RV Trip
Lancaster and Cincinnati 2015
May 27 2015 -
Illinois to Newton Falls, OH
Today we left on our first RV trip of the year. We drove from Illinois to Newton Falls, Ohio
today. The drive was long, but
uneventful. The kids did awesome with
the drive, although their new Teen Titans Go! DVD got tiresome after the first
3 hours. (For us at least.) We made several stops, but none
of them took too long except lunch. We
stopped at The Barn restaurant somewhere in Ohio. The food was a buffet. I can’t really decide how to describe the
type of food. There was fried chicken,
some really good chicken lasagna type thing, and enchiladas. Also, of course, they had salad, vegetables,
and side dishes. I think they were going
for an Amish or home cooking kind of theme, but the enchiladas didn’t seem to
fit in. They also had stuff out for ice
cream sundaes, but we found out when we got our bill that the ice cream wasn’t
included in the buffet price. The food
was good, but nothing that special. The service was very poor, but that was probably just our waitress. Seemed like everyone else was doing fine. I’d
go there again, but not go out the way for it. There is quite a bit going on at this
location. They have a pioneer village
and museum, plus a bakery, and a furniture store and gift shop and a hotel, I
think. We were thinking of spending some
time at the pioneer village, but it started pouring rain during lunch and we
also weren’t sure that our short visit would be worth the price of admission.
The rest of the stops were just pit stops and didn’t take
too long. The trouble with pulling a
travel trailer with a van is that you can’t use the diesel lanes at the gas
stations. At our first stop I followed
the signs for Trucks and RV’s, only to realize that while the parking was
convenient, there was no way for me to get gas.
After that learned to follow the car signs and just had to carefully
maneuver by the regular gas pumps. It
was fine at the oases as long as I waited for a tank on the end, but some
other gas stations I just have to skip altogether because there isn’t enough
room.
Our campground tonight is Ridge Ranch at Newton Falls,
OH. The people here are really
friendly. The owner even backed my
trailer into our spot after he decided to move us to a different spot because
the original one wasn't ready. We really
enjoyed the campground even though we didn’t spend much time there. It had tons of playground equipment and also
a beach and lake area. The kids had a
blast on the old playground equipment. For
dinner, I went out and picked up pizza at Gionioni’s Pizza (that’s probably
spelled wrong), which was really good – I ate way too much of it! Newton Falls has a very small town feel to
it.
May 28 2015 Newton
Falls, OH to Quarryville, PA
Had a BIG rainstorm last night and the campground is a
mudfest. The kids made sure they were
good and muddy before getting in the van as we hit the road.
We had another long drive today, but the kids have done very
well. The driving was much more
difficult today because, in addition to driving through mountains, half the
turnpike was under construction – our half!
It felt like the whole drive was next to a concrete barrier on one side
or the other. I’m not very comfortable
with that since our RV sticks out about a foot on each side of our van. Plus our mirrors are very poor for
towing. I bought some clip on mirrors last year,
but they aren’t very helpful. Anyway, we
did fine and I managed to avoid hitting anything!
For lunch we stopped at McDonalds ("Eww, gross" is everyone's response when someone even says McDonalds) because it had a big
playland so the kids could run around for a while – but not before taking a
scenic tour of a little town in the mountains trying to find Crazy Alice’s
restaurant. We soon realized that we
were not going to be able to park anywhere nearby even if we found the
restaurant and the streets were much too small and busy to accommodate our RV.
We had a nice drive through Amish country and downtown
Lancaster (I really have to find a routing system for RV’s) and arrived at
Jellystone Park in Quaryville right around dinner time. We quickly unhooked the RV and headed back
into town to eat at Sam's New York Pizza and Italian. The kids had pizza again (they couldn’t
believe how big the slices were) and Kyrie and I had pasta. Good food.
After we returned to Jellystone, Kyrie and I setup the RV
while the kids played at the playground.
