Pennsylvania and Proud Lake

The girls and I took a great trip to Pennsylvania last month. My niece Sabrina came along to help out. I really did enjoy it, however, it was the first "family" trip without Brian. He called twice daily to talk to the girls, and he spoke kindly to me each time as well. The girls kept mentioning they wished daddy was there for different things, and that was hard, but overall, it was still great. We started out by leaving at 7 p.m. from Michigan and we drove until we were just outside Pittsburgh. We stayed in a hotel the first night and then drove on to the Jonestown KOA. We stayed put at the campsite that first night, did some swimming, made a fire and smores. In the morning we drove down to Lancaster and went to an Amish house and farm museum. We toured the area and learned about the Amish. Then we went to Dutch Wonderland, which is an amusement park for 12 and under. The next day we drove to the Indian Echo Caverns and took a cave tour. Then we headed to Hershey to go to Chocolate World. While we were there we saw the 3D movie. It was Ella's first and Brianna's first that she could remember. Then we took a "factory" tour to learn how chocolate was made. The kids had us take that 3 times since it was free! We also had a trolley ride through the town and learned the history of Hershey. The next day we went to the ZooAmerica and enjoyed the zoo. Then we headed to Harrisburg and drove around. We also went to their City Island Park which was nice. We played miniature golf and walked around the island. That night we went to visit my Aunt Kim that lives in Hershey and the next day we headed home. We drove to Pittsburgh on the way home thinking we'd visit the zoo or aviary. What a mistake! That is the most awful city to drive in. We ran into so many problems, signs not right, mapquest directions not right etc! We finally found the zoo 20 minutes after they stopped letting people in. So we finally found a McDonald's to eat at. I then found out that the hotels in Pittsburgh were all booked because of a conference for conference organizers of all things! The cheapest hotel available was way too much, so we left Pittsburgh with the decision to NEVER go back there again. We found a hotel with a pool in the same city we had stayed in on the way to the KOA and enjoyed the night. The next day on the way home, we went to the African Wildlife Safari in Port Clinton Ohio. If you've never been there, you should give it a try. We fed all kinds of animals through the car windows and the kids got pony and camel rides too. Ask me someday about the giant cow that got its horn stuck in my car. It was hysterical, even though I was left bruised and the ceiling dented.

The weekend of July 28 I took the girls camping for two nights at the Proud Lake State Park with my sister-in-law Sarah, her son Kyle and her cousin Lori, her daughter Erica and Lori's friend Angela. We had a good time canoing, swimming and hanging out.


Upon return home from our nice trip to Pennsylvania Brian began acting like a complete jerk. He now is ignoring me on his best days and calling me names on the others. Let me just say that this divorce is uglier than it needs to be. He's treating me like I'm the one who broke his heart and exposed him to STD's, when it's the other way around. But I'll leave my complaints about him for another posting.