Hershey what?!

Our next to last day in the Finger Lakes, my mom called to tell me that their hot water heater had sprung a leak and flooded the basement.  This was going to mean all kinds of work in the area where Jeff and I are supposed to sleep.  Our first thought was to see if we could stay in the Finger Lakes longer, but our rental house had already been booked for the following week.  Then we thought, is there a place in Pennsylvania where we can stop that's about halfway home?  The obvious answer was Hershey Park.  It would mean doing laundry, so that we didn't run out of clothes, but it sounded like fun.

I checked online and found a pretty good deal, but we decided not to tell the kids and make it a surprise instead.  I don't generally like surprises, but this one just felt too easy to pass up.  Vivian was suitibly surprised and asked to be pinched, since it all felt surreal to her.

Last summer's plan of action had worked well, so we went for a repeat this summer.  We stayed at Hershey Lodge and spent the afternoon at their indoor water park.

Followed by a nice dinner in one of the hotel restaurants.

Jeff and Elena said they were tired, so Viv and I left them at the hotel and went just the two of us for the evening preview.  Turns out Elena was a big faker, and ended up having a dance party instead of going to sleep.

It didn't really matter though, because Viv and I had a fabulous time together.

I convinced her to try her first upside down roller coaster, the Super Dooper Looper.  It only has one loop, and it's really fun.  She was scared at first, but it turned out that she LOVED it.  We went on it three times in a row.  The last time, we just stayed on, since there was no one in line for our seats.

Like I said, evening hours are the best.  Eventually though, we were exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel.  We had gotten a package where kids eat for free, so the next morning we checked out our breakfast options.  We found a buffet that had everything we wanted and settled in.  Elena went full chocolate, with both her milk and her muffin.  I had to force her to eat some fruit, yogurt and eggs.

Viv had a slightly more civilized breakfast of bacon, pancakes and regular milk.

Jeff and I both got eggs sunny side up, and Elena asked me to use my bacon to make a happy face.  With the placement of the eggs though, it ended up looking a bit alien.

Jeff did me one better and made an alien Mickey Mouse with his sausages.

Then there was the horrific hot sauce incident.

Needless to say, we had a fun breakfast.  We may have over sugared Elena though, since she had a complete meltdown later in the day.  After breakfast, we headed out to the shuttle.  We had established the day before that Elena JUST qualifies for Reese's and Vivian is at the very top of Twizzler, not that it really impacts their ride choices.

We got to the park, and the girls and I started with the Scrambler.

Elena really wanted to do the little ski lift type ride, and she wanted to be in the Reese's one to celebrate her new status.

Jeff and Viv ended up in Hershey's.

Viv really wanted to go on her upside down roller coaster again, but Jeff was roller coastered out from our last trip to Hershey, so I went with her again, while he did some of the tamer rides with Elena.

Daddy the softy also bought her cotton candy, adding to her sugar intake for the morning.

We all met up again at the merry go round.

While they were happily spinning around, an epic rainstorm started.  By the time they got off it was pouring, and we only had one umbrella which Elena demanded for herself.  We made a run for the nearest shop, because I told Jeff Elena was losing it.  He bought Hershey ponchos for the girls which I thought were quite cute and effective.  Elena didn't think so.

They're doing construction to enlarge the park, so it's quite a long walk to the shuttle pick up area which is not covered, so I figured our best bet was to go to the chocolate factory tour ride which is inside.  Even that was a walk of a few minutes, and Elena SCREAMED the whole time.  Jeff and Vivian eventually walked ahead and pretended not to know her as she shrieked about how much she HATED the poncho.  It was an over the top, sugar fueled fit.  Luckily, it was outdoors in the rain, so no one had to suffer, and her shrieking didn't impede her walking, so she kept moving.  She calmed down when we got inside and took the poncho off, but she was still breathing heavily for several minutes afterwards.

Of course, in typical, easily distracted Elena fashion, she decided she loved the factory tour and it was her favorite part of the whole day.

It helped that they gave her a little chocolate bar at the end.  I know.  More sugar.  To keep things equitable, I let Vivi buy a one pound pack of two Reese's peanut butter cups.  I didn't get a picture before she cut into them, but they are delicious.

