Category: Family

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is famous for it’s large (~75,000 people strong) Amish community. Our second day was spent mostly in Lancaster county, which is slightly south of Hershey.

Many of our destinations today were planned from a tourist brochure picked up at a rest stop on our way into Pennsylvania yesterday. We did have a tentative idea of what we wanted to visit before we left Albany, but only one of those places stayed on today’s itinerary. And that was our first stop – the Sturgis pretzel bakery.

< At the pretzel bakery

Here we took a brief tour, including twisting our own pretzel (from fake dough…), and learned the history of this over 300 year old company, as well as how they make their pretzels today. It was an enjoyable way to spend the morning (and the fresh soft pretzel was amazingly good…)

After the pretzel’s we made our way south to a pet store named That Fish Place. “A strange destination”, you may be thinking. And you’re right. What attracted me was the fact that years before I used to buy my aquarium supplies from their mail order service, and remembered their claim of being America’s biggest aquarium store. So since it was on the way anyway, we of course had to check it out.

I’d say they are safe in their claim of being America’s biggest pet store, since the place was enormous. The aquarium section in particular was amazing, with just about everything imaginable for sale. The above right shot shows their innovative way of displaying coral pieces for reef tanks.

The above shots show some of the more exotic critters for sale. Note that on the tag for the Wobbegong (aka Port Jackson Shark) it warns they grow to 9 feet in length and require 10,000 gallon tanks! I wonder just who will buy such a ‘pet’? The evil worm was about 8 inches in length.
We were quite hungry by now, and had targeted a particularly interesting roadside restaurant for our lunch. It was new enough that Giles didn’t have it in his database, but we had no trouble finding Jakey’s Amish Barbecue anyway.

As far as Amish barbecue’s go, this was easily the best I have eaten. Jokes aside, the food was excellent (KLS has pulled turkey, Jim & I had pulled pork), and were the place not 5-6 hours away I would go again in a heartbeat!

The days real treat came after lunch, and it was a ride on the Strasburg Railroad:

< Strasburg Railroad

This is a refurbished old steam railway that runs 45 minute rides along a short length of track through Amish farmland. In addition to the working trains, they have various other attractions (such as parked train cars and rides for children) to interest tourists.

As members of society’s elite, we of course purchased first class tickets (which, at $16, were $4 more costly than the hoi polloi, er, coach class):

< The Beau Monde

The weather was beautiful. The drinks cold. The seats comfortable and the scenery engaging. The trip was a treat from start to finish. We passed through working Amish farms, mostly growing corn, and were lucky enough to spot some working the fields in the age-old fashion – by hand:

The smoke in the second photo is from the train.

It was after five when we finally left Strasburg, and we headed then for West Chester, where the first attraction of our third day was to be found.

But that can wait for the next update!

Last Thursday we (KLS, Jim and myself) set out for a three day trip to various sights in the state of Pennsylvania. We got a very early start on Thursday, since our day one destination was over five hour drive away.

Our navigation was handled by a GPS on loan from Joyce. In addition to being startingly accurate and fast, the little bugger had a voice and gave spoken directions. We quickly settled on the English male accent, and nicknamed him Giles. For most of our trip over the next three days we would follow Giles directions to the letter.

< Giles is on the left

< Welcome to PA

Thursday was devoted to Hersheypark, a large amusement park in the town of Hershey, PA. The town is named after Milton Hershey, who founded the now famous chocolate company. The park is ran by the Hershey company, and in addition to many rides and similar attractions is bordered by a museum, ‘chocolate tour’ and a zoo.

< Our first sight of Hersheypark

KLS and Jim had been here 20 odd years ago, but obviously the park had changed dramatically since then. What had been a paved lot with a dozen or so rides had now turned into a megapark with dozens of rides (including ten roller coasters) that, in my opinion, rivals any other park I have been to. My goal was to ride every coaster in the park at least once, and shortly after entering we were in line for Wildcat:

< Wildcat

And what a ride to start with! One expects wooden coasters to be rough and throw the rider around a bit, but this one took it to an extreme. So intense where the shakes and bangs that at the end I commented all it lacked was a hammer attached above the riders seat to bang him on the head repeatedly during the ride.

