We conclude our southern expedition with a stop to explore chocolate & ice cream.

April has just arrived, and we are making our last stop in Pennsylvania, east of Harrisburg, in a small town in Lancaster County called Manheim. We have chosen to stop here in PA to visit with my brother & sister-in-law, Paul & Jen. They have lived in a couple of different states, changing postal zip codes just about every 4 years or so. Last year, our tour through the Industrial Midwest was supposed to see us visit together in St. Louis, MO. We made campsite reservations just outside of St. Louis, in a town called St. Charles, along the Missouri River. Unfortunately, our planned visit with Paul & Jen was not to be, as Paul took advantage of another transfer position, moving east, and ending up here, east of Harrisburg, PA, in a town not too far from the campground in Manheim. More importantly, Paul and Jen seemed to have moved to a location affording easy repeated visits, well within striking distance and a day’s drive from Massachusetts. Which means we can stop someplace nearby on either our way out of New England or our way back. 

While we’re talking about routes, I figure now is a good time to start talking about our next trip, leaving in early June. We are so excited, and much of the planning is already in place for an ambitious 6,000-mile tour of the Northern Rockies. We are planning for another 24-stop tour, this time of the northern US states, which formally starts where last summer’s western trip ended - in Wabasha, Minnesota. From Wabasha we will start moving west, through N. Dakota, then turning south in Montana, through Wyoming and Utah, before eventually turning back east through Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Ohio, and then again in Manheim, PA.  Another wonderful swath of the northern United States, visiting many states for the first time, and concluding with a visit with my family in PA. (See how we come full circle back to Manheim, PA? Funny how that happens.) We are really looking forward to the trip and will be providing additional details in an upcoming blog post.  

We had a great time visiting this region of PA. Not only was it wonderful visiting with my brother, but we got to experience the area in a different way than we had years ago when the kids were little. As a family with young children, we had previously taken a vacation to Hershey Park, along with extended family and cousins. Obviously, that visit was solely focused on the activities for children, centering on Hershey Park. Not this time! Hershey Park was just a bunch of buildings we drove by when going to visit other locations. Hershey Park was not open for the season, so the town of Hershey was much less crowded. What we did really enjoy in Hershey was the story about the man, Milton S. Hershey, who took a small, unincorporated village previously known as Derry Church, and made it into a destination location and the chocolate capital of the United States. What a story!  And the Hershey Story Museum was a great attraction for education on all things Hershey. Lots of information on how Hershey Chocolate came to be, the failures and the successes. The history and heritage of the man himself, and the great success of his legacy and philanthropy. But most importantly, it’s about the “chocolate”.  Add 5 pounds here please. 

Would you believe we found a fantastic transportation museum in Hershey? It's called the AACA Museum, and it showcases an amazing collection of buses, motorcycles, vintage bicycles, and, at the time of our visit, Muscle Cars of the Past and Present. We started our tour of the museum with the all-English Austin-Healey collection, which contained some fantastic examples of the British roadster of the 50’s and 60’s.  Apparently, Austin-Healey has a Sport & Touring Club here in the states, and the AACA Museum organized an extraordinary collection of cars which we were lucky enough to see. 

Austin-Healey Collection

1968 Plymouth Road Runner 383 cu. in. V8 engine

David Cammack collection exhibit with Tucker 48

The museum is also home to the Tucker ‘48s and the Cammack Tucker Collection, the most extensive collection of Tucker automobiles in the world. The gallery, named for Tucker historian and collector David Cammack, displays an interactive exhibit chronicling Preston Tucker’s vision, determination, history, and struggles to build the “Car of Tomorrow.” There were only 51 cars ever built and this museum has three of them. Through his Chicago-based start-up, Tucker set out to revolutionize the automobile industry. He designed innovative automobiles, unmatched by other offerings on the post-war American market. And if not for the collector David Cammack, the Tucker vehicles, the Tucker factory test chassis, and engine prototypes, would have been lost for all time. Instead, the entire fascinating story of the Tucker automobile is forever preserved. There was even a movie made about Preston Tucker called “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” starring Jeff Bridges.