They really love this place. We stayed here a couple of years ago on our first long motorhome trip. We had a nice wooded site but it was a long walk to everything. This time, we selected a site directly across from all of the activities and playgrounds since most of our kids are old enough to go there on their own and we can see them or at least hear them! I didn't anticipate that Zach would see the playground (through some cabin sites) and bolt. He thinks he's old enough to go play on his own too.
The
bouncy pillow is a big hit as well as the little cars they can drive around a
track. They also had fun at the
playground and a wooden train they could climb on. Zoe made some friends as usual – they are
planning on seeing each other at the pool tomorrow. They had to hug goodbye when it was time to
head back to the RV!
May 29 2015
Strasburg and Bird in Hand
We spent the morning shopping in Strasburg and Bird in
Hand. We started at a little bakery in
Strasburg. I just had to try their
Skittles and Mountain Dew cookie – it didn’t disappoint! This cookie was themed after a movie...Taladega Nights..and was called the official cookie of NASCAR. A couple kids tried that too and the rest split a couple whoopie pies. We then walked over to the general
store where the kids took turns asking for toys and Zach tried to touch
everything in the store. He especially
liked this little plastic snowglobe that he called “bubble” (pronounced booble)
and when I said it was time to check out he yelled out “booble” and ran to get
it. I probably would have bought it for
him at that point, but it took forever to round everyone up and get to the
counter and by then he had set it down.
After that we drove to Bird in Hand to have lunch at our
favorite restaurant from our previous Lancaster trip, which was Plain and
Fancy. This is a family style feast that
includes many Pennsylvania Dutch dishes that you pass around with
strangers. Being antisocial, I was
hoping that our family of 7 was large enough for our own table, but there were
2 other couples who got to share in the “delight” of eating with our kids. One guy mentioned that he never had kids, but
that his dogs were like his kids to him.
We’ve never had dogs ourselves, but I think our kids are probably like
the dogs we never had. They make a giant
mess and they hardly ever listen! The
food was delicious as expected and eating with strangers was fine. Our kids even behaved pretty well, so the
strangers probably had a decent meal as well. Both couples commented about how well behaved the kids were. I guess they weren't expecting that. I was!
After lunch, we stopped at the Bird in Hand farmers market
where Kyrie had to buy a Bear shaped bird house and we picked up some food to
make for dinner. We returned to camp just
in time to meet up with one of Kyrie’s friends, Barb, who lives in the Hershey
area. She spent the rest of the day with
us as we hung out at the pool and at camp.
Zoe had a great time showing off for Barb by jumping into the pool with
her Rhino pool toy around her. She also
did meet up with her friend from the playground and played with her in the pool
a little. And again, hugged goodbye.
May 30, 2015 Yogi
Bear’s Camp Jellystone in Quarryville
Today was Saturday and we basically spent the whole day here
at the campground. It was packed here
for the weekend and there were a million kids running around. They had lots of activities going on and our
kids wanted to try each one.
Zach got everyone up bright and early as usual, so Kyrie
cooked up some pancakes. By the time we
were done with that, the campground was waking up and the kids headed to the
playground. We spent the day on various
activities. Some of the highlights were
Boo Boo’s surprise birthday party, a magic show, glow-light hayride, and laser
tag.
At Boo Boo’s surprise party, the kids got to make birthday
cards and hats and then ate ice cream and cupcakes while interacting with all
of the characters. The little ones had
fun with that, while the bigger ones were happy to get the cake and ice cream.
We spent a lot of the day at the pool. Zoe found a more shallow pool near the hot tub
that she could reach bottom except in the very middle. She loved that, so that she could practice
swimming and even let me teach her how to float on her back. Then she made me do it while she held up my
legs!
After Zach fell asleep and while Kyrie watched the kids at the pool, I managed to cook the ribs
that we had bought at the farmers market yesterday. They turned out really good which was a
surprise because I’ve hardly ever made ribs and I had to improvise quite a bit
to make it work in our small oven and grill.
After dinner, Max and Ella liked the magic show, but had to
move to be able to see after a bunch of bigger kids squeezed in front of their
seats. Zoe wasn’t interested and Zach
just wanted to put rocks on the people around him.
