Road Trip 2010 – Day 13

Thanks to our good friend Jon, we knew that if we could just get the car packed, delicious bagel sandwiches would be within our reach!  Hunter of course was hungry, so he and I headed down to get a quick bite

before we hit the road.  Hunter met one of the hotel employees named Louisa (who he later would also call his girlfriend).  Louisa seemed entertained by Hunter as he interrogated her with his normal line of questioning.  It provided for some great laughs over waffles and cereal.    After we finished eating, we hustled to get ready and packed and we said goodbye to yet another hotel.

We arrived at the Tettambel residence in about 45 minutes due to the morning traffic (another thing that sucks about NJ).  The bagel sandwiches were as delicious as we remembered them.  All that have visited Jon can attest to how unreal these things are.  We ate every last morsel off of our plate because we knew it would be some time until we could enjoy these again.  We hung out for a bit and let Hunter play as we visited.  Jon had a meeting at 9:30 so that was our cue to continue on our journey.  It really is great seeing old friends.

We were very much anticipating getting across the New Jersey border as we continued on our route.  The next stop for today was at the Crayola factory so we could all see how crayons and markers were made and Hunter could explore and create.  The Crayola tour was in PA just minutes over the NJ border.  It was located in a neat downtown square which provided a great place for some photos and walking.  The tour was neat.  They had old crayon machines that showed how the crayon making process worked.  There was also of ton of different places set up that allowed kids to create using the assortment of products that Crayola makes.  Hunter had a great time as did we and the other 8000 people who were visiting.   After the tour we grabbed a few hot dogs and toured the downtown area.  We completed our stop with a visit to the Crayola store (who would have guessed?) where we got a few neat things.  Emily planned yet another awesome stop.

After the Crayola tour was done, we headed on to Strasburg, PA, where we would be setting up camp for the next two nights.  We were staying at a hotel that was located directly across from the Devil’s Amusement park (the name escapes me but based on the drive in it felt like we were in hell).  The hotel was perfect and it was located very close to the train attractions that Emily had on the itinerary.  This was the first reservation that had been canceled due to my lost credit card.  Lucky for us they still had a room.

After we got settled, we headed out to dinner.  Emily found this really cool place online that was a restaurant that was inside of a train car.  Hunter was fired up to be going there.  It was actually a motel where each room was located in a converted train car.  It was really cool to see, especially for the train lovers in this group.  Dinner was nothing that you would see featured on the Food Network but the atmosphere (aside from the disgruntled waitress) was really great.  We watched out the windows and saw the Amish “horsey and bug bugs” (as Hunter would call them) ride by.  After dinner we toured the motel train cars and climbed up in a lookout tower (which due to our poor physical conditioning would have our legs rendered useless for days).

After dinner we drove back and checked out some of the neat train activities that we would be doing the next day.  We got back to the hotel, grabbed some delicious chocolate chip cookies, and went to bed.