, yummm. Hunter decided that he wanted to fall asleep in the three minutes that it took to get there so we ended up driving around a bit and then made some noise when we arrived to accidentally wake him up. Don’t tell me that you other parents out there have not employed this devious trick. We entered the establishment, consumed some incredibly mediocre food, got Hunter a balloon, and headed to the park.
Because we had already purchased tickets for the following day, we were allowed to enter the park 2.5 hours prior to closing the night before for a preview. Since Hunter was not ready for bed and we had nothing better to do, we decided to take them up on their offer. We paid our ten dollars (don’t get me started on this one), parked, and walked to the park. It was a warm evening but we were excited to see this new destination. The park was much like I imagined, some fun rides and lots of people from Pennsylvania. I know there are a few folks reading this journal that are from this fine part of our country so I will try to not offend. As I walked the park I decided that we are going to move here and open up a tank top and anklet shop and make an absolute fortune. There, I got that off my chest. We enjoyed our stroll around the park and Hunter could not stop sitting on the edge of his stroller taking it all in. It was really cute to watch him look and point at things. And of course you could always count on the “CHOO CHOO’s” when he saw the train. We made our lap around the park and decided to head back to the hotel to put Hunter down for the night.
All in all today was a really fun day. Just thought I would throw in one more cool photo from the park below.
