June 25: King of Prussia, PA-Lancaster, OH

It was time to check out from our home away from home and move on to the next stop.  After waking up (some of us needed some convincing) and eating our last hotel breakfast (that everyone was tired of eating) we hit the road.

Benjamin had trouble sleeping ON
the mat.

The hotel lobby where we ate breakfast every morning we
were in Philadelphia.  

After our big adventures, everyone was actually ready to drive for another day.  We took what we thought would be a slight detour to go to Hershey, PA.  It ended up being farther off the turnpike and involved lots more country roads than expected, but we finally found it.

One of the best things in Hershey is the street signs.  I would
move here just to live on Cocoa Ave.

Hershey's Chocolate World!

So many chocolate obsessed
tourists!  We were kind of
shocked at how busy it was.

We decided that we didn't want to spend all day (and a ton of money) on various "chocolate experiences", so opted for the free ride that talks about how Hershey's products are made.  

In the tour car.

Our tour was narrated by singing cows.  The kids were singing
"Hershey's Milk Chocolate" for hours afterwards.

The tour ended with a free chocolate, so everyone was happy as we headed out.  We didn't buy anything in the (super expensive) gift store, even though we were tempted by all the goodies.  

We hadn't stopped for lunch before our tour, and after smelling chocolate for an hour, we were all starving.  We found a little park to have lunch before continuing on down the road.

The drive through Western Pennsylvania was gorgeous.  We really enjoyed the mountains and trees, since we're short of both in Texas.  Especially exciting were the few mountains that we drove THROUGH rather than up and over.

Really cool set of bridges.

Going through the mountain.

Mountains!  Trees!

Going through another mountain.

One really long tunnel.

The weather slowed us down quite a bit; we kept driving in and out of rain. Sometimes it was so heavy that we couldn't see the car in front of us.  But we finally made it to West Virginia, where we stopped for dinner before making the final trek into Lancaster.  

Finally to Ohio!

It was after 9 when our exhausted crew pulled in to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  The kids got a second wind when they saw their grandparents, but all of us were happy to finally fall into bed.