Family Visit

Two weekends ago, I was very happy to welcome my dad and sister to Danville, PA.  They arrived late Thursday night after flying directly from Denver to the Harrisburg airport.  We'd been experiencing a heat wave that whole week prior, and I was concerned that there wouldn't be enough AC in the house to keep us all from melting (or choking on the humid air).  Luckily, the heat wave broke on Friday and we were able to enjoy outdoor activities without too much discomfort.

On Friday, we went to Rickett's Glenn for a hike touring the famous waterfalls.  Rickett's Glenn, as I may have mentioned before, is a recreational state park complete with lake, cabins, camping grounds and hiking trails.  The park is 13,050 acres at the top of a "peak," measuring 2449 feet above sea level.  The most famous of the hiking trails is the aptly named "Falls" trail.  This trail takes you down the hillside through old growth timber on a tour of waterfalls.  There are 22 waterfalls in all, with varying heights up to 94 feet.  The scenery is gorgeous, hike is moderately difficult, and the best part is that there are areas to wade into the water to cool off from the humidity of the area.  We had eaten a picnic lunch before our hike, and rounded out the afternoon with ice cream cones from snack shop after our hike.

Saturday Warren was able to joins for the day's activities (he'd had to work Friday.)  We all went to the gym (Warren and I belong to Anytime Fitness) and got in a great work out.  We then headed to downtown Danville to see what was going on at the Iron Heritage Festival and find a place to eat a late breakfast/early lunch snack.  We ended up at a place called "Pappas."  Warren and I had never tried it before, probably due to low expectations and very limited hours of operation.  It ended up being an experience to remember.  The short of the long of it is:

• They didn't have half the items listed on the menu (it may have been closer to 2/3, I'm not kidding)
• They stopped serving breakfast promptly at 11am (it was 11:04 and we were made well aware that there were no more eggs, toasts, sausage or bacon)
• but if you really wanted something breakfast-like, you could order the lunch-time egg and bacon sandwich (choice of toasted bread, including English muffin), if it was ok that the eggs had an essence of hamburger flavor (the apparent difference between breakfast eggs and lunch eggs)
• Oh, and cash only to pay thank you very much (phew, good thing that's all we had on us)

It reminded me of the "Olympia Restaurant" sketch from the early days of SNL (click here to navigate to the Hulu page, then scroll down to find said sketch: www.hulu.com/best-of-snl )  We hung out in Danville the rest of the day, had an early dinner, then drank wine and played Scattegories at the house until late.  The night was rounded out by a nice fireworks display that we could view from our porch, courtesy of the Iron Heritage Festival.

Sunday morning we met at the Pine Barn Inn (the hotel where my dad was staying) for breakfast, then headed out to Lewisburg for the morning.  Lewisburg is a cute university town about 20 minutes NW of Danville.  It is home to Bucknell, a private liberal arts university with Bucky the Bison as a mascot. We wandered the main street which has some cute boutique shops (most of which are closed Sundays, as is the norm in these parts).  When then had a nice dinner from the grill at home.  Complete with a grilled brussels sprout dish Katrina made.  Dinner was delicious.  We then played Jenga on the patio well into the night, with fireflies and a fire-pit fire in the background.

Monday morning the clock struck midnight, and Katrina and my dad had to leave for home.  I was sad to see them go, but treasure the weekend we spent together.  It made me that much more excited for my trip home at the end of August.

Fall at Rickett's Glenn

Danville as viewed from across the river in Riverside

Candid shot of Katrina and Dad