I cleaned up dinner and the trailer while Marc took everyone to the magic show. I wanted to be sure to get a good fire going to make smores tonight too. While I was doing dishes, two couples were admiring our trailer, so I invited them in for a tour. That burned up the few minutes of peace I was hoping to get before everyone returned, but I was happy to show it to them.
Zoe got tired and crabby after playing at the park a little
more, so I dropped her off with Kyrie who somehow knows how to deal with
that. Then I took the other kids to sign
up for Laser Tag which turned out to be super popular and we had to sign up for
the 10:15pm session. They only do it on
the weekends, so we had to do it tonight or never. Ella was bummed, because I decided that was
too late for her (plus I think she would have been afraid of the dark woods).
While we were waiting for the laser tag, we took a ride on
the glow-stick "Hey"ride. This kids loved
saying “Hey” to everyone they saw and seeing the sparkling laser lights in the
trees was a real treat.
We dropped off Ella back at the RV and I took the 3 boys
back to laser tag. The outdoor laser tag
area is really cool at night with a lot of darkness along with plenty of
colored lights and obstacles. Max and
Jacob had a great time playing and had to tell me their score after each
round. Zach somehow managed to sleep
through the extremely loud music.
May 31, 2015
Philadelphia and 4 states in one day!
On Sunday, we took a day trip to Philadelphia. This turned out to be great planning since
the downtown was very empty on Sunday and it was fairly easy for us to get
around and see everything. We started
out with a tour of Independence Hall.
While there isn’t much to look at, it was still very interesting to see
such an important location in the history of the United States. Hopefully, the kids will remember seeing it and have some concept of how difficult it
must have been for the colonists to declare independence and soon after take on
the nearly impossible task of creating the constitution.
Then we went across the street to see the liberty bell, but
Zoe was tired and hungry and by the time we got through the line she was in
full tantrum mode. We got a quick look
at the bell, but didn’t get to look at any of the other documents or
information that was also in that exhibit.
We took care of Zoe for a while and then walked down the
street to see Ben Franklin’s grave and then go to the US Mint. The Mint was closed unfortunately, but it was
interesting to just see it and talk to the kids about it anyway. We made a quick stop in the visitor’s center
to watch a movie and then headed down Market Street to the Reading Station
Market for lunch. This was a great idea
except that everyone wanted something from a different stand and it took
forever to get everyone fed!
We then searched for the oldest residential street in
America. I can remember the name of it,
but there have been residents living there in those houses since the early
1700’s. There wasn’t much to see there
since they are still private residences, but it was interesting to see the
narrow street and the architecture of these 300 year old row houses. Then we walked over to Betsy Ross’s house,
but didn’t go inside. We were all very
tired of walking around in the heat by then, so we decided we had seen enough
for this trip and headed back to the van.
On the way home we decided to drive through New Jersey,
Delaware, and Maryland, since it wasn’t very far out of the way and we could
check off a few more states. We
definitely didn’t see much of these states since we just took the turnpikes
most of the way, but I’m still glad that we did it.
At 4:55pm, we unexpectedly drove by the Hess Snack
Factory. Max has been asking to take the
tour there ever since he first saw a pamphlet for it a few days ago. Unfortunately, they close at 5:00pm, so we
were too late.
We ate dinner at the Hershey Farm Restaurant. Wow, it was so good! I have no idea if it’s related to the Hershey
company or Milton Hershey in any way, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s a buffet with Pennsylvania Dutch food. The buffet is very large and the food is just
delicious. There was so much good stuff
that I had to basically skip dessert even though those looked great as well! My only complaint about this place is that it
is a little pricier than the other places we have been around here.
June 1, 2015 Amish
Village and Shopping
This morning we visited the Amish Village. This is a tour of an old Amish house as well
as a farm, schoolhouse, and blacksmith shop.
We began with the outside stuff to let the kids run around a little
before taking the tour of the house. The
farm was pretty interesting. The kids
liked seeing the animals and there were signs posted above the pens with some
interesting facts about each animal and how the Amish use these animals on
their farms.
