The Pennsylvania Road Trips – July, November & December 2020 / January 2021

Where We Stayed: Shannon’s House

Trip Highlights:

Three cross-country road trips
Working from a new location for a while
Exploring new areas of Philadelphia
Shenandoah National Park
Lots of Board Games

Favorite Restaurants:

With most of our travel plans for the year cancelled as of March 2020 due to COVID-19, we weren’t really sure what the remainder of our year would like like in regards to travel.

Most of our travel in 2020 ended up becoming road trips between Milwaukee, WI and Philadelphia, PA to stay at work from Shannon’s house. To avoid flying during the pandemic, we drove the 14 hours between Milwaukee and Philadelphia, twice in a single day (though one trip we did cave and stay in a hotel to break up the drive). We quarantined for at least two weeks and were tested before and after each trip. We were able to caravan out to Pennsylvania with Sam’s parents for two of the three trips.

While these are definitely three distinct trips, we decided to post them as one large trip, because, in reality, most of the time was spent at the house eating takeout and playing games, just due to the reality of the world we were (and are currently) living in.

But, there were definitely a few fun stories from each trip, which I’ve tried to summarize in each trip below. Enjoy!

Pennsylvania Road Trip #1

July 2020 – August 2020

We took our first trip out to Pennsylvania toward the end of July 2020 and stayed for almost three weeks. Sam’s parents came and stayed with us for a single night in Milwaukee before we loaded up the two Priuses and left at 4:30 a.m. to drive the 14 hours to Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, we ran into some inclement weather on the drive, forcing us to wait out the rain for an hour in a Culver’s parking lot in Ohio before continuing on the drive. It wasn’t until this drive that I realized how mountainous Pennsylvania is! After seven hours of driving through farmland in Indiana and Ohio, it was a fun turn of events to arrive in Pennsylvania and spend five hours driving through the Appalachian Mountains. We eventually came crash landing into Shannon’s house at 10 p.m. Eastern time and collapsed for the night.

Since we were in Philadelphia for several weeks, Sam and I spent part of each week working remotely from Shannon’s basement, while the other half of the week we played games and hung out with the family.

One perk of avoiding the typical sights of Philadelphia that we would normally visit was that we had time to explore a few suburbs that were a bit less crowded than Center City. Sam and I spent an afternoon walking around and picking up takeout in the Manayunk neighborhood, which had this adorable park called “Pretzel Park” with a statue of a pretzel and looping pathways in the shape of a pretzel.

We also spent an afternoon geocaching – my first time doing so! We walked on the trails near a river, stopping at occasional geocaches when we passed by one.

However, we did make time for a few of our favorite stops. Being summer time in the Philly area, we had to make several stops at our favorite water ice shop, Rita’s, and Sam and I drove into Philadelphia twice at off times to go for a quick walk near city hall and to pick up Reading Terminal Market.

One of our biggest outings of the trip was to Haddonfield, NJ to go to a gluten free bakery I had always heard about but never had the chance to visit. When looking up the town, however, I discovered that Haddonfield is actually considered the birthplace of paleontology. The first ever complete dinosaur skeleton (the Hadrosaurus) was discovered in Haddonfield, and this discovery was the first concrete proof that had been found that dinosaurs actually existed. Haddonfield had a small statue and plaque to celebrate the Hadrosaurus, which we checked out before and after our visit to the bakery.

But back to the bakery! Bleu Bear Bakery is a fully gluten free bakery and is known for it’s fun baked goods and freshly baked donuts. We grabbed a selection of the more fun baked goods, including a smores cupcake, linzer torte, and hot fudge sundae stuffed donut. These are still the best gluten free baked goods I’ve ever had, and Bleu Bear Bakery is now a regular stop on our trips to Philly. In fact, we stopped by the bakery on every other Philly road trip we took in 2020.

We hit some bad weather again on our drive home to Milwaukee. The drive was uneventful for most of the trip, other than a bit of fog we encountered while driving through the mountains. We hit a thunderstorm once we hit Chicago, which made the drive difficult for a while. Once the weather cleared we were treated to a double rainbow that followed us all the way back home to Milwaukee.

Pennsylvania Road Trip #2

November 2020

Our second trip out to Pennsylvania occurred in November 2020, but this time only Sam and I made the trip. We once again worked from Philly for most of the wee, enjoying a couple walks in Center City and the suburbs. One new exciting food find is the Rib Shack in Reading Terminal Market, which is a new favorite stop of ours when visiting Philly.

We added an additional road trip to our Philly road trip by making our way to Washington D.C. for two nights.

Our first night we enjoyed a walk through the National Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. We had the National Mall largely to ourselves, and even enjoyed a few minutes alone at the top of the Lincoln Memorial.

Our main purpose for this trip, however, was to visit Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Shenandoah is just two hours outside of Washington D.C. Most of Shenandoah is located just off of Skyline Drive, a 70 mile road that winds its way through the mountains in the park. We spent the day driving down Skyline Drive, stopping at occasional overlooks. We did one half mile hike up to another overlook point that provided sprawling views over the Shenandoah Valley. We spent a while at the overlook, sitting and looking off over the edge at the hills and valleys below.

Our last few days of the trip were spent celebrating Thanksgiving by cooking a full dinner for just the three of us. The food turned out delicious with tons of leftovers to keep us plenty full before our 14 hour drive back to Milwaukee.

Pennsylvania Road Trip #3

December 2020 – January 2021

Our final road trip began on the day after Christmas and extended almost a week into January. Unlike the other trips, there are very few photos from this trip because, honestly, we spent most of the time at home working, playing board games and watching West Wing.

This time, we did the drive over the course of two days, stopping in Ohio for a night to break up the drive. On our way home we stopped in Independence, Ohio for the night just outside of Cleveland. As we were driving around to pick up dinner in Independence, we were shocked to find that many of the buildings in the town were modeled after Independence Hall in Philly! Some of their road signs even had the Liberty Bell on them. It seemed to be a very fitting stop for our trip home!