The Deadly Duo

My struggle with New York City driving had not even begun once we had dropped Eric off at the airport. It was now time to face traffic in the city during evening rush hour. Honestly, I had no idea which roads to take, so I was just listening to the instructions provided by Tweedy’s phone. Before we knew it we were in the dead center of the city. We even drove right by Times Square! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of that moment. It took all my concentration just to navigate those roads and the heavy traffic. But no need to worry, you'll get to see pictures from NYC once I get to that part of the trip.

We did end up surviving the horns, crowds, and deadly traffic maneuvers, arriving at Jaclyn's residence in the state of New Jersey a bit earlier then I might have thought it would take. Jaclyn was another person that we found via the couch surfing app. She runs a music business that sells instruments and (even more awesome in my own opinion) plays music for events. Her particular instrument of choice is flute, but she is well versed with the piano as well. She was super nice to us and provided a floor to sleep on and the next day allowed Tweedy and I to do some catching up on our social media before we took off and hit the road to return once again to Pennsylvania. 

When we reached Pennsylvania it was already dark. With this being the case we chose a nearest state games land on the map (that’s the open space for hunting that people aren't techinically allowed to camp in) and set up the tent. We made a batch of beans with the deathly peppers provided by the girl at Kafe Kerouac that was far beyond the spicy level that most average U.S. citizens would ever subject themselves to. Thankfully we survived the self-inflicted torture (both Tweedy and I thought it was delicious in all honesty). After our bellies were full we retired to bed and fell asleep to the sound of guns being fired deeper in the woods.

Morning arrived and we pointed ourselves towards Hershey. For those of you saying “No way! Hershey isn’t a town, that’s a chocolate company!” turns out it’s both. Not only that, but the chocolate is made there in that town. The Hershey company has also thrown up a lot of tourist attractions in the area. Most of it a person has to pay for, such as the museum that Tweedy and I walked into first. After learning that there was an admission fee for all of the attractions in the building we just snapped a few pictures of the waiting area and headed out again to go down to Hershey’s Chocolate World where the internet said we could find a free tour. The following mural was painted on the wall of the museum that we went into first.

At Hershey’s Chocolate World we were floored by the amount of candy that was available for purchase. The majority of the place was more of a candy store than anything else.

What Tweedy and I had come to see was tucked in the back corner of the building. It was a free ride. That magic word "Free." We had to give it a go. My personal opinion is that the very beginning and very end of the ride are the best parts, this is because you have to walk across a floor that is constantly rotating into or out of the seats for the ride which are also in constant motion. The rest of the ride is a tour through the chocolate making process narrated by a cow and various pieces of chocolate candy. It was hokey to say the least, but a fun little ride, especially considering the price. Afterwards you even get a little piece of chocolate. Tweedy made the observation that this free candy was probably offered as a way to induce the desire to buy more chocolate once we returned to the candy shop that made up most of Hershey’s Chocolate World. Not going to lie—I almost fell for the trap. But it soon became clear that the prices for chocolate there were even more expensive than prices at normal grocery stores. So if you want to eat Hershey chocolate in Hershey, buy it at a Walmart beforehand.

After that little taste of amusement park rides, I wanted more. We went to go take a look at Hershey Park right across the street, but to my chagrin it was closed that day. It didn’t keep us from walking all the way around the park and seeing what we could. This included some little statues that could be posed with for some good photo ops.

We also managed to find a giant ice arena that we wandered around for a few minutes. Tweedy even found a hockey puck that he held on to as a souvenir. Ultimately we decided there was nothing else to see there, so we got back on the road to get to the next tourist area we had skipped on our first pass through the state—Gettysburg. But first we had to stop at Rita’s. Anyone who has experienced the perfection of Rita’s custard and ice knows that it can’t be passed up, especially while in the state where it was born. There’s no way to describe it, just know that if the concept of a fluffy cloud-like heaven could be translated into a cold food it would be a Rita’s Gelati.

After the taste of heaven, we went to the place where America experienced its taste of hell. When you pull into Gettysburg it’s hard to believe that it was the location of the bloodiest battle to ever take place on U.S. soil. It is such a small, quiet, and quaint little town. But there are quite a lot of tourists, so that does make it a bit more packed.

Our first stop was the museum. It’s remarkable how much is present solely to detail one war that involved two halves of a single country. The museum size-wise is about two thirds the size of the giant war memorial/museum in Indianapolis, while the information contained there (such as written placards or informational films) might actually be greater than what was contained in the Indianapolis War Memorial. Here is just a little taste of what a visitor may find there.

After the tour of the museum we decided to wander out into the fields nearby to take a look at the terrain those involved in the civil war faced there at Gettysburg. All along the roads are monuments representing every unit of cavalry, foot soldiers, cannoneers, etcetera. And most of them look quite exquisite. Most majestic of all was the State of Pennsylvania Monument that has Winged Victory standing atop it and President Lincoln standing at one of the corners. You can take a staircase up to an overlook, though it’s much shorter than the Indianapolis Civil War Memorial. Still—since the surrounding area is rather flat—you can get quite the view.

