We also added lots more pics to our picasa web album for this trip.
Sunday was our last day in Washington and we decided not to return into central Washington as we have seen, in the museums, what we came to see on this trip. Instead we drove around Washington to the southern suburb of Alexandria, a touristy spot on the Potomac River. It was about a 40 minute freeway drive around the east side of Washington. Last time we were here we took the metro and all told, from the RV park to the Alexandria station was about double that time, so worth driving. We found a parking spot on King Street, the main drag, and wandered along the 4 or 5 blocks down to the waterfront. We picked up a few neat items in the Williams & Sonoma store and Kris bought some new sandals at Comfort One Shoes. For lunch we returned to the Chart House on the pier overlooking the marina on the Potomac...
... where we both had the delicious Crab, Shrimp, Mango and Avocado "stack"...
After lunch we walked through the Torpedo Factory Art Center enjoying seeing the many diverse types of art displays and chatting with a few of the artists. Neat place, and yes, it was once a torpedo factory.
Back at the RV park we met our neighbours who are from just outside Seattle Washington. He has traveled extensively around the north west and has been to northern Vancouver Island numerous times so he knew about Courtenay where we live. She is an avid baseball fan and was very interested in chatting about our bucket list item of seeing a ball game in every Major League ball park. Her son works for ESPN and is usually able to fix them up with whatever tickets they are interested in.
For dinner we picked up some boneless pork ribs for grilling. Afterwards, with the threat of rain, we packed away anything we didn't want to get soaked during the night and it did rain quite hard in the night.
Monday we finished drying out, packing up and headed north past Baltimore into Pennsylvania Dutch country. We chose the Lake in Wood Camping Resort about 30 minutes north east of Lancaster as our place to stay for 3 nights while we toured around the area. Nice campground deep in the woods with lots of trees around each site. Chatted with a neighbour who said we were lucky we chose midweek because the place is packed on weekends. He left after the first night and the next two nights we had a whole area to ourselves, nobody but us and some critters. One night a skunk came by. Sitting in the trailer we got a whiff then it got stronger and stronger while the skunk must have been checking us out as a food source. Guess it figured out it was a lost cause and after a while the smell abated. Glad we didn't inadvertently open the door and startle the little bugger :-)
Monday afternoon it was raining but we took a drive into Intercourse where Kris had a good look around in The Old Country Store (quilts) then the Lancaster Yarn Shop, coming away with only one small new project. Brian snoozed in the car :-). We had toured this area a good 30 years ago and it has changed quite a bit (to be expected). Much more upscale looking shops etc, but being still very early in the tourist season most of the tourist type shops closed early afternoon. We stopped in at the Corner Coffee Shop (part of the Smucker Village on main street Intercourse) where we were able to take a brief respite from the rain. It was neat to see the Amish horse drawn buggies again...
Late afternoon, early evening we drove around looking for a possible place to get some dinner. NOTHING! So we headed back towards the campground. Driving through New Holland we spotted one, yes one and only one, tavern open so went in there. What can you do? Bit of a dark little place so we grabbed a couple of stools at the bar so we could watch a bit of baseball on TV while we ate. Kris had a pretty good chicken quesadilla while Brian had some very messy ribs and greasy fries. Kris won that one! While there we got chatting with a guy at the bar. He is a local rancher (for lack of a better word) and does a lot of livestock trucking throughout Pennsylvania, New York and New England. He told us that probably the neatest livestock thing he has done was providing cattle for a TV ad shoot on Wall Street in Manhattan. We recalled seeing an ad where they ran some bulls and other cattle down Wall Street and he said... that was it. Cool guy to chat with.
Anyway, we got chatting for quite a while when all of a sudden Kris looks and her watch and says... "How long will it take to get to the campsite... it is now 8:30 PM".... When we checked in they asked us if we were likely to be out of the campground past 9:00 PM because they lock the gates at that time. Well we rarely are, especially in the more remote rural campgrounds such as this one so we declined picking up the special pass that would open the gate after 9:00... Well, here we are a good 20 minutes away. So we asked for our bill which seemed to take too long to arrive. Turns out that our waitress who just started her job about 6 hours ago had given our bill to another table who had paid it without noticing. The manager was in a bit of a quandary as to what to do so Brian just said to not worry about it, we'll pay theirs. Turns out they were relatively close so no harm, no foul... but it did take us an extra 5 minutes to get out of there so we had to gumboot it back. Luckily, no issues on the road and we got back with a couple of minutes to spare thereby averting a bit of a situation. Worst case is that we'd have had to park outside and walk in, about a kilometer or so to our site, in the pitch dark. Lesson learned: Next time just get the damn gate pass!
Tuesday was another rainy day so we did a day trip into Lancaster, had a bit of a drive around the city. Man are there some fabulous houses there. The Old Country Store in Intercourse used to have a wonderful Amish quilt museum but apparently they had some financial woes, ended up closing the museum and the quilts were shipped off to the Lancaster Historical Organization. So that's the place we headed for. A nice little museum but unfortunately all but 2 of the quilts are in storage and the two that are on display are behind very reflective glass so difficult to get a picture. We chatted with the quilt curator about seeing some of the other quilts in the collection but he just gave us the cold shoulder with an explanation of how much work it is to give special admittance. So that was that. At least they have a couple on display.
