A nice couple of weekends!
The day after seeing Barbiere at the Met, it was Easter Sunday. I don’t celebrate Easter myself, and it took me a while to realize that other people do (adults, I mean) and take it quite seriously. Like, Charles would give me an Easter card each year. I was delighted, but why? There were also Easter baskets, which became a problem since he didn’t particularly like chocolate or the kind of things you put in an Easter basket.
Anyway, Susan was hosting an Easter brunch, so I did get a card for her, and brought some wine. There were six of us – two friends who I knew already, two new ones. It was a lovely afternoon, just sitting around and eating and chatting. Food was terrific. I got ham to take home, too! (apparently, we all took too much ham – Susan ended up with not very much at all.)
The week was pretty tame, just QUO brass sectionals on Wednesday. When I realized that we were having sectionals at a rehearsal studio just a block or so from Miss Tessa’s place, I reached out to her and we had dinner before my rehearsal. Rehearsal was great, too – we’re all very excited to be playing Mahler 1.
Friday was Susan’s birthday and (months in the planning) we were doing a similar trip to what we’d done in October. Drive out to central PA, stay in Danville, visit Susan’s relative’s graves in Shamokin and Elysburg, and spend a day at Knoebel’s – Saturday was their opening day for the season.
We needed to get started early – Renee Uber’d out to my place and Susan picked us up, we were on the road by 9:00. Getting out of the city (and then back in when we returned) is by far the hardest part, but it wasn’t too bad this time. We listened to music and to a couple of episodes of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, which is very funny. One of the best parts is they have panelists sing the words of one song to the tune of another, and one was “Tom’s Diner” to the tune of “Modern Major General”, which works surprisingly well. (and then in the car, we tried it the other way around) Snacks were eaten.
We arrived in Shamokin and had lunch at a time-honored local institution that Susan grew up enjoying,
The place is ruled by sour-faced women who have apparently been there forever. There’s no menu, just hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and soda. We had hamburgers and Susan and I had electric-blue birch beer, which was yummy. I didn’t particularly like the hamburger, but if I went back, I’d be more aggressive about asking for more mustard or whatever it needed to spice it up.
Then to the Shamokin cemetery. This is up on top of a mountain, and the way Susan had described it, it sounded like we’d be driving at a 45 degree angle up Mt. Doom. As it turns out, yes, it is a steep hill, but the GPS routed us away from the very steep block and up a much calmer one and we didn’t have any trouble getting to the top. Susan’s grandparents and many of her relatives are buried there. We were looking for her grandparents’ marker, and she had a picture of it from last time – but it wasn’t obvious where it was. I treated it as a puzzle, and one of the other markers in the picture was pretty distinctive, and i looked for that – and that worked. Susan left flowers there and on some other graves. Susan’s Ukranian last name was represented all over with various transliterational spellings. It was a lovely view up there, and this was a very pleasant visit.
Then to the Elysburg cemetery, where her parents are buried (I was at her dad’s funeral, five years ago). Even though we’d just been there six months ago, we had trouble finding the marker, even though it’s actually right by the road and not hidden in any way. We’ll know better next time. More flowers left.
Then to the Pine Barn Inn, which is the really nice hotel/motel in Danville right by the big Geisinger hospital center. The rooms are nice and the restaurant is unusually good for a hotel. We checked in, got settled, and ended up at the bar for a pre-dinner cocktail. At dinner, we were joined by our fourth, Janna, coming up from Philadelphia. Much food and conviviality was had. It being Susan’s birthday, our waitress brought us a big bowl of lemon sorbet with birthday candles all through it, but they were melting so fast it was basically a wax sundae. This was not a problem, we all thought it was hilarious.
Luckily no one wanted to stay up for more shenanigans, we retired pretty early.
We’d known that Saturday might be rainy (not ideal for amusement parks), and indeed it was very rainy in the morning, but was supposed to clear up by noon. We met for breakfast, then headed out to explore cute downtown Danville. Not much to see at that time, but we did make it in to a little gift shop, where I bought some handmade soaps and Renee bought a really nice throw blanket and we generally enjoyed the cute things they had.
Then off to Knoebel’s. Renee had not been before, but the other three of us had just been in October. My goal was to go on more rides (and I did). We got ourselves a map and headed basically to the other end of the park to look at the eagles and wait for the rides to get going. We started on the Black Diamond mine ride (a dark ride, duh) and then went on the nearby Haunted Mansion ride, which had so tickled us last year. Then the carousel – I got three rings. We had lunch (I had a hot dog, Susan had fries, Renee had pierogies and I don’t remember what Janna had). Went on the Ferris Wheel, much fun. I went on the terrifying Impulse coaster.
This coaster really does put you in every possible rotation and I’m glad I put my glasses in my pants pocket. (I’d forgotten to bring those straps for your glasses specifically for rollercoasters, even though I have quite a few at home.)
We had fudge-covered pretzel sticks, those were yummy. And went on one of the little trains that go into the forest.
The rain was mostly not-a problem by the time we’d gotten to the park, although it flared up once or twice. Bonus – it cleaned the pollen out of the air, which had been making me want to claw my eyes out for about a week. Mid-afternoon, when it warmed up, the pollen came back with a vengeance. I was like, “oh, good, it’s not psychosomatic, the cause and effect of my itchy eyes is very very obvious”. *sigh* (Susan had been nice enough to share some eye wipes with me, and I’ve now ordered more.)
The last ride we did were the motor boats, and unlike every other ride we’d done, there was a long wait. The line itself wasn’t that long, and they were split in two, but the boats were being sent out like 3 minutes apart rather than bang-band-bang and it was just slow. But we got there eventually. You could really steer the boat, which was very cool.
Finally, mid-afternoon, we headed out and Susan bought a big thing of kettle corn, yum. Back to the hotel for chill-out, then we headed into Danville to go to the Old Forge Brewing Company. There was a 20-minute wait, which wasn’t a big deal – but the reason was not that there were no tables, it was that there was no silverware. I’d never heard that one before.
Once seated, we had cocktails and ordered poutine (!) to share. Realizing I’d had no vegetables that day, I had a stir fry with tuna (which I couldn’t finish, but it was yummy). That was a fun meal, and great company.
Not much to say about Sunday – we met for breakfast, then packed up and said our goodbyes to Janna. Drive home was pleasant until we hit Manhattan traffic, then it was slow and tedious (as expected). But overall, a successful trip! Nice to have friends like these! We discussed the possibility of doing something grander eventually, like Disneyworld, that would be fun to look into.
The Toast Point Page 