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...

Hey all. So, we are really bad at this whole blog thing, but I promise we'll try to get posts up more often.

Anyway, We've been here over a month now, and things are going well. We have gone out and explored a little in our town and others, and have even had some fun surprises land right on our front steps as well. A few weeks ago we were eating dinner in our apartment and looked outside to see a whole parade of literally hundreds of Corvettes driving by. Then they stopped right in front and the whole town came out to walk around and enjoy the beautiful cars. So that was something unexpected that we were able to enjoy.

Also, we have been going to Harrisburg, PA's capital (and they do call it "P.A." out here), about 1/2 hr from here to explore and find fun things to do. The other weekend we went over and they had a main street that runs along the Susquehanna river closed off and there was a huge fair with tons of really good food and fun games and shows. There was even a whole section dedicated to a chili contest, so we definitely took advantage of the samples that all the booths were handing out.

The vast majority of our time, however, as I bet you can imagine, is spent for me at school, and Kate at work. Kate enjoys her job at a small family owned bakery/sandwich shop where she is a manager of the front part of the store. School is going well for me, and though it is of course very difficult, I have been relieved thus far to find that it isn't quite as bad as I had expected.

I have included some pictures of the car show below, and also of our apartment. So, enjoy!!

How did we end up in Pennsylvania?

Sorry it took so long, but welcome to our blog! Kate and I arrived in Carlisle, PA on Aug 12th and have since gotten pretty much settled. (though are always a million little things that still need to be finalized) Because I can't really expect to be able to write it all, or for you to want to read it if I did, I figured I'd just use this post to put up a bunch of pictures of our move and some things that we've done since we got here:

We started out in the flats and that lasted most of the trip. The first two whole days, and some of the third.

When we finally got to Pennsylvania toward the end of the third day things got a bit more interesting with the farms, forests, rivers, and hills (that they call mountains)

And here is our lovely truck that we spent around 34 hrs in. Kate's family was nice enough to come out with us and bring our car. A BIG thanks to them!

After a few days of unpacking and organizing, we decided to take a break with Kate's family who only had one day left, to go to Gettysburg which is about 1/2hr away from our apartment.

This is a view from Little Round Top where the Union commanders held their position and also had a view of the battle field on the last two days in order to better command their men who stretched over 2 miles away starting from about here and going up out of this picture to the right.

This was the view of General Lee and his men looking east toward the Union Soldiers who were fortified along the little ridge at the end of this field right before it drops off. It is about 4 or 5 hundred yards across or more, and this is the field that the confederates charges across during their last big attempt to break through the union line and became known as "Pickett's Charge"

This is a memorial honoring the soldiers and also the visit of Abraham Lincoln after the battle was over.

After we toured the battle field for a few hours we visited the national cemetery where this was taken

Well, I hope that gives you a general idea of where we are, and our trip to get here. We will try to get some pictures up of our apartment as soon as we can and fill you in more about work and school.