On the grounds they have various Amish buggies on
display. The kids enjoyed getting in
them and it was interesting to find that there are a couple different kinds for
different uses.
The schoolhouse looked pretty typical of a schoolroom that
you would see in your average school except that all grades (1 through 8) are
taught in the same room. There was a
poster which explained some of the other differences between Amish education
and traditional education. The main
difference I think was that Amish education values conformity while traditional
education values creativity.
The blacksmith shop had a variety of farm implements on
display, but very little information about them.
Finally, it was on to the most interesting part of the tour
– the house. They describe it as an
1840’s Amish home, but it gets a little confusing because they have modern
things in there as well. I think the
building is from the 1840’s, but the things inside are typical of a modern
Amish home. Anyway, the tour started out
in a large room where the guide gave us some background about the Amish and
Mennonites. I was surprised to find out
that the Mennonites were first and the Amish formed because the Mennonites were
too lenient on people who left their community.
I had always assumed the opposite.
The house tour was interesting and the guide seemed to do a
good job even though our group (which was ourselves and a couple other
families) was pretty dull. None of us
really asked any questions or talked much.
Most of my questions came about later when I really started thinking
about what we saw. I have to say that
now that the tour is over, I know
more about the Amish, but I understand
less. Here’s why…one of the things I
noticed on the tour of the house is that even though they don’t use
electricity, they still have quite a few modern conveniences. Refrigerators, lights, mixers, etc. All of these things have been converted to
propane or compressed air or whatever.
So, I really can’t quite figure out what they are going for there. Why are they against electricity, but not
against all of the things that electricity provides? Also, the clothes washer runs on a gasoline
engine, but it’s this really old style of washing machine that I’ve only seen
in my 90 year old great aunt’s house.
It’s like a big tub and a ringer to get the water out instead of
spinning. The guide said that Maytag
still makes them and this is what they use.
I can’t figure out why they don’t just attach their gas engine to a
modern washer instead. Plus, they still hang all of their clothes out to
dry. Can’t they just find a gas engine
for a dryer or something? Plus, why does
Maytag still make those washers? Are
there that many Amish? Who else uses
them?! My last confusion is the whole
farming equipment thing? Why do they use
horses to do their plowing instead of tractors?
If they’re willing to use a gas engine to wash clothes, why not to plow
their fields? I’m sure there are good
answers to all of these questions, but right now I’ll just have to accept that
I don’t know. So, I guess it was a good
tour because it showed me that I really don’t know the Amish and it made me
interested enough to do more research some day.
After we left the Amish Village it was lunch time so we
drove up the road some to Millers Smorgasbord.
This was another great buffet. I
won’t be able to go to a regular buffet at home anymore now that I’ve had these
great ones out here! The kids loved the
chicken and waffles (well, at least the waffle part) and I liked the cabbage
casserole, browned buttered noodles, and even liked the oatmeal pie.
We
then headed to a little shopping area that Kyrie wanted to go to since it was
closed (on a Sunday) the other time we visited Lancaster a couple years ago.
I think it was Country Kitchen or something like that. There are a bunch of little shops there and
the kids played at the playground and petting zoo.
I
am writing this part several days later, so I can’t really remember the chain
of events here, but somehow (possibly on purpose) we ended up in Lititz where
we went on a “pretzel factory” tour. The
Lititz pretzel factory was the first place pretzels were made in America and so
the tour is of a really old pretzel factory, not a working one (although they
actually do make some soft pretzels here).
The company makes their actual pretzels at a more modern factory
somewhere else, but don’t let this stop you from taking the tour! Our family was the only one on this tour
(which was also the last of the day). It
started out with a pretzel twisting demonstration where our tour guide taught
us how to twist a pretzel properly and explained how the monks gave these to
kids for remembering their prayers and that the word pretzel came from a
German? word that meant “little gift”.
