Penn Vacation - Penn's Cave

William and I have been to a few caves. They are always fascinating, but it's hard to get excited over the next one when you have already been to several. When I found out that Penn's Cave was only tourable by boat, I got way excited because we had yet to a cave in that fashion.

The cave is down this long flight of steps, and stays really cold all year long. The water is so cold in fact the no fish actually live inside the cave...plenty at the mouth, but none inside. Here is a ceiling shot.

This is the inside of the next picture.

At one point all the lights were turned off and so we were left in complete darkness. I tell you, there is nothing quite so dark as a cave with no lights. Then they presented this pretty light show.

This is out the other side of the cave. Can you see the blue of the water? It was pretty cool because you could look down in the water of the lake we were turning around in and it was full of plant life, and then you see this line of teal/blue leading to the cave that is void of plant life and really stands out against the murky brown of the rest of the lake.

As we were turning around to have another go through the cave (only backwords)we got a glimpse of the neighboring wild life refugee. Since leaving Idaho, we don't see too many elk these days.

The heart of the cave. Can you see it?

The end it near! The cave was so smoky because of the difference in temperatures between the outside of the cave and the inside of the cave.

I would say this cave is worth touring. We didn't do the wildlife exhibit, because let's face it, when you've been through the Yellowstone Bear World when bear can climb into the back of your truck, this just didn't seem that it would be up to par.

Penn Vacation - Bellefonte

During this trip we figured we would check out some bed and breakfast places. People always rave about them and we figured we would like to check out what the hype was all about. So here is the Reynolds Mansion. Isn't it cool?

We were the only guests that night so pretty much had the run of the place to ourselves. Needless to say, we played some pool down in the fancy billard room.

We even got a tour of all the other rooms because they weren't occupied. Throughout the house were four fireplaces, like this one, but with different tiles to represent the four different seasons of the year.

The hosts had two dogs who decided to join us for breakfast. One was all for pets and the other was still a little unsure of people.

Can you guess which of the dogs was used to cozening up to the guests for hopes of some table scrapes? The breakfast was absolutely amazing btw.

We highly recommend this place! Oh, we stayed in the garden room. Sorry, no pictures, you'll just have to go see for yourselves.

Penn Vacation - Visiting Ru

On the way up to State College, PA...yes, I thought it was a weird name for a city too.

Ru is always doing some amazingly crafty thing. I saw the result of one of her latest brainy ideas and had to take a picture. Now, just to find where I can do it :).

Ru and Russell introduced us to Rita's, apparently it is very popular in that region of the US. It was interesting. A slushie with ice cream is the best way to describe it. Here is Ru with Nazarie...it's she getting so big?!...Nazarie that is, Ru hasn't changed much since the last time I saw her.

This is Russell and Lex (it was my first time meeting Lex, he is such a happy baby, and he loved sharing dad's ice cream).

Penn Vacation - DC

I have been wanting to visit our nation's capitol for as long as I can remember. So of course we had to go since we were so close. An important tidbit to know...there are no information booths open on Mondays in the state of Maryland. Go ahead, try and find one, I dare you! We ended up going into the city without any idea where anything was. You all should be so proud, I winged it. We had planned to go later in the week so I hadn't looked into things to do, but then our plans got switched around and so the only day we could do it was Monday.

We started off at the museum of natural history. I thought it would be just like any other museum, so wasn't thinking it would take that long, but would be a good place to get a map of DC. Boy was I wrong. I was totally impressed with the displays. They did such a great job!

I did a report on this deer in the 8th grade. It's a Chinese Water Deer. I thought it was cool because of the sharp pointing teeth it has.

The dinosaurs were really popular. All the pictures I got were in close proximity to the object. Plus they were just so big that it was near impossible to get the whole thing in the shot.

I saw these on ice age and thought, what a funny looking thing. Then I saw the bones at the museum and thought, nope, still funny looking :)

Supposedly there is a pyramid of pure gold at the tippy top of the National Monument that supposed to reflect sunshine and be seen from miles away when the sun hits it just right. At least, that is what Dan Brown said, and we all know that he doesn't draw any un-researched conclusions.

The WW2 Monument. It was really pretty. There is also a Vietnam memorial, but with all the construction around the place, it got missed in our journey.

You can see the construction around the reflecting pool going on. That was sort of a bummer that we couldn't go right up to it, but you can imagine the view when it's operational and it's almost as good.

Good ol' Abe. I think he may have been the most popular stop all day.

The White House. It's wasn't as grand as what we thought it would be.

The ceiling of the Library of Congress.

This building was so ornate in design. This place also housed a Gutenburg Bible, but they asked that people not take pictures, so we obeyed the signs.

The fountain out front was pretty fun too.

The capitol building was right across the street from the library of congress. We got there too late to see the visitor center. There were guards swarming the place as well so we figured it would be better not to try and sneak a peak.

Outside the space and flight museum.

All in all the trip to DC was great. We have to go back though and catch all the stuff we missed. Hopefully on not such a hot day as well.

Penn Vacation - First Stop

So this vacation was back in July...but posting late rather than never is good, right?! This was a farmer's market that is one of the most popular to do in Lancaster. It was way busy. Those people in the lower right should look familiar.

This herbs guy had all sorts of dried mushrooms. Since mushrooms are one of William's favorites, I figured it was picture worthy.

I had to laugh at the craziness of all the telephone lines, and how close one got to be to their neghbors.

In Cameron and Yai's backyard was this of so cute little pond. The owners previous also had this train track that went around it. Way too fun.

This was one of 3 huge frogs that live in the pond and felt the need to vocalize all the time. They didn't much care for their pictures being taken, but I was able to snap this one.

It's he handsome? Everyone, meet Liam Meebune. Isn't he cute?

Here is William having fun at the kiddie park. He was able to make it all the way across because of the great running start he got.

A tuckered out Liam. You can kinda see the hint of red in his hair from his dad. I think everyone is anxiously awaiting what color it ends up being.

A river close to their house. It's a popular swimming area. Way different from the clear waters back west.

We celebrated Cameron's birthday a little early. His schedule is so busy with rotations that we took the opportunity to surprise him. It was great!