Road Trip Day Two

Road trip day two (Wednesday) began with one of us (no names) sleeping until almost 9:30 while the other one got up, took a shower and went to the breakfast room and worked for two hours. The Holiday Inn Express where we stayed offered a fairly extensive breakfast, but the star of the morning show was the pancake machine. I suppose if you travel a lot you may have already seen one of these, but last time I was at a hotel like this they were still offering make-your-own waffles, so 2014, which reminds me of a funny story, but, I digress. I think this machine must be some kind of newfangled invention, because the hotel was featuring free pancake night through the month of August.

I wish the front of this thing was transparent because I’d love to see how it works, though I have my theory. You press a button on the front of the machine and after making myself a tiny pancake, and then making a large one for Rachel, I realized the longer you hold down the button the bigger the pancake. I can see how this might become problematic when teen-aged boys figure this out, though there may be some sort of maximum limit. After you dispense the batter (what holding the button does I presume) you wait about one minute, then a perfectly formed and browned pancake emerges on a conveyer belt. Mind blown. This alone has made our entire trip worthwhile.

This leg of our journey has led us to Seven Springs, PA, and the beautiful Seven Springs Resort. We had a three plus hour drive here, past miles and miles of corn, and much green. I lost track of how many mountain tunnels we drove through at four; there were so many the novelty wore off. It is cool and breezy here and there are lots of things to do (activity wise) but we’re not doing any of them. My first impression of the place is that it’s quite a step up from the HI Express in Lancaster for the same price, though I doubt they have a pancake machine. If you’re looking for a place to visit this summer in PA, they are offering a $40 gift card to use anywhere at the resort for each night you stay. (I was not incentivized to say that, or anything else.)

The resort has a number of restaurants, but only a few open for lunch, and many not open mid-week, so our late lunch got off to a rough start. We opted for the poolside lunch shack (my words) and I was impressed with the number of mistakes they made with a simple lunch order for two people, however management quickly resolved the issue, and didn’t charge us for the meal, so all is forgiven, we hit reset, and made our plans for dinner.

Without getting into too much boring detail dinner was just fine, and that’s about it. A veggie burger for Rachel, a fish sandwich for me, and we shared a Dutch apple pie with ice cream for dessert. The pie looked prettier than it tasted; the apples were a bit underdone, the crumb topping (the thing that for some reason makes it Dutch) nothing special, and the huge portion of vanilla ice cream was so white I thought for a moment it might be a scoop of lard. This is a nice place, but don’t come for the food. We’re excited about our plans for today, which I’ll post on Friday. Can’t wait to tell you all about it. Having a great time! Wish you were here.

And we also want to wish our dear friend Corrine a happy birthday!