Gettysburg, PA

In January some of the 31 and older singles from my church decided to take a ski trip to Gettysburg, PA. Shelley’s boyfriend, the totally awesome Ben, really wanted to go skiing. Shelley thought it would be fun to go as well and somehow managed to talk me into the trip. I don’t know how she does it.

The plan was to avoid skiing. Shelley is a fantastic skier, but didn’t have any of her gear in Virginia. I don’t ski at all, and I really didn’t want to try on the pathetic “mountains” that they have out here. If I am going to go skiing, it will be in Utah or the California Sierra Nevada’s. That is how God intended people to ski. Instead, Shelley and I were going to tour the Gettysburg Civil War site.

Everyone in the group was staying at a Day’s Inn, but I am a hotel snob and refused to stay there. Instead, we stayed down the street at a Hampton Inn where I felt much more comfortable. The Hampton was nice enough, but in our first room (and I do mean first) someone had smeared snot on part of the wall. I cannot stay in a room like that and we had to change rooms. I am still disgusted thinking about it. The hotel was very nice about the whole incident so I don’t fault them.

The next morning we overslept and didn’t make it to the Gettysburg tour. I wasn’t that upset because I was just along for the ride. We decided to drive to Amish country (Lancaster County) as Shelley had never had never been. It was an amazing plan except for the fact that we had no actual idea as where to go to exploit the Amish and gaze at them for our own amusement. Luckily Shell and I live for the road and just headed toward any town or shop with the word Lancaster in it.

Now if you ask us how Amish country was, we really couldn’t tell you. A few weeks before this trip Seabreeze’s mother, Coni, came and helped us to feng shui our bedrooms. Coni did an amazing job and little by little Shelley and I have been attempting to make our rooms infinitely more awesome. To make a short story long, as we were driving to Amish country we saw a billboard advertizing a Pottery Barn outlet store. It was as if the universe was telling us to buy crap for our bedrooms.

The rest of the day became a quest to find the Pottery Barn outlet. Lancaster, PA has an amazing amount of outlet malls. We headed to the Yankee Candle outlet, the Harry and David outlet, the DKNY outlet, and finally, the Pottery Barn outlet. By the time we had finished shopping, we needed to head back to Gettysburg and meet up with Ben. It may seem lame, and it was, but we got some great stuff at even better prices.

We did see one buggy if that redeems us in any way.

Next Trip – Calgary, Alberta