Vacation 2015--destination Hershey and History

It would appear that the only updates to this blog come in the form of travel posts. So be it.

This year, we traveled at our older son's request. He loves to read, and one of his favorite book series is the I Survived... series. He recently read I Survived: The Battle of Gettysburg 1863, even suggesting that I should read it too. He had many questions, so I asked if he wanted to visit Gettysburg; it's only 3 hours or so away. He jumped on that one, and we made it his birthday present this year.

So, for day 1. We planned to be flexible on the first day, because we weren't sure if it was going to rain or not. We packed rain boots in anticipation of tromping through Gettysburg in the rain and mud, especially since that was what we faced as we left New Jersey.

My husband is brilliant and got the boys these headphones. Now they can listen to "their" playlist... and we don't have to. Ditto for long road trips; we don't have to listen to their movies and be quiet in the front seat.

But soon into our drive, the weather turned gorgeous and we figured we should go to our other destination, Hershey Park. We expected to be in chilly and gray weather, so we were pretty thrilled when arrived to sunny skies as well as small sized crowds.

Due to the timing of our trip, though, we stopped for lunch in the Hershey area before hitting the park. We chose Top That in Hershey, which was highly reviewed on Yelp.

Lunch was pretty good here. Since I'm posting this a few weeks later, I don't exactly remember what we had, but we all enjoyed our meal and were well fueled for the fun filled day at Hershey Park (our next meal was in the park and regrettably, pretty terrible).

Tram car from the parking lot

Coincidentally, the same size A was for our last trip to Hershey Park.

After spinning too quickly in the teacups, I took a break and met up with Miss Kiss!

They had scooter cars. Just slightly too tall! Not sure in what world I'm too tall for things, but there it is.

We had a great trip. I didn't take too many pictures, but we got some great ones anyway. The boys went on tons of roller coasters--A did the Sooper Dooper Looper, which he was tall enough for in September 2013 but was too afraid to try. Same happened with E this trip; he was tall enough but chickened out at the last moment. Both boys rode the Runaway Train ride and a wooden roller coaster and we had a BLAST on HP's newest roller coaster, called The Laff Track. It was the only long line in which we waited, and it was incredibly worth it. In a car for 4 passengers, you either face forward or backward. A and I rode backward for much of the ride, and it was an amazing thrill!

We stayed at Cornerstone Inn and Suites in Mechanicsburg, PA, which was situated half an hour from Hershey Park and half an hour from Gettysburg. More on that in the next post, but we selected it for the huge benefit of affordability, location, and a separate living room so the boys could sleep and we didn't need to!