Some Blog Site

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 7

After breakfast in the hotel room, set out on another adventure. We could see the shuttle bus stop from our room window, and we waited until all the amusement park people had left. We were off to Hershey Gardens – the botanical gardens that are part of the Hershey complex and are thus included in the shuttle bus routes.

The boys really enjoyed it. The gardens had a number of different sections:

(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 5

After breakfast at the hotel, we left Perry. It was a few hours – starting on some backs roads because Perry (or Castile, I couldn’t figure out which was where) is not near anything. The plan was get up, eat breakfast, and leave, Then, 4 hours later, we would arrive in Harrisburg and eat lunch and then pop over to Hershey since it is right next to Harrisburg.

Due to the lack of breakfast options, it seems that everyone ate lighter than usual, because people were hungry about halfway to Harrisburg. Or maybe it took us longer to pack up so we didn’t leave right after breakfast. I forget which.

Anyway, thanks to the magic or smartphones, my wife was able to find a restaurant that we could get to before the kids melted down. There were a variety of chains, but we chose a place we had never heard of before – Country Cupboard.

It’s in Lewisburg, and it is well worth a stop. It has a large restaurant, but it also has a candy store and gift shop and stuff. You may be picturing a Cracker Barrel. That would be inadequate. This place is more like a complex, filling an area comparable to a few Cracker barrels put together.

The kids liked it. A lot. In fact, Beta still asks if we can go to Pennsylvania, just so he can eat at the Country Cupboard again. The food was good. And it was a buffet, so the kids could get what they liked and in what portions. There was a lot of variety, and it was a decent price. Nothing bad to say.

We eventually made it to Hershey and went to the Hershey Lodge.

(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 4

After breakfast at the hotel, we left Rochester and headed for Letchworth State Park, voted the #1 state park in America. It was scenic.

Here is the view just after the entrance, at what I think was the first overlook spot.

(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 2

Upon leaving Old Fort Niagara, we drove a while to Rochester, NY. We went straight to the children’s museum – the Strong Museum. We allowed for 2 or 3 hours there, but the kids could have spent longer there. Part of the problem was that we weren’t able to fit a good meal in there so people were running out of energy.

But they had a bunch of displays.
(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 2

Drive to Old Fort Niagara. We crossed over the Rainbow Bridge into New York. The US border patrol was more intense than the Canadians were the day before. I was not prepared for the automatic photo, so it was probably even worse than my passport photo. But I didn’t get to see it. Another extra thing the US did was have me roll down the kids’ window so they could see the kids clearly. And the US people must have more paperwork to do, because they held our documents for a few minutes while they typed in a bunch of things. But we got through there and headed north to Lake Ontario, to the point where Old Fort Niagara is.
(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 1

Drive to Niagara Falls. One hour in the USA and 4 hours in Canada. The border crossing was uneventful. The CBP asked us a few questions, mostly relating to the fact that we were not coming back into the US via the same point we were leaving it. Really, the only issue was that my wife was wearing her sunglasses and the guard asked her to remove her sunglasses so he could see that she looked like the picture in her passport.

We got to Niagara Falls, checked into our hotel, then walked to the falls. We stayed on the Canadian side, but I saved a bit of money by booking a hotel that does not have a view of the falls. In fact, here is the view from our balcony:
(more…)

Welcome back, those of you who read Part 1 of my recap.

This part, the second and final of the set, concerns the airplane portion of the trip.

• It had been several years since I was on an international flight, and the entertainment options are vastly improved since then. Now, you get a USB plug to charge your devices, WiFi if you want to pay for it, and about 50 movies that you can watch and control for yourself, thanks to touchscreens in every seat. More on that later…
• Regarding airplane food, avoid the entree with meat. On the way over, I chose chicken instead of pasta. That was a bad choice – the chicken was rubbery and not tasty. On the way back, they were out of the pasta by the time they got to me, but they did have a Cobb salad. The chicken on that had been cooked but was cold on the salad. That was fine. Apparently chicken cooked before getting on the plane is okay, but chicken cooked (or at least heated) on the plane is not. That’s my assessment having had one of each.
• Here’s a photo for those of you who have forgotten what it’s like to fly:

  

• Here is a photo of my first sight of the Netherlands:

  

• It was fun trying to guess which lines were roads and which were canals:

  

• And here is a photo of our plane landing:

  

• One thing that struck me on the flight back was how mindlessly passive everyone was. The flight there was an overnight, so I watched a movie because it was novel and I could, then I tried to sleep. Then I read and tried to sleep again. After sleeping and eating, I watched one more quick movie before landing. So I didn’t notice that the whole plane was dark because it was night and it was supposed to be dark.

  But the flight back was a daytime flight – it was midday the whole time. Left at 1pm, flew for 9 hours, and landed at 3 pm – following the sun the whole way. Almost kept up with it, too. So I expected the plane to have some daylight.

  But for various reasons, they ask people to close their window shades closed so the plane stays dark. The reason stated was so that people can watch movies without glare. But I suppose some people who wanted to nap would appreciate it too.

  And I just thought that was sad. “Here’s a window seat so you can look out at the glorious sunshine if you want – but don’t. We don’t want you to.” I watched a movie, then I read, then I scribbled some notes and stuff. I had to turn on my overhead light to read and write, which I shouldn’t have needed to do because there was plenty of sunshine available.

  Out of several dozen other seats that I could see, only a handful of other people had their lights on. As best I could tell, all the rest were watching movies or TV shows. I’ll agree to some entertainment – I watched 3.5 movies on my round trip. But that’s about 5.5 hours of screen time out of 18 hours flight time. That’s still a lot of sitting and watching, but I didn’t have much of a choice on the sitting part.

  As I was looking around, in awe of how people were able to watch movies for 8 hours non-stop, I thought “how mindless is this?” I made a choice specifically not to watch a screen for a chunk of the time. That was harder than you might think, because as I am writing, my habit is to look up when I pause to think between items. And, even though I had turned off my screen, my eyes were naturally caught by the bright glow of the screen of the woman in front and to the right of me. And she had the closed-captioning on, so my eyes caught some bad words, too.

  In summary for this point, I am worried about our society, that people aren’t going to be able to do anything (or sit quietly) if it’s not on a screen in front of them.

• Here’s my view during the flight home:

  

• In case you’re wondering, the movies I watched were The Boxtrolls, Kiki’s Delivery Service, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and half of Captain Phillips.