This past weekend, we went on our first ever family vacation (with all 6 of us). We borrowed a pop-up camper (which we are probably going to buy) and headed out on Thursday morning. Out of Indiana, across Ohio, through Pennsylvania, across Maryland and into West Virginia. All 5 states in one day! We set up camp at the Falling Waters Campsite, made a quick run to Wal Mart for a few supplies we would need for camping (not our last trip to the store while we were 'roughing it'), and settled in for the night.
Friday, we went to Hershey, Pennsylvania and Chocolate World. We enjoyed our tour and learning about how chocolate is made and did some 'market research' for them (ok, so we each ate a Jolly Rancher and told them how we liked it). Then, we bought far too much chocolate (it's REALLY hard to resist when everywhere you look there's chocolate, everything you see refers to chocolate, and the entire building SMELLS like chocolate! Then, we let each of the kids pick out something from the gift stores .
After Hershey, we headed out for Shanksville, PA, the site of the crash of Flight 93 on 9/11. The memorial has grown quite a bit since Don and I visited it a few years ago. DJ and Jr weren't exactly excited about this visit, who can blame them...it's not something that a 5 or 7 year old would really understand. Ariel's bestest friend, Jessica Stirk (and her mom), met us there so that Ariel could spend the weekend with Jessica (they moved in June and the 2 of them have missed each other terribly). The rest of us went back to camp for the night.
Saturday we headed out for Washington D.C. A stop for umbrellas, as the forecast called for rain, and we were off and driving (again!). We walked for about 3 hours before the rain became just too much to deal with even with umbrellas. Poor Jr's little legs were totally tired out and just couldn't take any more, and we headed back to the van to drive back to camp. The rain finally let up and the kids played outside for a few hours (getting absolutely filthy...but, hey, that's camping!). Dinner at the campfire and a movie before bed (not much else to do when it gets dark so early).
Sunday we drove to Jessica's church building to pick up Ariel. Then, a LONG drive home. It rained like crazy at times, but we made it home around 9:30-ish.
Our vacation went really well, and Don and I enjoyed it more than I think we thought we would. I'll be blogging about the trip in the days to come, and including pictures as well.
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