Saturday, November 10, 2007

Lots of things to see outside of Philly

On Tuesday, after the sessions at the conference, I took Page to New Castle, Deleware for dinner. It was only about 30 minutes from Philly on the Deleware River. This is where William Penn landed and founded the city. Penn's ancestors still manage the land here. We went and ate in an old colonial building and had a colonial style dinner.

Here is a statue of William Penn in New Castle. The locals wanted us to stay for their Halloween Parade, but we had other plans and places to see still before the end of the day....

Can you see the Capital Dome? It was nice in bright, but the camera only can do so much. Page has always wanted to go to Washington DC. She mentioned how it was too bad we were so close and didn't have time to go see it. Well it's about 2 1/2 hours from Philly. I know it was late and we had a nice dinner in New Castle, Deleware, but I made a dash for the capital. Who knows when we will be back this way again. Didn't get to tour anything, but we did get to see a lot of buildings. Just wait, our adventures only get better....

This is a little hard to see but it is the Lincoln Memorial. We parked in a handicapped parking area (nobody was there!) but it freaked Page out so we quickly took the picture and hopped back in the car. We drove around the Mall. Saw the White House, Capital, Supreme Court, the Archives, Washington Monument, and Jefferson Memorial. Then we headed back to Philly.

Ok we may be a little crazy, but my meetings at the MGMA conference were over by noon and we had all afternoon off. We really wanted to see New York City and the Statue of Liberty, and it is only 90 miles from Philly (the nearest shopping mall from our house is 90 miles away and we drive that all the time!) so we headed to NYC. We got there late in the afternoon, worked our way down to Battery Park to take this picture of the Statue of Liberty. The late afternoon sun was right in our face, so it really washed out the colors, but we saw that beautiful lady in the harbor. We also drove past Time Square, Central Park, and got caught in the 5:00 traffic on Halloween night, bumper to bumper cars and people. The city is just what you think it would be. Busy and crazy, full of people. We got honked at constantly. We saw lots of little kids in costumes trick-or-treating at all the businesses. We basically just went on a driving tour through the city and headed back to Philly. We entered and exited the city through the Lincoln Tunnel. It was a fun experience.

We drove past "Ground Zero" where the World Trade Center buildings fell on 9/11

We happen to come upon the LDS Temple in downtown Manhattan. It is right across the street from the Lincoln Center and down the block from Gray's Papaya, where we just had to eat. Regis Philbin always talks about Gray's. Hot Dogs are only $1 there so we had a very inexpensive dinner in NYC.

The day after my conference was over, we made our plans to see some sights outside of Philly. Just north of the city is Valley Forge. Here is a picture of the monument at the site. We also saw Washington's headquarters and replica's of the little cabins the men stayed in during the winter.

By lunchtime, we made it to Amish Country. Here is a young man driving his buggy through town. We took the picture without him seeing. We heard they don't like their pictures taken. We saw women dressed in their Amish clothes and older men with their long beards. It was really interesting. We also had a Pennsylvania Dutch lunch and were served by some Amish ladies. It was good home country cooking. We went to the Intercourse Canning Company store and tried lots of samples. I really liked the peanut butter sauce that they make.

We drove to Gettysburg to see the famous Civil War Battle Field. The battle field is huge and actually surrounds the entire town. More men died in that battle than in any battle in that has occurred in North America. A little side note: we ended up stopping in town to get an ice cream cone, before heading up to Harrisburg for the night. We had the best cherry-vanilla ice cream we have ever tasted in our life. So if ever in Gettysburg, you got to try their cherry-vanilla ice cream.....

Here is the spot where President Abraham Lincoln stood to give the Gettysburg Address

We got to tour Hershey's Chocolate World the next morning. They have an amusement park, museums and in town they have street lights that look like Hershey kisses. We had a long drive to get up to Palmyra so we only went on the factory tour to see how the chocolate was made.

We went on a tour to see how they make the Hershey's Chocolate. We were on a ride like at Disneyland (but it was free!). These cows cracked me up. We kept seeing them on the tour singing about Hershey's Milk Chocolate. After the tour we got a free sample of Hershey's Kissables. I also got me a chocolate bar in the gift shop. Tasted just like the ones you can buy in any store.... haha

After leaving Hershey we drove through some beautiful country in central Pennsylvania, heading to Palmyra and Upper State New York. The fall colors were still bright due to the warm weather. This picture doesn't do it justice.

2 comments:

Kevin xo5 said...

how lonk did it take to make this blog it is realy long I would never be able to make ont this long

KarliSue said...

Mike,
It looks like you guys had such a fun time! I would love to go and make that same trip. I guess I will have to wait until my kids are little bit older. Hope everything is going well!
Karli