A DAY AT HERSHEY FARM

I had off from work today.  Joe had his regular doctor's appointment so I took him to the VA Hospital.  It was nice to not have to look at my watch and hope he got out in time for me to get to work.  It gave me a little taste of what retirement will be like.  Ah, how I'm looking forward to that!

When we started for home we decided to take a detour and not go home.  Instead we went out to Lancaster County.  It was about 11:30 and we figured we could get out there around 1:00 p.m. and have lunch.  (Lunch is cheaper than dinner.)  We talked about where to eat and decided on Hershey Farm.  It's one of our favorite places besides being where we spent our honeymoon.  We figured it would be a good place to celebrate our anniversary.

The traffic was awful. A lot of times we had to stop.  But we got to see some lovely scenery.  If only my camera wasn't in the bottom of my purse!  We had beautiful views of center city, the Zoo Balloon, and Boat House Row.  I've showed you center city Philly lots of times and I know I shared the Zoo Balloon pictures with you.  But I've only shown you Boat House Row at night.  Here's a google image of what it looks like in daylight taken by Bill Cannon.

And here's the Waterworks and the Art Museum.  I'll have to do a Philly Friday post on that sometime.

 Joe's back is still bothering him and he had taken some pain medication so he slept most of the way out there.  He must have really been out of it because I had the radio on and even drove in and out of a thunderstorm and he never woke up.

It took about 1 1/2 hours to get there and just as predicted we arrived around 1:00.  It was very crowded and we thought we would have to wait a long time to be seated, but it was only about 5 minutes.  When the waitress seated us, I recognized her as Linda, our favorite waitress who had waited on us every morning we were there on our honeymoon.  We have seen her occasionally since then and she always remembers us.  I was so glad she was going to be serving us.

We both got the smorgasbord and started off with the cream of potato soup.  It is so good!  My very favorite soup.  Then I had fried chicken, ham balls, green beans, Amish stuffing with chicken gravy and Pennsylvania Dutch corn nuggets.  Joe had roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans.  Everything was so delicious.  I don't usually get dessert.  I was very full, but I splurged and got a parfait.  It was crushed chocolate cookies, coffee pudding and whipped cream topped with mini chocolate chips.  I don't like the taste of coffee, but I liked this!

We told Linda how nice it was to see her again and left her a large tip.  It's only right because she is very good.

After we ate we looked around the shops.  I got some whoopie pies to take to work on Monday.  We also got some beautiful tomatoes, peppers and gala apples grown right there on the farm.  I could have bought a lot more if my bank account was larger.

We put the purchases in the car and then took a walk around the farm.  I took lots of pictures.  I won't show all of them to you, but here are some of my favorites.

Joe had me sit up in this Amish buggy.  It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.  But it was a lot of fun sitting in it.

Famous Amos overseeing his domain.

I love the wild grasses.  But my allergies don't.

The mums were just beautiful.

There were three huge boxes (about 4 feet tall) full of pumpkins.

Isn't this pretty?

This is my artistic shot.

The baby goats aren't babies anymore.

This duck was mean.  He grabbed the black and white silkie chicken by the neck and tried to kill it.  When the chicken finally got away, it went after the goats who were bleating with pain.  I am going to get in contact with the farm and tell them.  It was very upsetting.

I had Joe stand next to these wild grasses so you could see just how big they are.

Geese and ducks.  Lots of geese and ducks.

This is the side of the carriage house.  I thought it was so pretty.

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye.  My sister Elaine knows what that means.

After we left Hershey we headed for Rockvale Mall Outlets.  Joe wanted to get another pair of pants that actually fit him.  But...  there was only one pair in his size in the entire store and they were ugly so we left with nothing.

I wanted to go to Christmas Tree Hill to look around and I hit the jackpot there.  I got three kinds of wax tarts to burn:  apple and cinnamon, fall harvest, and pumpkin pie.  I also got two bayberry candles.  We always burn a bayberry candle on New Year's Eve, so we are all set.  Again there was so much there I would have bought if I had had the money.

We headed home then.  It was about 3:00 p.m. and I thought I would miss rush hour.  Boy was I wrong.  I didn't count on there being three accidents and road work.  And rude drivers, especially ones in huge trucks that try to push you off the road.  But that's another story.  It took me 2 1/2 hours to get home.  I think I was driving about 15 miles/hour most of the way.

All in all it was a lot of fun.  We both had a wonderful time.

Kathy
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Today's weather:
Mostly cloudy
High:  75 degrees
Low:  55 degrees (predicted for tonight)
Sunrise:  6:44 a.m.
Sunset:  7:04 p.m.
12 hours and 20 minutes of daylight