Road trip of a lifetime...

This summer after Lisa and I returned home from YW camp our family spent two weeks traveling up north through Tennessee, Viriginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and finally New York State where we spent time visiting some of the most amazing places in history.

We started out in Hershey, PA where we toured the Hershey Chocolate factory! What a fun way to start our vacation! You could just smell the chocolate as soon as you entered the city of Hershey! We rolled down our windows and enjoyed the sweet smells! Even the light posts on main street were chocolate hershey kisses!

Next we drove up to Palmyra, NY where we toured all of the original church history sites including Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove.

Next we found ourselves in Ontario, Canada and Buffalo, NY touring Niagara Falls up close and personal! We even have the rain ponchos and slip on shoes to prove it!

New York City was next on our list of things to do and after we booked ourselves into a hotel on the New Jersey coast we spent the next two days figuring out the train and subway system well enough to get ourselves to Times Square, Rockefeller center, the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Chinatown, Little Italy, and K-Town (also known as Korea town).

Driving back to Philadelphia we found ourselves back where we started in a small town near Hershey, PA where we picked up a generator we had bought off of ebay. Its actually what started this whole trip in the first place and may have very well been one of our favorite stops along the way.

What turned into a quick trip into Womelsdorf, PA to pick up our generator turned into half a day of fun on a Dutch Pennsylvania farm with a wonderful family who had lived on the farm for generations. Raising each of their children to work on the farm and learn the values of the culture they lived.

Our kids fed 15 year old catfish that have grown to be as big as Jessica, saw snapping turtles, chased jumping frogs along the pond, rollerbladed through the family's country store, watched a Paul Revere filmstrip from the tops of the rafters in an old barn house and found a new friend in the family's youngest son, Kevin.

We were so impressed with the Brubaker's family values, hard work ethic, and sweet honest nature. We will never forget meeting the Brubaker's. What wonderful friends they have become!

Several hours into the night we found ourselves in High Point, North Carolina - or as most people know it - the "Furniture Captial of the World". We spent two days here checking out the furniture outlets and trying to find some furniture for our house. About a year ago we made our first trip to High Point and furnished our new home with amazing bargains on furniture that we had seen in Architectual digest and only dreamed about owning one day.

This trip proved to be a bit more difficult as we were looking for more specific pieces rather than whole house ensembles, but after a few hours we were successful and found several pieces to bring home with us. If we didn't have the original price tags to show the markdown, you would never believe the deals we got! I guarantee it!