We all got to roll out some dough and try twisting a pretzel – Jacob was
the best at it. I don’t want to give
away the whole tour, so I’ll just say we had a lot of fun with it even though
it was much different than we expected.
After
the tour, we decided that this would be a good time to find
Kleinfeltersville. Being our namesake,
we had to make the drive and find this place, which is near Lebanon, PA. The kids thought we were crazy for driving
“even further” from the campground just to see some town. Well, we found it. It’s small as we expected. The only business in town was the k-ville inn
and bar, but that seems to have had a fire.
We had planned on taking a picture near the town sign, but we couldn’t
find one, so we settled for the only thing in town we could find with our name
on it which was the post office.
June
2, 2015 Hershey Park
For
several days we’ve put off going to Hershey Park because it was supposed to
rain. Well, it didn’t end up raining
much on those days, but today it sure did!
The whole day was a rainy mess.
We probably would have skipped going there, but Jacob has really been
looking forward to it and we know we won’t be back anytime soon.
It’s
hard to give a very useful review of Hershey Park since we went on such a
miserable day, but I’ll give it a try.
Number 1 – they need more indoor attractions! Okay, yes, that is mostly a reference to
being out in the rain all day, but also really I’m sure that it gets really hot
in the summer too and people would like to get out of the sun for a while. Number 2 – the little sit down restaurant
just outside the park isn’t very good.
It was basically bad park food, but indoors. We’re a little (lot!) spoiled after going to
Disney so many times, but really if you’re going to bother making a table
service restaurant (and charging table service prices), then serve some decent
food!
Okay,
other than those 2 things, I think Hershey Park is pretty good. It’s not a huge park, but it’s plenty big for
a day and there’s a water park that is included which could easily make it a
2-day park if you wanted it to. It was
too cold for the water park today. They
have done a nice job of mixing the big roller coasters and thrilling
attractions with some little kid rides nearby.
So, for much of the day we were able to stick together and keep everyone
happy. I was surprised to find a little
zoo in the park and all of us except Kyrie and Jacob spent about an hour there
while those two hit some roller coasters.
By
lunchtime, we needed a break from the rain, so we ate lunch in the aforementioned
table service restaurant and then headed next door to Hershey’s Chocolate
World. We hadn’t planned on going there
since we went last time, but we needed to dry off a bit. The tour of the fake chocolate factory is
free so we did that. Everyone enjoyed
that and we got to try a new Hershey Caramel bar which was a bonus. After souvenir shopping a bit, we headed back
out into the rain to finish out our day.
The rain slowed down a bit, which was a relief and we enjoyed ourselves
well enough. Zoe loved the little cars
that she could drive!
June
3, 2015 Drive to Lebanon, OH
Today
was our longest drive of the trip.
Mapquest said 8.5 hours, of course for us that meant all day.
The drive was pretty good, everyone managed to survive the trip without
too much complaining even though they are all pretty sick of driving. I love to drive, even when we’re dragging our
hotel room with us, but the rest of them just put up with it. I was a little worried when we were only an
hour into the trip and Zoe said, “Are we almost there?” Ella’s been our best traveler. She took over the back seat of the van and
seems perfectly content there no matter how far we are going. I swear we drive all day and hardly hear a
peep out of her. Maybe she’s just too
far away!
We
took about 12 hours, which included about an hour for dinner. By the end of the drive I was getting a
little worried. The campground
specifically said that everyone has to arrive before 10pm. I had assumed that wouldn’t be a problem when
we left at 9:30am this morning, but we didn’t pull in there until about
9:30pm!
June
4, 2015 Cedar Creek Campground and Cincinnati
Our
campground is Cedar Creek Campground in Lebanon, OH which is about an hour
north of Cincinnati. The campground is
very close to Kings Island (our main destination here) and that was the main
reason we chose it. It’s kind of a
medium size campground and it’s pretty busy.