No matter how hard I try, I just keep coming back to the topic of food. This time the sweet treat is ice cream. Not just any kind of ice cream, but the Turkey Hill variety. Turkey Hill ice cream and dairy products are from Lancaster County, PA, and in celebration of this family-owned dairy and ice cream business, one can take part in the immersive “Turkey Hill Experience”.  A place where all things sweet and creamy are on display for unlimited tasting (Can you say “all you can eat” ice-cream?) Turkey Hill was started by the Fry Brothers who purchased their father's dairy barn and added a dairy delivery service. Soon they were delivering milk and ice cream in trucks across the county. At its core, Turkey Hill was a dairy delivery service run out of a dairy barn that, in later years, turned into an ice cream business. Interestingly, the Turkey Hill name was given to the hill in the river valley by the native Susquehannock Indians and was within sight of the Fry brothers' dairy barn. It may be the brain freeze talking, but we think Turkey Hill ice cream is pretty darn good ice cream!    

This is the last stop of our “Fly South for the Winter” trip.  Manheim, PA was a short stop, lasting only a handful of days, but very eventful, with lots to do and see. The weather was not our friend on this visit, which is too bad because there are a lot of hiking and nature trails in this part of Lancaster and Dauphin Counties. We were hoping to get a hike in, but the weather was just too wet and rainy. But no worries, we’ll be back.

From here we head home. Trip concluded. Hard to believe we started on October 25^th of 2023, and we are finally returning on April 7^th of 2024. Here are some of the statistics. There were 25 stops of at least 2 nights or more. We visited 8 states, 4 of which we had never visited before.  Neil the Northport, aka “our home on wheels”, traveled over 4,600 miles. We had a blast. Thanks for following along as we tell…. the Rest of the Story.

Following the Shenandoah Valley north & visiting Roanoke, Lexington, and Winchester, VA

Based on the fact that I have missed a month of blog posts, the following post comes with a disclaimer:

                        “We are back home in Massachusetts and have been for a month.

   The accounts and descriptions you are currently reading are

   from our travel journal and photos.”

We are traveling in a northeasterly direction as we follow the Shenandoah Valley on the Virginia side of the West Virginia state line. The Shenandoah Valley is such an interesting geographical land mass residing between two mountainous regions, that of the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east. Our trip back to New England found us stopping in Natural Bridge, VA, near Roanoke in the south, and then again in Winchester, VA in the north at the busy state intersection of Virginia, West Virginia & Maryland. These two stops in Virginia were of shorter duration but really allowed us to enjoy and explore the Valley. 

Also very interesting was the slow progression of blooming trees and flowers we found on our travels north. We really started to notice the blooming Pear trees with their bright white petals and the Redbud trees flashing those pink and white flowering buds in Pigeon Forge, TN.  We seemed to be following the seasonal progression of these flowering plants north for just about three weeks. Each new location we visited seemed to be just starting to bloom, with hints of green, pink, and yellow, but we were never around long enough to witness full bloom.

In Natural Bridge, VA we, of course, had to go to Natural Bridge State Park and walk the ¾ mile Cedar Creek Trail that leads under the most fantastic naturally occurring arch bridge in the world and on up to Lace Falls. Natural Bridge is a geological formation comprising a 215-foot-high natural arch with a span of 90 feet. It is situated within a gorge carved from the surrounding mountainous limestone terrain by Cedar Creek. Lots of picture taking moments were involved, and they all looked something like this picture of Judy standing under the bridge.  We got to the park early, and it was still quite chilly, which meant the trail and the park had fewer people. Then, in the afternoon, the bright sunshine and warmer weather brought people to the park in droves. Thankfully, we were on our way out to explore other trails in the park. We settled on a 4-mile hike along the Blue Ridge Trail, and scarcely encountered a soul.  All told, we walked almost 6 miles, and our legs were most definitely tired. 

Natural Bridge

Salt Peter Cave, Natural Bridge

The nice part about towing Neil the Northpoint (our camper) behind a truck and un-hitching at a campsite, is our ability to explore surrounding cities and towns.  A perfect example was our visit to Roanoke, VA, some 45 miles south of our campsite. Roanoke is a bustling city, and we started our exploration at the Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center in preparation for our tour of the city. To fully explore the city, Judy found online, and we signed up for, the Roanoke Downtown Food and Culture tour. Terri, our guide, and food connoisseur for the morning, provided a wonderfully colorful history of Roanoke, VA, which included information on the food & restaurant influences in the downtown area. This was as much a historical tour as a food tour. We heard about the history of many of Roanoke 's landmarks and learned how important the railroads were to Roanoke's development. Our tour ended atop the "Center in the Square" building with great views of the city.