When we were done, the rain had stopped, so we took the shuttle back to the hotel, collected our bags, grabbed a quick Taco Bell lunch and got on the road back to Virginia.  It took very little time for Elena to completely crash out.

Despite a couple bumps, Jeff and I decided that the Hershey surprise had been a success.

Happy Birthday Jeff!

My main birthday present to Jeff was time at the Finger Lakes, and he got to wake up and enjoy that on his birthday.

His next present was a super birthday breakfast of bacon and eggs (Mom helped ;-).

The girls had made him really cute cards.

Elena's card says, I love your jokes.  She thinks Daddy is the funniest guy around.  Vivian gave him props for his singing skills.  He also got a special card from his dad, a classic baseball card.

I got him a shirt to show off his Finger Lakes pride.

Unfortunately, Mom and Dad had to leave after breakfast, so we hugged them goodbye, and then got on with the birthday.  Step one was the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge which is at the northern end of Lake Cayuga.  

It was free, which was very nice, and it had a small but excellent education center, with a ranger there who was happy to teach us all about the reserve.  Our first question was why on earth it was called Montezuma.  She said that the original land had been a personal estate.  The owner had lived in Mexico, and the swampy terrain reminded him of it, so he named it Montezuma.  When he donated the land and it became a reserve, the name stuck.  While Jeff and I found that very interesting, the girls were more into the hands on displays.

OCD Elena even completed the entire print matching activity.

After the education center, we did the one mile walking trail.

There was periodic fussing, but generally speaking, the girls were good.  The final part was a three mile drive through to the other side of the reserve.  We drove very slowly and kept our eyes peeled for birds.  We spotted quite a few.  One of our first sightings was a bald eagle from what Jeff estimated to be about 500 meters.  We used major zoom to get a picture.

We also saw lots of heron and geese.

Plus some cute water birds.

There were also beautiful red winged blackbirds that showed off their colors in flight, but we couldn't get a good picture of one.  The girls had a bingo game to play as we drove through.  It was a lot of fun.

Our next stop was a vineyard called Americana.  It had been recommended on a website as kid friendly, and it had a cafe, so we were hoping for some kid friendly options, but the most important part was that they had beer as well as wine, and Jeff wanted beer for his birthday.  The winery itself was very cute.

And they had a covered, open air cafe section, which lent an interesting shading to our photos, but Jeff got his beer, and I got my wine.

We were hoping for some dogs for the girls to play with, since that was their main source of entertainment at these places, but there were none out and about, so we sent the kids to run the grounds.

The food was pretty good, and we bought some fudge to take home.  The most important part of the birthday, was being home to watch sunset on the patios.  We started the sunset with leftovers for dinner.

The girls opted to stay inside and play war.

There were clouds, but it made for a beautiful show.

We finished on the upper deck with some of our local wine.

It was a great way to the end the day of Jeff's birthday, but it wasn't an end to the celebrations.  We hadn't been out on the lake yet, and the only day I could book a boat for was the day after Jeff's birthday, so we counted it as more birthday presents for him.  There was a local man with a pontoon boat who gave history tours, wine tours, and sunset tours.  We opted for the history tour, which left from the Aurora Inn dock at 11am.  We knew our day was going to be great when it started with a duckling sighting off the porch.

We had gone past the Inn several times, but we had never gone into it.  It is beautifully decorated, and the land behind it is a slope of green grass leading to the lake.  It is beautiful.

We were early, so we explored a bit and got pictures of the girls.

There was another group of two couples on the boat with us.  Two of them were originally from the area, so the history part of the cruise was very interesting.  Plus, it was just fun to be out on the water.

When we told our guide we were staying along the lake, he sailed over to our rental house and took a picture of us with it.

It was a great way to spend a couple hours.  Afterwards, we went back to the Fargo for lunch.  This time, we sat outside.

It started raining shortly after we got home, and since we were all tired from spending the first half of our day out of doors, we decided there was nothing wrong with a quiet, rainy afternoon.  We even watched an episode of Our Planet that had narwhals in it, and decided we need to go up to Canada at some point to see them.  The rain came down quite hard.

The sun came out to sparkle for a bit.

But, in the end, sunset was mostly overcast.

I suppose it's easier to leave a place when the weather isn't being good, but we love the Finger Lakes, so it's always hard to leave, no matter what.