There isn’t a lot here, just a small playground and pool, but our site
(#82) is right across from the playground and the kids have had a lot of fun
going over there. The staff seems
friendly and the grounds are decent. Our
site is large and there is a cement pad for the picnic table, but very uneven
gravel for our RV. I haven’t figured out
a good way to level it, so we are a little lopsided when we are trying to
sleep. The other big problem with the
site is that the sewer hookup is far in the back and I can’t reach it and still
have my water and electric hooked up. So
I had to move my whole RV to empty the tanks and then move it back! We haven’t camped enough with this RV to know
if that’s a common problem with our configuration, but this is the first time
we’ve run into it.
After
our wet day at Hershey Park and very long day of driving, Kyrie wasn’t anxious
to head out on another adventure yet this morning, so we tried out the pool
instead. It felt like it had ice cubes
in it! I’m sure later in the day it was
fine, but it was definitely too cold for us to spend much time there this
morning.
By
lunchtime we were ready to explore, so we headed for the Cincinnati Museum
Center which is in a magnificent old train station. It holds 3 museums, an Omnimax and 1 or more
traveling exhibits. We bought tickets
that included all of that and we started with the Nature and Science
Museum. This was a great surprise. They have a cave you can explore and a large
ice age exhibit, amongst many other displays.
We ended up spending a lot more time in this part of the building than I
expected and everyone enjoyed it quite a bit.
Of course, Max could have spent all day here – this is definitely his
thing!
Next
we headed across the building to the Cincinnati History Museum. This starts with a very large model of the
city of Cincinnati. Each month they hide
some small things in the model and “kids” can try to find all of them. This time it was baby buggies and there were
10 hidden, but we could only find 7. They
also had a World War II display, a river exhibit, and a full size replica of an
old downtown street.
The
third museum is a children’s museum, which they all just loved – even the big
kids were able to enjoy themselves for a couple hours even though it is clearly
geared towards the younger bunch. Zach
liked everything of course. For Zoe, the
play house was the best. She collected
babies, to set up in the kitchen and play house. Jacob and Max had fun delivering mail and
then Jacob just had to run the grocery store and later the diner.
Before
the Omnimax movie, we were all getting hungry, but the snack bar that we saw in
the lobby was now closed, so we just had to get ice cream in the sort of old
fashioned ice cream shop. We had to rush
through that to get to the movie. We saw
a movie about Humpback whales which was pretty interesting. Max said that was his favorite thing of the
whole trip.
June
5, 2015 Kings Island
Today
we went to Kings Island. This is a big
amusement park, with plenty of thrill rides and a very large Planet Snoopy
section for the younger bunch. With it
feeling like 90 degrees all day, I will make the same complaint as I did about
Hershey Park – add a few indoor attractions!
They do have a couple and then have at least one indoor show, but a few
more wouldn’t hurt.
Other
than that, it’s a nice park. Plenty for
everyone to do. In some ways, I don’t
like how all of the little kid rides are in one area. I prefer to walk around the park as a family
instead of having to split up to get to the rides for each group. That being said, they really do have a lot of
rides for the little kids. Zach loved
his first bumper car ride and Zoe liked every ride she could go on (but was
very frustrated at the one’s she wasn’t tall enough for). The older kids had fun on coasters and thrill
rides. Sorry, not much of a park review, but I'm tired and can't really figure out a good way to review these parks. Even though the coasters and rides are all sort of unique they are still kind of the same as the other parks. Still a lot of fun, but not much I can say about them.
By
5 O’Clock, we’d had enough sun and decided to head back to the campsite to hit
the pool. We headed to the top of the
replica of the Eiffel Tower to end our day at the park. When Max heard it was only a 1/3 replica he
said that he will not be going to the top of the real Eiffel Tower! It was fun to see all of the rides from up
there.
We
picked up Mexican food from Acapulco’s in Lebanon which was very good and the
kids spent the rest of the evening at the playground.
June 6, 2015 Back to Illinois
Well, that's about it. Today we drove home. It took a long time, but not too bad today. I think everyone was anxious to get home. So we only made a couple of stops and everyone was pretty quick today. It's good to be home, but I'm still excited about our next trip (even though we haven't decided what that will be yet)!
