Saturday, September 3, 2022
This morning, just as Jane was getting up, Nancy and John dropped by our motorhome to say goodbye and pick up some cheese they had stored in our refrigerator. Jane made a delicious breakfast from leftovers, cheese and spinach scrambled eggs with fried haddock. We then prepped for departure and drove the vehicles separately to The Waterville Tavern parking lot where we hitched the car to the RV. We only stopped to refuel on the pleasant three-hour trip. En route, Jane made our dinner reservation,
We rolled into the Elizabethtown/Hershey KOA Holiday, bustling with Labor Day Weekend activity, around 2:30 pm. After checking in, we followed the requisite yellow golf cart escort to our site. The site is perfectly level with full hookups including cable, and we have 5G cellular reception. What a difference from our last three days in the wilderness of central PA!
After setting up, Jane and I enjoyed a beer and played some games to wile away the time until our dinner reservation. I watched part of the first quarter of the Georgia-Oregon football game. (All three of my alma maters, GA, FL & NCSU, won today!) Out of our dinette window, we watched fisher-people with rods and reels accumulating at the pond across the road. A catch & release tournament was scheduled to start at 4 pm. We departed for the restaurant in time to drop by the Masonic Village Farm Market and purchased bread and fresh vegetables on our way.
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| Our Greeting at the Campground Office |
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| A Level Site with Amenities |
We arrived at The Mill Restaurant in Hershey a little earlier than our 5:30 reservation and were hungry because we had skipped lunch. Original wood beams and brick walls provided a rustic ambiance to the restored mill. We had an excellent meal including beer, a shared appetizer, entrees and desserts.
Today is our 29th wedding anniversary. Over dinner, we brainstormed grandiose ideas for our upcoming 30th anniversary. We also reminisced about our 26th anniversary. In July 2019, a few weeks after I retired from N.C. State University, we set out on an RV trip to Newfoundland. Unfortunately, the transmission of our Ford Focus was destroyed while we were towing through Massachusetts and we left it to be repaired at the Holyoke Ford dealership while we proceeded on our journey, toadless. The trip was excellent, but six weeks later we passed back through Massachusetts to pick up our toad, coincidentally on our anniversary. However, that joyful occasion was overshadowed by the recent death of Jane’s cousin, Jim. We drove to Buffalo for Jim’s memorial service in separate vehicles in order test out the repaired transmission. So Jane & I spent the day celebrating our 26 years together mostly apart.
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| The Mill Restaurant, Hershey, PA |
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| Our Anniversary Dinner Venue |
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| A Delicious Appetizer of Seared Scallops with Vadouvan Puree and Roasted Asparagus |
After our excellent desserts at The Mill, we perused Chocolate Avenue with its Kisses Streetlights in the car to get a feeling for the layout of Hershey’s Chocolate World before returning to the campground.
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| Hershey Kisses lining Chocolate Avenue |
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| Hershey’s Original Chocolate Factory |
Back at our motorhome, we needed to walk off some of our meal and so strolled through the campground for over a mile. On the downhills, my quadriceps were screaming with pain as a result of the steep descents on Panther Run Trail yesterday. This is a nice campground rated in the middle of the KOA amenities scale (Journey, Holiday, Resort). There are many bathhouses here, a Putt-Putt course, a large rec room, a campground store, several playgrounds, a swimming pool, beach volleyball, cabins, RV sites with patios, tent sites, a fishing pond, etc. The campground is full with vacationing families for the Labor Day weekend and has a celebratory yet peaceful atmosphere. Upon returning to our motorhome after our walk, Jane went to bed. I took advantage of the internet access to post three backlogged blog posts before also turning in for the night.
Happy anniversary. Things are looking up for your Florida Gators now that they have a former Furman QB as head coach. I remember watching him play at Paladin stadium.