Memorial Day Camping / Visit From Family

Over Memorial Day weekend Kate and I went camping at the Blue Knob State Park.




Kate played cards while she waited patiently for me to get a fire going with the damp wood collected from around the camp site.

The fire was pretty pathetic the first night because all the wood was wet around us from a storm the night before, so I learned my lesson and went and bought some dry wood for the second night . . .

. . . and we made S'mores . . .


I had forgotten how good they are!


The Blue Knob state park is basically a small mountain, and the state leases part of the north face off to a ski resort. Kate and I happened upon it while exploring and hiked around a bit. It was pretty retro though, it reminded me of the resorts in the older Warren Miller movies.


The resort was at the top of the mountain, and when you skied down, no matter which direction, all the lifts brought you right back to the same spot.



We took a hike around the mountain, and though it may not look like it, this section here was actually pretty steep. And due to our poor planning, it was our last stretch of the hike and by that time it was late in the morning and starting to get pretty hot and humid. Ugh.


We took several breaks on the way up, and during one of them we found this little guy. He was only about twice as big as my thumbnail at the most.


During the hot afternoon we took a drive, to be able to be in the air conditioning of the car, and went to find some covered bridges we had seen signs for on the way to the state park.


This last weekend my cousin Charlie and his fiance, Lizzie, came to visit us for a couple days. We headed down to south-eastern PA into Amish country.

The center of all the action was a little town by the name of Intercourse (no pun intended!). So we shamelessly flipped a U and went back to take a picture by the sign before going to the Amish market in town.


There were great markets will all sorts of great canned preserves, handmade goods, etc.

Fall in Pennsylvania

There are so MANY trees here in P.A. we could hardly wait to see the leaves turn colors in the fall. "P.A." is what the locals call their state! This is a picture of the so-called "mountains", boy do I miss real mountains...

However, we found that the trees did not seem much different from Utah during the fall. In fact, I hate to say it but I think there is more of a variety of colors in Utah.
(This is not to say this is the best picture of P.A. trees...)

It is hard to tell but this is a picture of a bunny. They are all over the place! This one we captured on film up on the main campus of Penn State. We also see them around town! Love the wildlife here!!

Halloween (am I late?)

Well better late than never right?
We went to a murder mystery party dressed like "Men in Black" however our characters at the party were married to different people...pretty funny. Ben turned out to be involved the mystery (he was not the murderer however).

Pumpkin Carving Time!

Turns out Ben is a pro at pumpkin carving! He did the witch and the running Homestar Runner. It was good to brush up on our carving skills...