Author: Sarah

We are home!  But we ended the trip with one last stop, at Hershey’s Chocolate World.

We took a fun trolley ride around the area, and learned a bit of the history behind the Hershey chocolate factory.  The kids thought it was fun, especially when they periodically handed out bits of candy!

Then we went on the Great American Chocolate Tour.  Anna loved this – in fact, we had to go on the “cow roller coaster” once more before we left, because she really, really loved it.  (Luckily, it was free.)

Carolyn would have liked to create her own candy bar, but at $15 per person (and we all would have had to make our own, we couldn’t just all four go in and let Carolyn make one) we decided we could make candy at home.  They even have “make your own candy bar” kits in the gift shop for a much more reasonable price.

Finally, we hit the road and drove straight home with just one stop for a quick dinner (we had to collect a couple more Smurfs from McDonald’s, of course).  The drive was absolutely lovely – perfect scenery and perfect weather.  Even the knock knock jokes were mostly tolerable:

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Interrupting smurf!
Interrupting smurf wh-
La, la, la la la la, la, la la la la!
(Yes, that’s the smurf theme. No, they’ve never seen the smurfs.)

We packed up the car with water (not nearly enough), swimsuits, sunblock and kids and headed to Dutch Wonderland to open the park.

Apparently, it was a day for cheesy photo ops – seriously, the girls insisted on posing in each and every one of these places and wouldn’t budge until I’d taken their pictures!  (I have them trained well.)

We got there early enough that we were able to go on ride after ride with little to no line.  It was so much fun! Some of them (like the Frog Hopper) they went on multiple times in a row because there was no line.

The bumper cars were especially fun.  It was Anna and Daddy in the yellow car vs. Carolyn and Mommy in the purple car.  We definitely put the bumpers to good use!

When we decided it was time to cool off, we changed into swimsuits and let the kids play in Duke’s Lagoon – a combination sprayground & mini waterpark with (cold!) water spraying everywhere and mini waterslides.  I was terrified to even bring the camera near the place after killing my ipod touch the other night, so it stayed safely dry in a locker for that part of our fun.  We finally managed to drag the girls out of there with promises of going on the pipeline plunge.  Yes, I took two small girls through that twisty-turning blue tube, on nothing more than a rubber raft.  It was fun!

We went on lots more rides after, including the dreaded log flume ride.  (I left nothing, not even park maps, in the outside pockets of my bag this time!)  Carolyn even went on the flying trapeze by herself!

After dinner, we saw The Frog Prince, reinterpreted into a high dive act.  It was really amazing!  And even more amazing was that the pool these performers were diving into was only nine feet deep.  That’s only 6″ deeper than the deep end of our backyard pool.  But they were diving from really, really high heights.

We didn’t quite close the place down, but we rode the train one last time around the park, saying “goodbye” to all of our favorite rides.  The girls had a wonderful time, and are already asking when we can come back!

The forecast today was for “scattered thunderstorms”, so we decided to leave our second day of Dutch Wonderland for later in the week and switch a few other plans around.

We thought that taking the train in the rain would be fun, so we headed for the Strasburg Railroad.  (To say that we got drenched while waiting to board would be an understatement.  Despite our enormous umbrella, everyone’s shoes were soaked through and Anna – poor short little Anna – couldn’t have gotten wetter standing in the shower fully clothed.)

But it was worth the soaking.  The details inside the train were lovely – aside from the velvet seats being green instead of red, it was exactly as Laura had described her first train ride in By the Shores of Silver Lake.

The ride itself was fun, too.  We were able to open the windows and look out on the rain soaked cornfields, wave to people waiting in cars at crossings, and even see an Amtrak train go speeding by at 100 mph while we waited for the engine to switch to the other end of the train for our trip back.

By the time we finished watching the engine switch back to the other end of the train again after our trip, it was lunch time, so we headed to the Red Caboose Motel, where we ate lunch in a train car!  The girls were extra thrilled to find a friendly cat sitting on the porch when we were leaving.

Since we were still soaked through, we headed back to the hotel for a swim and a change, and then went shopping at Kitchen Kettle Village, where we bought fudge, jam and beef jerky (blame Denis), and also were able to stop at the absolutely lovely Lancaster Yarn Shop.  Where I may have acquired some yarn.  But, 1) it’s souvenir yarn, and 2) it’s sock yarn.  Neither souvenir yarn nor sock yarn count as “stash”.  So souvenir sock yarn must be anti-stash, and therefore actually cancels out some yarn I already own, right?

Road trip time!  We switched Anna forward facing a few weeks ago, and let me just say, it’s a trip listening to her narrate our drive now. “Daddy, red light! Green light, Daddy! Wait Daddy, the letters on the truck – go back so I can read the letters on the truck, Daddy!”

Anyway, we are in Lancaster, PA for a much-anticipated vacation.  We spent a couple of hours at Dutch Wonderland this evening, which is a small theme park – especially compared to the other DW – but absolutely perfect for our two small girls.  We were able to let them go on lots of rides all by themselves.

The only sad moment of the day was when I discovered that our trip on the log flume ride may have completely killed my ipod touch – aka, the kid entertainment unit, aka the only reason Anna behaves during Carolyn’s piano lessons.  That was a harsh, harsh lesson to check the outer pockets of my bag before going on a potentially drenching ride or wandering through a rain storm.  (The inside, where my camera lives, stayed perfectly dry, thankfully!) I’m holding out hope that some time drying out will somehow fix it.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, and the kids are *finally* asleep.  I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!  Oh, and I’ll leave you with Anna’s very first made-up joke:

Why couldn’t the banana cross the store easily?
Because it wasn’t completely peeled!