A Blog Post About Pennsylvania

"It's 10 degrees and my fingers are falling off!"

Every time I’ve sat down at the computer to write about our trip to Pennsylvania, I don’t know the words to start. This isn’t because it was a particularly unusual or difficult to describe trip, but a simple fact of feeling pretty drained lately. Zachary and I returned to town with two teenagers in tow— Francis and George, the oldest of his set of six youngest siblings— and between hanging out with them and editing my student papers and trying to keep the house from imploding, I haven’t felt terribly eloquent. And now it’s been a solid week and a half since the wedding, and five days since I started writing this post, and a full day since the boys left to go back to Portland, and I need to put something on my blog before I fall out of the habit entirely!

Let’s see, where to begin? I went to two new states. Ohio was one, and since we listened to Tommy on the way there and Who’s Next on the way back, I will forever associate the half-flat, half-mountainous state with The Who. The second state was Pennsylvania, which also marked my first brief foray into New England. I had certain positive sterotypes about what New England was like… and they were all true! From the  houses with 12-foot ceilings, richly-colored interiors, and front porches to the wooded mountains drenched in snow, it was something right out of a picture post card. (Also, the “Obama hates coal!” signs and amusing accents.)

The Pinnacle

Zach and I set up camp in his brother Dustin’s (the groom) livingroom. The bride, Tessa, was living out her last few single days in her parents’ house, along with about 20 other out-of-town family members. On any given day there were 30 of us (all immediate family!) running around that house, and Tessa’s family fed us all— from a complete Thanksgiving dinner (with two turkeys) to enough pork tacos to feed an army!

We got to see eight out of nine of Zach’s siblings, and meet a slew of new people, all of whom are now related to us. We got to spend a lot of time with Zach’s family, and got some time to ourselves, too, when we spent an afternoon hiking to the Pinnacle, one of the most famous points on the Appalachian Trail. We played video games, shared drinks, visited the largest Cabela’s in the US (where Dustin works), talked politics, tried to stay out of the way, tried to catch up with out-of-town relatives, ate candy, shopped at Weis Market, ate pierogies for breakfast, felt sorry for ducks walking on an icy pond, and froze our butts off in the often-sub-zero temperatures. Oh yeah, and we attended a wedding, too. A beautiful wedding with beautiful people. But somehow a public blog doesn’t seem like the best place to tell about it.

Look for an upcoming post or two about our trip— definitely one about the hike to the Pinnacle. But other than that, suffice it to say that it was a good trip, and we had a good time, and I have been rushing to catch up on my normal life ever since.

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