I'm back! Mini-vacation, Part 1

I'm back from my 4 day weekend, struggling to settle back into a life of routine.

Our mini-vacation was good overall! I'm going to summarize it over the next two posts (maybe three), complete with lots of pictures! The weather was ok, not great for two of the four days, and sadly one of the four days was spent in the car, on the turnpike.

Thursday - Day 1 - was earmarked for a visit to Hershey Park. We bought advance discount tickets at a Giant grocery store on our way. The skies were gray but we had seen on weather.com that morning that there were only supposed to be "scattered thunderstorms" throughout the day, and otherwise partly cloudy. We were ok with that, which is why we bought the advance tickets (we were committed to going after that!)

Weather.com - however - is NOT reliable. Shortly after we got our tickets it started raining. And by raining I mean POURING. Better yet? It rained for the entire three hour drive to Hershey!! We didn't know what to do at that point - should we go since we already had the tickets but risk having a wet and miserable day? Or should we just call it off and plan to return the next day, with hopes that the weather would be nicer?

Ultimately, we decided to do it over a lunch at Wendy's during which time we continued to watch it rain. No decision had been made, but I was leaning towards just sucking it up and staying in Hershey. Returning on Friday would mean an hour and a half drive to D's dads, and then another hour and a half each way to get to Hershey and back the next day. That means an additional 4 and a half hours would be spent on the road, on a trip that already consisted of WAAAAY too much driving.

So we stayed. We got in the car (still raining) and drove around for a while. D called his brother, who went on weather.com again (are there any better options for reliable weather sites online? If so, please enlighten me. Weather.com does NOT have my trust.) Just a mere four hours later, the forecast had changed drastically. Now they were saying that there was a zero percent chance of rain from about 12:40 until at least 6 p.m., when it might start storming again. We could see some blue skies off in the distance so we took the plunge and went to the park.

At least this time, weather.com was right. It didn't rain at all for most of the day. We got into the park around 1 p.m. and were SHOCKED at how many people were there given the inclement weather. Nonetheless, the lines for rides weren't too long and we spent most of the day getting on some of the larger coasters. We decided to skip the water park altogether - it looked like fun, but neither of us were really interested in getting wet.

Around 7 p.m. we decided to go on one of the larger coasters for a second time. The sky was starting to get dark but we didn't hear any thunder or see any lightning. However, they were closing all of the roller coasters because their weather systems had detected lightning. We were ok with leaving at that point, so we followed the mass exodus to the parking lot (seriously, it was a mass exodus. EVERYONE was leaving.)

On our way out, we purchased a new ornament for our traveling Christmas tree collection. Previously, we used to purchase shot glasses to collect from each place that we visited. However, after we collected about 30 shot glasses, we remembered that we don't do shots. Oh yeah.

So, we're collecting ornaments now and we officially have our second ornament (the first being from Cape May.)

My second update is the one that will involve lots of pictures! Up next: Part 2, The Cabin.