Spring Fling 2026 - Days 38+39: Philly Visit and Touring along Hudson River

Friday, Jun 5

Martha and I drove into Philadelphia to visit with Thing 2 at her apartment near the city's downtown.  Thing 2 moved to Philly for work and resumption of nursing school about 3 months ago.

We went to lunch at the large eatery complex known as Reading Station.  We went for cajun food but ordered too much food unknowingly!  Still it was a good lunch:

We got photo bombed.....

In the morning, we also went to IKEA to get Thing 2 some furniture:

A couple of city views:

It was a very good visit. I had been dreading going into the city but it turned out to be a manageable experience.  After dinner with Thing 2 along with 5 friends of her, we parted company and Martha and I returned to Macungie for the night. 

Saturday, June 6

We left Mike and Terry's home before 9:00 a.m. and by early afternoon had arrived at a harvest host site. It is the Hudson River House and Distillery in West Park, NY.  No hookups, just a gravel parking lot. There are three other rigs here tonight with us. 

We disconnected the CRV and headed over to the other side of the Hudson River over the mid-Hudson bridge to visit the FDR Museum and Presidential Library located in Hyde Park, NY.

Pretty good museum and house tour. If you got a few hours, I recommend you check it out. 

As usual here are some things that caught my eye in the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the presidential library he set up. 

FDR birthplace, home

Library/Study

Manually powered elevator, FDR could 

apparently raise it himself

Boyhood bedroom 

Adult bedroom 

Fire Extinguisher, you throw it at a fire....

FDR and Eleanor's gravesites.

At the front of the library/ museum 

In case you're into genealogy and how Teddy

Roosevelt and FDR were related...

The First Pet:

FDR desk

Hanging out at the visitor center with the Roosevelts 

By this time it was late afternoon and too late to take a guided tour of the Vanderbilt to mansion nearby.  Also run by the National Park Service it gives you a glimpse into the world of the gilded age. 

So we settled with some outside shots of The Mansion:

Italian Garden

The back porch

We hit quite the thunderstorm, with hail, on the way back to the RV. Traffic going eastbound across the Mid-Hudson bridge was at a standstill due to construction on the east end. We looked out, since we were on the westmound traffic and managed to catch the westbound flow as it started moving.

Lots of walking today, almost 8000 steps for me.

Spring Fling 2026 - Day 36: Longwood Gardens

 Wednesday, June 04

We went over to Kennett, PA (Mushroom Capital of the World) not to see mushrooms but to visit Longwood Gardens.

It's the largest botanical garden I've ever visited and according to Mike and Terry H. it's second only to the Royal Botanical Garden in England.

Normally, this kind of place isn't my jam.  I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

The Bonsai Trees exhibit was the highlight of the place, IMO: 

The girls fooling around after watching some Instagram influencer type pose for pics in same spot:

We had a late lunch at the Victory Brewing Co.  Then we were driven back to Mike and Terry's place via the most questionable routing possible by Waze app.  Good to see that Google maps doesn't have a monopoly on occasional bad routing guides 

Spring Fling 2026 - Day 35: A Drive to Lititz, PA

Mike and Terry drove us to the quaint town of Lititz, PA today.  

Although located in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country, we didn't see any of them. 

Still, the town itself was pretty nice. Our first stop was the Wilbur chocolate factory.  They're offerings were quite delicious but they also a bit pricey so we didn't get a lot of stuff. 

We did some meandering of the shops prior to lunch, and then we retired to the Bull Head Pub located along Main Street.

Pretty nice pub and the food was tasty.  I had the pork chop sandwich, while Martha had the fish and chips.

Some more meandering after lunch had us checking out the first Pretzel Bakery in the USA, established in 1861.

Inside the bakery there were some displays of historical photos and displays related to the bakery.  Near the shop where one can buy pretzels and related items, there was some hard work on display with an Amish theme of sorts:

Today's moto content 

Our purchases in hand, we meandered back to Mike's car for the drive back to Macungie.

Not much else to report, no sightings of Amish horse buggys.