Pennsylvania

We had a brief stop at home to drop off Lego with Ken’s brother and pick up some extra supplies. While home Jerusha was taken ill by a bout of vertigo and has been suffering on and off with dizziness ever since. She can’t easily drive anymore, and even though it is curtailing some of what we can do, we are still having a wonderful time exploring the country.

We camped in French Creek State Park outside of Lancaster, PA. Though the park was nice, it was infested with stink bugs! At one point there were 20 on our door that we had to knock off in order to get into the RV. We thought we did a good job keeping them out, but they are sneaky little guys and managed to hide throughout the RV. A couple days after we left the park, we found about 15 in our bed when we removed the bed sheets for washing! As I write this now (2 weeks after leaving the park) we are still finding 2-5 stink bugs a day that seem to appear from nowhere. We collect them in a jar of soapy water to kill them without having the smell released, but two managed to give off their stink here in the RV - ICK!

One day we went hiking on the trails in the state park when we came upon a sign letting us know that hunting was allowed in the area, and to wear bright orange! We were really surprised that they allowed hunting so close to the campsite. The only bright thing we had was a pink bandana which Jerusha tied around her head and we made sure to talk the whole hike.

We find the rolling hills of PA lovely, and particularly enjoyed looking at the Amish farms and seeing the Amish in their traditional clothes working their land without modern machinery, and driving horse drawn buggies. We attended a cute Halmarkesque musical about an Amish girl who goes to NYC thinking she wants to become an actress.

We visited a couple of farmers markets and in addition to picking up fresh produce and meat, saw an auction of live chickens. That part smelled really bad so we left the auction quickly.

While in Lancaster, we had a lovely evening with Ken’s cousin-in-law, Claudia. We look forward to seeing her (and husband David) again in Savannah!

We went to a multi building museum that preserved the buildings and everyday tools of the Pennsylvania Dutch that settled the region.

We visited the Hershey Botanical Garden with Ken’s colleague Michael (“MFed” as he is affectionately called), then went to the Hershey Museum and learned all about the founder of Hershey and the unusual relationship between the founder, the chocolate company and the town. The town center had cute Hershey kisses lamp posts!

While in Hershey we saw the other bug plague of PA - the Spotted Lantern Fly. They were all over.

We ended our PA experience by dry camping on MFed’s property. It took us an hour to park the RV as we learned new limitations to pulling the rig. Apparently if the truck goes up a steep incline and the RV is still on level ground, the RV tips back and scrapes along the ground! - oops! Dinner out with MFed and his wife Liz was followed the next morning when they came over to our RV for breakfast and Ken had a blast playing with their little kids.