Discomfort aside (and for me, the intense cranial pain dissipated very briefly after disembarking), Wildcat has some intense moments of zero-G on at least four hills, and wicked speed for a wooden coaster. Although we lacked the time to ride it a second time, I think the undeniable thrills of the ride may have persuaded me on at least one more time, pain notwithstanding!

Adjacent to Wildcat was Hersheypark’s traditional wild mouse style coaster, unimaginatively named Wild Mouse:

< Wild Mouse

A fairly standard ride, but fun nonetheless. It even had a single zero-G element after a nice drop toward the end.

Oh yes, KLS had ridden both these coasters. This is important since historically she has shyed away from riding roller coasters. Apparently though her fear had derived from height and the coasters at Hersheypark were low enough to make her overcome any fear she had. She had been a little scared on Wildcat, less so on Wild Mouse, but she was quite apprehensive as we lined up for the next coaster Lightning Racer:

< Lightning Racer, by night

Lightning Racer was a racing coaster, which means it had two tracks of similar length and two separate cars. The idea was both left the station at the same time and raced to the finish line. Being a wooden coaster we all expected to be banged around a bit, but Lightning Racer ended up being quite a smooth ride and a lot of fun. During our first go (we would ultimately ride it three times) Kristin was quite scared on the initial climb, but after the first drop turned to me and said “This is fun!”

Here are the two photos taken of us during our first ride on Lightning Racer:

And here’s a shot of Jim and KLS that I took while on the ride (climbing the first hill):

Hersheypark is quite an attractive amusement park. It is clean, well maintained and beautifully landscaped. I particularly like the way many of the coasters snake in and around other attractions or tall trees.

The next ride we went on was called Canyon River Rapids, and was a water ride. Riders sat in a large inflatable ring and took a bumpy ride along the rapids of an artificial river. The line for this ride was very long, especially compared to the non-rides for the coasters, and we by the time we eventually boarded, after standing in the heat for an hour or so, we were all looking forward to getting a bit wet

< Loading Canyon River Rapids

We weren’t disappointed. We were absolutely drenched. Head to toe. It was a good thing I had brought along a little zip lock bag to keep the camera’s and cellphone dry!

The next two coasters we rode were called Sidewinder (an out-and-back style coaster which was caused more headaches than even Wildcat had) and a linear accelerated coaster named Storm Runner, which featured a near vertical drop and several inversions:

< Storm Runner

KLS did not ride Storm Runner; she was afraid of the height of the track. This was probably a good thing, because I suspect if she had she may have declined to ride any more coasters that day.
About this time we wandered over to the attached zoo named Zooamerica. Although very small, it was well kept and had some nice enclosures. Not bad for a free attraction with a park ticket. The best thing about the zoo was the prairie dog enclosure:

A couple of random shots of lunch and dinner:

Of course the park is not all about coasters, although much of what we rode was the coasters. But we also went on a Pirate Ship (which had some nice zero-G), a log flume ride, a ferris wheel, a chair lift ride, a ‘rotating sail ride’, a monorail and a train.

Jim and I are visible in the first shot above (the Pirate Ship). The third shot is a ride none of us actually went on, but was very impressive from a mechanical point of view.

Our next coaster was called The Great Bear, and was a ‘feet hanging down’ style coaster. For me, this was the most thrilling at the park (although perhaps not the most fun), since it had four inversions and several nice drops. KLS commented after this ride that had she stopped to really analyze the track before boarding she would not have rode it, but I am proud she did!

< Great Bear

After Great Bear came the final coaster of the day, and the 8th one we rode at Hersheypark (one was closed and the tenth was a water ride). This was the oldest coaster at the park, a wooden one named Comet, which was a good solid ride with a lot of old-school thrills:

< Comet

The park closed at 10pm, and we stayed until about 9:30. Right after leaving we managed to squeeze into the last showing of the ‘chocolate factory tour’ ‘ride’ at the adjacent ‘factory’/museum. Although propagandist fantasy (<- exaggeration!), it was a good way to end the Hersheypark day :) < Milton Hershey

Stay tuned for the next post, in which I describe day two of our Pennsylvania excursion. I’ll try and update tomorrow, but given that we’re having our carpets replaced this week that may not be possible.