Dutch Wonderland

We recently took a lovely long-weekend trip to Pennsylvania. We had so much fun -- we saw and experienced so many interesting things that one blog post couldn't do it justice. So I'll tell you about it day by day. This is Day 4 and 5.

We all woke up a little happier this morning. Perhaps real beds and better temperature control helped us all sleep better.

The hotel had a continental breakfast, but Grandmother thought we should eat a big breakfast before going to the amusement park. We drove around a bit before passing this little hole-in-the-wall called Jennie's Diner. It was the classic silver, '50s-looking diner. It looked like a place the locals would eat, and it was perfect.

The food was great and super cheap. I decided I had to try scrapple. Grandmother got pancakes the size of a dinner plate. Sawyer had a bacon and eggs. The home fries were outstanding.



After our ginormous breakfast, we drove back to Dutch Wonderland amusement park. When I saw how many cars were in the parking lot, I started to regret prebuying our tickets. I'm still not used to having to go places like this on weekends. And the day before Memorial Day? It was packed.

The nice thing about Dutch Wonderland is that most of the rides are suitable for smaller kids like Sawyer. There were very few things that he COULDN'T ride.

We waited in line forever to get on the Sky Ride chair lift that would take us to the other side of the park.





Sawyer then rode a jumping frog. We rode a very jerky roller coaster, that I was sure was going to give me whiplash. We raced down a giant slide together. Then we talked Grandmother into riding the log flume with us. The line for it wrapped around and around and trickled over a bridge. But we could at least see the high-dive show in the amphitheater while we waited.



The log flume cooled us off a bit, so we walked on to hit a few more rides … like the monorail (where I got fired up and told some line jumpers not to cut in front of us and the family behind us).

We found a very cute little Amish boy there.



I had never seen a horizontal ride like this. I had to convince Sawyer to ride with me by telling him we'd be flying like rockets or Superman. It was interesting.



Sawyer wanted to ride the mini train all day, but I told him that would be our last ride. So on our way to it, we hit my favorite: the swings. This one was a little different than others I have seen. We had a small meltdown over someone not getting to ride in a blue swing, which was a good sign that we needed to wrap up our visit soon. Seriously? Crying over what color your swing is?





I knew part of the meltdown was because of hunger/thirst and part was just him being tired. So we found the ice cream stand I'd noticed on the map and got Dole Whips (which my Disney friends rave about).

We got in line and rode the train, but that wasn't enough. Sawyer begged to ride just one more. So we picked the closest ride to the exit and had to wait awhile because some guy ahead of dropped his phone/camera/something in the murky water and they had to stop the ride to try to fish it out. They were still looking for it when we left!

While Sawyer slept in the car, Grandmother and I hit a couple stores for souvenirs. I even found a print by one of our favorite Bermuda painters at an antique store.

After Sawyer woke up, we decided we wanted real food instead of fast food. So we went back to Jennie's Diner for dinner. I had Pennsylvania Dutch "chicken pot pie" which was very different from any pot pie I've ever had. It had dumplings instead of crust. And it came with several sides. It was enough to feed all three of us.



Sawyer was desperate to go swimming in the hotel pool, but we kept telling him it was too cold. That excuse didn't fly when we returned to the hotel and found a whole family playing in the pool! Sawyer got in and swam across the shallow corner a few times before his teeth started chattering. Luckily, the other family left so I convinced him to get out, too.

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We packed up early the next morning, grabbed bagels from the continental breakfast and hit the road for home. Thankfully, the roads were clear and the journey home did not take nearly as long as the trip there. We made it in about eight hours, including a couple rest stops and lunch break.

It was a very fun trip, but we were all quite happy to be home!