That night we stayed with Ben, whom we found on couch surfer. Ben lives on a beautiful piece of property that has been in his family for several generations. His experience with the couch surfers before us was a bit negative. Tweedy and I wanted to change that around, so we got his kitchen cleaned up and made him some of our famous beans, we toned down the heat this time so it wasn’t quite as violent on the taste buds. Over dinner Ben shared with us stories of some of his travels, including a bike ride that he had made from there in Pennsylvania all the way across the country to Portland, Oregon. It made me feel like we were cheating by using cars for our travels. Still nothing would ever make me leave my beautiful Ophelia behind and opt for a bike instead (Ophelia is my car, just in case I haven’t let her name slip before). After chatting for a bit we sat down and did a small amount of work on our social media before going to bed.

The next morning we said goodbye to Ben and got back on the road again. We were driving all the way to the north end of Pennsylvania that day to see Penn’s Cave.  Penn’s Cave is one of the few caves in the U.S. that you tour by boat! Not only is it not good for people who have issues with claustrophobia or nyctophobia, but they even found a way to keep people who are afraid of the water at bay. Tweedy and I don’t have issues with any of those fears, which I suppose made us the perfect candidates for that short tour. The cave itself wasn’t all that long, but the tour took a full hour since the boat couldn’t go all that fast, plus the only way out was the same way that you went in. At the end of the cave was a decent sized pond to turn around in though, which sat in the middle of a wildlife refuge. That’s where we saw a giant bull elk, who looked at the boat full of tourists with a judgmental look for disturbing his peace. All in all I’d say Penn’s Cave is definitely worth the twelve dollars it costs for the tour.

That night Tweedy and I drove back across the state to sleep in another Pennsylvania Game Lands (Number 58 to be exact). There were no gun shots to be heard that night or even people to be seen, so we felt safe building up a fire to keep us warm while we made and ate our beans. I went to bed a bit before Tweedy, and then woke up thirty minutes to an hour later to him asking me to step out of the tent. I was very tired and disoriented so I was rather unwilling to get out of the tent. Instead I sat up and unzipped the tent partially to ask him what was going on. Apparently Tweedy had yet another encounter with wildlife. We’re not sure what it was this time (I’d hazard a guess that it was deer), but what we do know is that he saw four sets of green glowing eyes. Thankfully nothing happened and we escaped without any dings and I was able to fall right back to sleep a few minutes later.

The next morning we got up and drove towards Knoebels—a very old-school amusement park that I had celebrated my twenty-first birthday at. I was super excited to go back, but my heart fell when we arrived just to find that the park was closed. So instead of spending money at Knoebels we decided to spend money on a big lunch because we skipped breakfast and had the all-you-can-eat wings at Quaker Steak and Lube. One of my favorite restaurants from my year in the state. We definitely got our money’s worth seeing as both Tweedy and I put away more than thirty wings. That’s over sixty wings total between two guys. 

There was a dance that night in Philly and my dancing clothes were still dirty so I decided that it might be a good idea to stop by the laundromat and Tweedy agreed. Once the clothes were clean we had just enough time to drive down to Philly in order to get to the dance in time. It was easy enough to find the building, but figuring out where the dance was inside took a few minutes. There was a comedy show happening there, which had the entire lobby packed full of people. The top level had a yoga and meditation class, and then we found a door off the landing between these two floors and inside was the dancing!

Philly has been one of my favorite places to dance so far, even though the city itself is not one of my favorite cities (I apologize to all those Philly lovers, it does have some great architecture, I'll give it that, and it is quite possible that I just didn't get a full Philly experience). I met several great dancers, including one by the name of Julia. We had no place to stay that night and needed to pick up Eric in the morning from the airport in Philadelphia, so when Julia offered to let us stay at her place an hour or so away. We jumped at the offer. Halfway there we got a call from Eric saying that he would not be able to make the flight that he had originally planned on, so that meant when we got back to Julia’s we were in no rush to go to bed. We put on some music and danced while we fixed a late-night snack and eventually fell asleep just before the sun came up.

Upon waking up in the early afternoon we came to the realization that we had ended up in a beautiful house near the shore of New Jersey. Once we had all dragged our sleepy bodies out of bed the next day and got some food in our bellies we went to check out the ocean where we all did a little boogie boarding. 

Daylight didn’t last too long (since we had been up so late), and when the night moved in we went out to check out the night life. We ended up in a little joint called Johnny Mac’s House of Spirits. The place was full of fun little signage and little antique toys and books. There was so much to look at that it was hard to stay focused on the conversations. One of the best parts was that with every drink you got a free cheese pizza—not a free slice of pizza, a whole pizza (sure it was still sized for individuals, but it was a whole pie!). It was quite delicious too.

As the night continued to wane we walked out to the shore again and stood by the water before wandering back to the car. We stayed awake almost the entire night since we had to pick up Eric from the airport early the next morning. I fell asleep for a short nap, but then it was time to go and reunite with the third member of our group.