The Finale! Aren't you glad we didn't go for a week! I may still have been blogging about it until next year!
So we got to bed really late on Thursday night. I had a little more trouble getting to sleep, but finally nodded off a little after midnight. But at 3 a.m., I was awoken to what sounded like a hurricane coming through. I looked out the window and it looked like a hurricane too! The trees in the courtyard were bending and swaying at unbelievable angles, lightning was flashing continually, thunder was booming, and rain was coming down so heavy I could barely see our van in the parking lot just below us. I checked the internet to see if there were any tornado warnings and woke Josh to see if we should do anything. Surprisingly, the kids were sleeping through all of it. It began letting up after about 30 minutes, so I drifted back to sleep. When we woke up in the morning, the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue. But when we went down to breakfast, one of the trees that had stood in the courtyard was now laying across the courtyard. Luckily, it fell away from the parking lot and not toward, so the vehicles were saved.
After breakfast, we let the kids get in the pool at the hotel, while Josh went up to the room for a while. The pool looked great from far away, but once we got in, it was not as pretty. I tried to ignore the cloudiness and the little bits of stuff floating in it, because the kids were oblivious to it! So we didn't stay in long and I made sure the kids showered as soon as we got back to the room!
As we were were driving away from our hotel, it looked like a disaster area. There were car ports flipped over, awnings ripped off, trees down everywhere. There were huge cherry pickers all over the areas of the park that we drove by, trying to clear the downed trees and branches away from the rides.
We decided to go to "Amish Country" in Lancaster County for the day. We stopped at a KMart and got a GPS, since we had no directions. We just typed in a restaurant called "Good n' Plenty" that someone had suggested we try. We had thought previously about getting a GPS, so this seemed the perfect time to get one! We found Good n' Plenty pretty easily. We were planning on eating family style (Basically a buffet, but in bowls on your table like at Thanksgiving, instead of the window-covered troughs at a regular buffet restaurant.), but it was going to be $60 for the four of us! So we went to the other part of the restaurant and ordered from the menu. The food was basically the same and we would have never gotten our money's worth at the family style. It was very good and very homemade - but we discovered the Wilson's are not a fan of real butter, which is what was in the corn and a couple other things.
We were going to try to go to see a live performance of "Jonah" at the Sight and Sound Theater. We had no idea that the shows sell out weeks in advance! So we just rode by and saw the outside of the theater, which was beautiful.
I was not impressed with "Amish Country" in general. I felt like it was way over commercialized and I felt like it was like prostituting a people group! The Amish there have to deal with suffocating traffic and gawking spectators and while there are Amish making their livelihood off tourism, it is definitely not an ideal situation. Tourists can pay to go on buggy rides around Amish Country and stop at farms and have Amish snacks and see animals, etc. The point that I had reached my fill of "Amish Country" was when I saw a certain passenger in one of these buggies. Sitting beside an Amish man with a grey beard and his conservative black suit was a black lady who was decked out in an electric blue, short, strapless, satin dress that looked better suited for clubbing than vacation. Her outfit was completed by long, decorated acrylic nails and hair extensions. I had to wonder what that man was thinking as he sat beside this woman who seemed to be the polar opposite of him. To say she stuck out was an understatement!
We looked around a few of the little shops, but the temperatures were over 100 and I was feeling so conflicted by being a tourist in that environment, that we only stayed for about an hour.
So we set our new GPS and headed for home. The kids did great on the way home and the trip was pretty enjoyable, until we hit hurricane-like weather about 1 1/2 hours from home. We kept debating whether we should pull over or keep going. During the drive, we were hoping that we were not going to come home to water in our basement. It finally started letting up about 20 minutes before we got home and we were thanking the Lord that we got back safely.
When we got back, I went into the basement and found no water. I was so happy! Josh had gone to put his car in the driveway and when he returned, I said, "Good News, our basement isn't flooded." and he said, "Bad News, our siding is torn off the side of the house." We had no idea just how bad the storm had really been until the next day when we were seeing news reports. We again thanked God that we made it home without incident. We were also thankful that Josh's car had been parked in the garage, since it is normally in the driveway. It could have been hit by flying debris - like our siding!
SO THAT IS FINALLY THE END OF OUR TRIP!!!! If you made it through, I commend you! If we go on vacation next year, I may have to plan to write a book!
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