Atop Market Square - view of Roanoke

Traveling 12 miles north of Natural Bridge, found us wandering through historic Lexington, VA.  After stopping in at the Lexington Visitor Center, we commenced our self-guided walking tour of the historic downtown area. The first thing to know about historic downtown Lexington was that in 1851 the town underwent a process of lowering the streets in order to provide for more efficient travel, as much of the town was built on extremely steep hills. Because of this, many buildings have an additional “full basement” that did not exist before 1851. It took nearly 12 years to complete the immense, pre-Civil War public works project. There is so much history in Lexington, I’ll just throw out a handful of places we visited on our walking tour:

• Colonel Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson’s home whilst he was an instructor at the Virginia Military Academy. 

• University Chapel of Washington and Lee University is a National Historic Landmark. It was constructed during 1867–68 at the request of Robert E. Lee, who was President of the school, and after whom the University is, in part, named. In the basement is a crypt (added after Lee's burial), which contains the remains of much of Lee's direct family, and outside lies the remains of Traveller, Lee’s favorite horse. 

• We walked through the campus and parade ground of the Virginia Military Academy which was founded in 1839.  A magnificent campus for one of the smallest of all the military academies in the US.  

• Concluding our tour at Memorial Hall of the Virginia Military Institute, which housed Virginia Military Institute Museum established in 1843, and considered to be the very first public museum in the state of Virginia.

Now you must be saying to yourself, “how does he (Steven) know so much about the Shenandoah Valley?  Because in Winchester, VA there is the formidable Shenandoah Valley Museum and Gardens. The Museum was a hotbed of activity when we first arrived, as there was an orchid convention and sale going on in one of the function rooms in the south wing.  Unfortunately, the magnificent Glenn Burnie House & Gardens were not open yet, as we had arrived at the Museum a week too early. Judy and I stopped in to look at the orchids before climbing the stairs to walk through the entire second floor Museum which is devoted to the Shenandoah Valley. Starting with the topography and environment, the Museum traces the history of the Valley from the indigenous tribes who first settled the Valley, to the European settlers, and through to the Revolutionary and Civil War period. There is a lot of great insight into the economics of living in the breadbasket of southern confederacy, to have it all destroyed by the Union armies and leaving such devastation that it took decades to recover. The Museum, The Glenn Burnie Estate, and the trails, all sit on a 90-acre parcel just outside Winchester, and Judy and I spent the entire afternoon either in the Museum or walking the trails throughout the park. 

Artistic bench called Daylilly Slumber @ Museum of Shenendoah Valley

And the town of Winchester, VA is no slouch when it comes to Civil War history. No, sir, this little town was the center of no fewer than three major battles during the Civil War, four other battles in the surrounding vicinity, and changed hands more than 70 times. In 1862, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson won the first battle of Winchester, securing the Shenandoah Valley for the south. This started a fierce back-and-forth between the North and South for the area concluding in September of 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant tasked Union General Philip Sheridan with securing Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley once and for all for the North. There is a fascinating museum called the Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum located in a pedestrian park in Old Town Winchester that oozes Civil War information and artifacts, with a couple of very lively and informative museum curators.

The best part of our visit to Winchester, VA was getting to see Judy’s sister, Pam’s, family. Yes, after 2 months on the road, we were finally close enough for family to come visit us in the RV.   We just LOVE this picture and had to include it in our blog post.

Pam, Scott, Noah, Jen, and Chase

Alas, were just about home with only one more stop between Winchester, VA, and Massachusetts. The days are getting longer, and we are now eating meals outside the camper in the daylight, if the weather cooperates. We still have to run the furnace at night to keep the camper warm, but the season is definitely transitioning, and we just keep following spring flower blooms north. The next, and last, stop is in central Pennsylvania, a small town called Manheim, PA. One of the border towns to Hershey and Lebanon, PA, and which also happens to be the place where my brother Paul and sister-in-law Jen now live. You may remember them from an earlier blog post (“A tour of the Industrial Mid-West. Not the most romantic starting point. Dated 7/1/2023) when we had planned on visiting them in St. Louis, Missouri, until they moved to Pennsylvania a couple of months before our intended visit with the RV in tow. Not this time!  Let’s see what fun we can have in the chocolate capital of Pennsylvania as we tell…. the Rest of the Story