The Great Adventure - Day 13 - August 17, 2009

Morning comes real early when you don't get to bed before 1am. And a half-toasted bagel and a box of Cheerios from the hotel continental breakfast bar don't really do much to address that, though the free refills of coffee do take a stab at it. Stacy grabbed another half hour sack time while I took the kids to the lobby and plied them with all things continental; then we regrouped and made our way back to the van Bastelaars. Jeff and Liz have a "standard tour" on which they take all their out-of-towners when they visit Harrisburg. The first stop on the tour is the Pennsylvania state house - They wondered if we would be interested; we thought it a capitol idea. (HA HA!)

Lots of naked marble people doing all those progressive things
that naked marble statues do in government buildings.

Jeff and I took my rented car and my fully-financed children while Stacy road with Liz and the three mini vBs in their minivan. The capitol is a pretty impressive structure. Lots of arches and rotundas; efficient, suited people briskly clicking their way through the building; statues scattered hither and yon. L was starting to show signed of travel fatigue and her whining reverberated uncomfortably from all the polished marble walls and floors. A capitol tour guide had asked us if we wanted to join a free building tour she was about to give, but our kids were all pretty squirmy so we declined. She seemed relieved, like she wasn't all that up on the idea of hauling a group with five squirrely tykes around. Instead we meandered about on our own. We wandered up to the 4th floor which held all the balcony entrances for the legislative chambers and proceeded to poke around. Unfortuantely we ended up unintentionally shadowing the route on which the tour guide was leading the only two other people who had agreed to a tour, and I got the distinct impression that she felt like we were trying to cheat her -- not signing up for an official tour, but still trying to get one on the sly. I wanted to grumble something like "I pay your salary, lady! Get over it," but remembered that I actually don't, so I let it slide. Instead I concentrated on keeping L from destroying anything too particularly valuable as her mood continued to deteriorate, dragging mine down with it. (I can't imagine why the tour guide wasn't thrilled to see us...) Eventually a little trip to the men's room with L brought about a considerable attitude adjustment that served us well the rest of our state house visit.

Pennsylvania Senate

Pennsylvania House of Representatives

More progressively naked people.

After the state house we took a drive around Harrisburg and along the Susquehanna River, eventually winding our way back to the van Bastelaar's for sandwiches and chips. I took Stacy and the kids back to our hotel for naps, then Jeff and I set out to find our own take on refreshment: the Troegs Brewery - a pretty decent microbrewery not too far across town. (We enthusiastically recommend their sampler platter.) Our "rest break" took us right up to the appointed time we were all to regroup at our hotel, children all bright-eyed, for the next in the day's activities.

The second stop on the official van Bastelaar Harrisburg spree actually takes you out of Harrisburg, about 15 miles east, to Hershey, PA -- home of the all-American Hershey chocolate bar. The Hershey folks have an entire amusement park in homage to the gifts of the cocoa bean, but we were not after wild thrills and spills, however chocolate-infused they might be. Instead we set our sights on tamer and more affordable fare: the free Hershey Chocolate World tour. A ten/fifteen minute Disneyland-esque ride through fields of happy mechanical cows singing jauntily about the wonders of chocolate - not just any chocolate, of course, but the finest quality Hershey^® brand product. These marketing moo-ers and shakers walked us all the way through the life cycle of our friend the cocoa bean, never failing to highlight their own crucial contributions to the chocolaty enterprise. All the while the heady chocolate aroma built and mounted like the soundtrack (nose track?) of an overly dramatic chick-flick. The tour, as expected, dumped us into a massive candy store, and they were crafty enough to pass out a couple of Hershey Kisses to each of us to bring the steadily mounting chocolate cravings to a full crescendo.

As hokey as it was, being a glorified advertisement and all, it was nevertheless a lot of fun, and I especially appreciated the vB's ability to quickly, even surgically, maneuver three small children on a direct bee-line through the candy den of temptation and iniquity, right through the exit doors and into the parking lot!

We neglected to bring our camera with us on this particular outing, but fortunately the van Bastelaars make this trip a lot, so it was easy enough to acquire a dramatic re-enactment, (courtesy of the Wimberly family from Texas).

The van Bastelaars and our stunt doubles.

A great dinner by Liz (chicken in lemon tarragon sauce!) wrapped up an equally great day. We retired early in prep for the morrow's follow-up plans: Gettysburg National Park.