Today was our last entertaining leg of the trip before our final leg home. We decided to drive a few hours and then spend the afternoon in Pennsylvania before making some progress towards home. Taking the trip full circle a bit. We wanted to swing through Hershey (especially since we missed it on our last trip through the area) and Strasburg for some mini-golf.
Still, I didn't manage to take a single photo (mainly because we did things that I've -- wait for it -- covered previously). So, I've interspersed this entry with interesting signs we saw in New York.
We had one more friend, Jess, with whom we wanted to meet up. So we had an early breakfast together at David Burke's fabrick in the Archer hotel. That actually worked out perfect for us (due to checkout) and her, too, because she had a work function right after lunch.
We got up early, just threw on our clothes, and walked down to the restaurant. We'd never been to a David Burke restaurant before (seen him on TV, of course), so we were excited about that. Marsha and I had just passed one of his other restaurants yesterday, David Burke's Kitchen, on our way to the Brooklyn Bridge. The food was really good (yay breakfast!), though we found out afterwards that they had a B rating. That was a bit of a surprise. We expected better based on his reputation.
We went back to hotel afterwards to shower up and pack. We called down for the car, checked out, and went down to the parking garage. All right on schedule. As always, it was tough to leave NYC. We always want to spend more time in the city.
When we got to the car, they said they were having a problem with the key. I'd had a glitch once before where I had to open the door manually, and figured that's what was going on.
Nope. We actually had a dead battery. I couldn't even open trunk. This was all very frustrating, especially since I'd just had it serviced ahead of schedule before we left. Since we were driving so far, I wanted to get my checkup done beforehand. Luckily, they were able to give us a jump start. Still have no idea what caused it. There weren't any lights left on our anything. Just another fluke, I guess.
Thankfully, we had plenty of gas, because I was determined not to stop until we reached Hershey. Of course, getting out of NYC was a challenge in itself, thanks to road construction and tunnel traffic. I just prayed that the car wouldn't cut off when every time we got stuck for a few minutes and were surrounded by other cars. Had we broken down, it would have been a real pickle. I finally breathed a sigh of relief after we made it back out of the city and onto the New Jersey Turnpike.
We managed to make it to Hershey just fine. We stopped at Chocolate World, of course, which they've updated yet again even since Marsha and I were there last. On that trip, they'd completely rerouted the entrance to the ride. Now they've changed the entrance even more by taking your picture before you even get on. And they've replaced a lot of the mechanical effects (such as baking beans and stirring chocolate) with animated video screens. They've even added holograms of their cartoon mascots (talking Hershey bar, Reese's Cups, and Kiss) and a big social media push to the finale. And, of course, we bought some chocolate in the giant gift shop. Which posed a slight challenge since it was 90 degrees outside.
Afterwards, we drove over to the Hershey Lodge (another favorite) and had an early dinner at The Bears' Den, the hockey themed cafe in the hotel. We also bought more chocolate afterwards.
As tempting was to stay there, we still had more ground to cover. We drove over to Strasburg to play mini-golf at our favorite course, Village Greens (again, see previous post). It was still in the high 80s, so we asked them to keep the chocolate in the little cafe for us. Got the feeling this wasn't the first time they've gotten that request.
We did the long (gold) course again because it's just so beautiful. It was National Cow Day, so each hole had a trivia question about cows. You won a free little sundae if you got them all right. We did terrible (even using Google), but they gave us sundaes anyway. Participation trophies, I guess.
The general goal was to drive to Winchester, VA, before we stopped for the night. That still seemed pretty do-able after we left Strasburg. But because we had gone east from Hershey, our GPS had us cut across 30 to get to I-81, instead of going back up to Harrisburg and then down again.
At first this was just fine, since 30 is a major highway in that area. We actually went right back through York and even drove past the Around the Clock diner, where we'd eaten breakfast two weeks ago (feels like forever) on our first morning out.
But then 30 turned into a tiny country road and we ended up going through small town after small town. Gettysburg was nice and made me want to go back some time. Eventually it was slow going and very frustrating until we finally made it to I-81. Would have definitely been quicker to have driven back to Harrisburg.
To make matters worse, Marsha had some troubles trying to book a room in Winchester. She even called Customer Support at Hampton Inn and still couldn't get it booked. Still not sure what was going on there, but she finally managed to book a room in at Holiday Inn Express. We got there around eleven and were so glad to finally call it a night.
Tomorrow is the last leg home, which I hope will be uneventful. I especially hope that the car starts again in the morning. Fingers crossed!
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