Leaving the museum we headed for the historical center, found parking and headed for the Lancaster Central Market, the oldest continously run farmer's market in the country, some 275 years. After a wander through the market we decided to head down the street where we had a nice mid afternoon lunch (pizza and burger) at the Pressroom Restaurant. It continued to rain the whole day so we didn't feel like strolling the streets of historic Lancaster. We drove up to the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen, had a look about their small store then headed back through Intercourse for another stop at the yarn store and a coffee at the Corner Coffee Shop before heading to the campground where we just had light snacks for dinner.
Wednesday we headed a bit further afield to York, PA, home of Harley Davidson Vehicle Operations. We decided on the Steel Toe Tour which, for $35 was quite a bit more thorough than the regular free tour. It was about 2 hours long and took us through most of the stages of making a Harley. About the only thing they don't make here is the power train; those get made at their factory in Wisconsin. We got close up views of the huge presses used to make the fenders and gas tanks. That was neat... a piece of flat sheet metal goes in, press, out comes a fender, laser cuts it to exact size and cuts holes for bolts etc... takes less than a minute.
The Steel Toe tour also takes you along the entire assembly line so you can see what each station does, starting from a bare frame and ending up with a motorcyle being placed on a truck. Fabulous tour... recommended!!!
After the tour we headed into downtown York for a very late lunch (we had to hurry to get to York to make the 12:00 noon tour so no breakfast or lunch until well going on 3:00 pm) and found ourselves at the Roosevelt Tavern where we had a most excellent lunch of crab soup followed by crab cakes... yummmmm... a meal that did us for the day.
Thursday we packed up and headed east to Philadelphia. The closest campground we could find was in Clarksboro, New Jersey at the Timberlane Campground. We had called a few days ago and made a reservation but they only had a spot for Thursday night. They have an overflow area which they told us was available for Friday and Saturday night but did not have sewer or cable. When we arrived we checked out the overflow area and decided to just stay there all three nights so we wouldn't have to move Friday morning. It all worked out ok. In terms of big cities, this place is good and is only about 20 minutes to downtown and about the same to Citizens Bank Park, home of the Phillies, our real reason for being here.
After getting checked in we took our car to a nearby Nissan dealer for an oil change, a coolant flush and tire rotation. They also found our battery is failing so we got that replaced as well. Another late afternoon lunch day. After the car was done we headed for the Hollywood Cafe & Sports Bar, a place recommended by the guys at Nissan. We made our way to the bar so we could watch a bit of baseball while we ate. Brian tried a Philly Cheesesteak (not bad) and Kris had a salad with shrimp and scallops both of which were cooked well beyond necessary. We wondered what the cook had against shrimp and scallops?
After lunch we decided to head over to a Nordstrom store in Camden an eastern suburb of Philadelphia. Bit of an exercise in futility as there were a couple of accidents on the freeways and traffic just ground to a halt. We did eventually find the mall, had a wander around in there for a while before braving the traffic to get back to our campsite. Spent way too much time sitting in idle mode. To finish off the day in prime style, Brian found that he had left a jacket back at the Lake in Woods campground. Gave them a call but nothing turned in so probably someone just picked it up. Hope they enjoy it .... it was a nice jacket :-(
Friday was a downtown and historic old town area of Philadelphia day. We had to set our GPS to allow toll roads otherwise it would have taken us about 2 hours to do the 20 minute drive into downtown. The bridge toll going in is $5 per car but no charge coming out. First stop was a Starbucks but, you guessed it, it was no longer there when we arrived. Seems to be a bit of a pattern here. We are starting to think our GPS does not like us going for a coffee! Anyway, by this time we were already parked in the Sheraton's parkade so decided to leave the car there for a while. We quickly found Century 21, a discount clothing and home decorating store where we had a good look around but came away empty handed except for some directions to the nearest Starbucks, although buddy did try to send us off to Dunkin Donuts but we rejected that one.
For lunch we went to Le Pain Quotidien, a place we had gone to in Paris and it was every bit as good. We both had the quiche...
After lunch we picked up the car (parking tab $14 - not too bad) and drove over to the historic area where the Liberty Bell is and parked in the visitor parking garage. We wandered through Independence Hall where there are great displays of the life and times of Benjamin Franklin; visited the Carpenters Hall where the first Continental Congress was held; chatted with a fellow in the Free Quakers Meeting House; and stood in line for about half an hour to see the Liberty Bell...
It was a pretty hot afternoon so we decided to pick up the car (parking tab $17) and drive to a different part of downtown where there is a Nordstrom Rack as we both needed to pick up some socks. Bit of a snark hunt but we did find it and found a parkade nearby so went in there. Those turned out to be some expensive socks as the parking tab for the 1 hour and 48 minutes it took us to shop and browse around a bit, was a whopping $32...
Ouch! So, all in all, we spent $63 on parking for the day. Philadelphia is an expensive place to park! On the way back to the campground we stopped and got some deli fixings for dinner; found a good wine store so stocked up on the strategic reserve supply and came across a classic car show and tell ...
Saturday was baseball game day at Citizens Bank Ball Park where the home team Phillies took on the visiting San Francisco Giants. This was a bit of a quandry for Brian as the Giants are his favorite but our home town mojo is pretty strong. Well not this time... the Giants came out on top 7-5 AND we did get to see Madison Bumgarner pitch for the Giants (he also had an RBI helping his own cause)...
We also got to see a couple of Phillies hit home runs including a grand slam by Jeff Francoeur. When one of the Phillies hits a home run the "Liberty Bell" lights up and swings... you can't really see the lights in the daytime but it does swing and it probably looks really cool at night...
Almost had a rainout today so we were lucky to get this one in. Not much of a crowd...
.... but that is number 21 under our belts. On to New York next...
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