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.