Pennsylvania Trip 2024

Originally Posted 08/07/24

Event Date 3/19/24 - 3/24/24

Picture of 4 people on the sidewalk on a street in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. One person is facing the camera holding a peace sign

We went to Pennsylvania

This trip sort of felt like the first real "Adult" vacation I've been on? There was a time almost a decade ago where I went camping with some friends, but usually when I have a vacation I'm either visiting family or visiting a friends house. This trip, Michelle, Me, and two other couples rented an Airbnb and basically hung out for a few days. PA was sort of a central meeting point, and it was great! We stayed near Harrisburg. My best friend Mat and his girlfriend Abigail was there, as well as Josh and Bren, who Mat has known since college and I had met online, but never in person before! This post is largely going to be photos, but I'll try to put in some stories in between them!

This story starts before the trip begins! Normally when we have long trips, my girlfriend and I take my car. But my car had been having car troubles, and we were worried about driving it from Vermont to Pennsylvania. My girlfriend has a lease, but is doing really well on miles, so we decided to take her car. This posed a problem though as we needed to use a roof rack for all the stuff we had, but her car did not have crossbars.

picture of a roof rack on top of a car. Notably the roof rack is being held to the rails with some wooded crossbars, which a basket sits on top of. There are also some green ratchet straps holding everything together

I'm still pretty proud of this solution. We had had some storm damage and so there were random pieces of fence laying around. I was able to use the fence posts (cutting them only slightly) to use as crossbars for her car. With some foam, ratchet straps, and hose clamps it was on there

picture of another angle of the roof rack from the previous photo. The wooded crossbars are more well seen as well as the ratchet straps, and a metal cage now being held within the basket on top.

With the car sorted out, we headed for Pennsylvania. Michelle and I got there a day early, because we had the furthest to drive and wanted to be sort of well rested before seeing everyone. That first day when everyone arrived was pretty low key. We pretty much just did the grocery shopping and hung around the house. One thing that was also a lot of fun was this airbnb had a hot tub. I had never been in a hot tub before, but it was big enough for all of us and a lot of fun!

Now, one of the reasons we went when we did was because it would be my birthday, and so it was going to be a lot of fun to hang out with everyone! The day after everyone got there, we woke up to:

picture of orange and yellow streamers hanging down from a doorway

My friends setup the house to be birthday themed while I was asleep!

photo of a living room with a fireplace in the center of the frame. There are letters spelling out Happy Birthday over the fireplace, with a bunch of balloons blown up and placed about

photo of a living room and kitchen area, with multi-colored party hats on the table

A sort of funny story about this: So Michelle and I wanted to try and head down a day early because we both knew we'd be exhausted from the drive, and wouldn't really want to be that social. Our drive was about twice the length as the next closest person. Because the Airbnb was under my name, I was able to extend the reservation by 1 day early, and then Michelle and I paid for that extra day ourselves. We did not tell the group about it, because we really just wanted the day to ourselves and knew if we mentioned we had gotten the place early, everyone else would also try to show up. Well apparently the others had wanted to get there before me because they wanted to setup all the birthday decorations before I even arrived! I feel very fortunate to have friends that are so thoughtful! Unfortunate we sort of ruined their plan, but I'm glad they were able to do it in the end!

photo of 3 people sitting on a couch. One is on their phone, one is smiling holding a yellow party hat, another is smiling at the one holding the hat

Here on the couch is Michelle, Mat, and Abigail! Mat and Abigail have been dating for a long time now. I've known Mat since middle school, and he is my best friend.

photo of a man in a blue party hat sitting in a chair holding up peace signs, smiling at the camera

Here is Josh. I believe he wore that party hat all day which was impressive. As I mentioned before, Mat has known Josh since college, but I had only started getting to know Josh online for about a year or two before this I think

photo of a man in a blue party hat sitting in a chair, talking to someone off camera. There is a woman with her leg around a chair, arms crossed, also looking off camera at someone

This is Josh and Bren! They've been dating for a while now too. Mat, Abigail, Josh, Bren and I all play DnD together, as well as a lot of different board games, video games, and things like Magic the Gathering.

photo of a woman in a purple sweatshirt grilling burgers and hot dogs outside

So luckily for all of us, Bren really likes to cook. Basically the entire week we were there Bren focused on cooking meals for everyone. She made this really good sushi bake recipe that everyone absolutely loves. I'm normally a pretty picky eater, but I had some of it and it was fantastic!

photo of a man at a kitchen table looking down at his phone. On the table the board game Dune has been setup, and there are pieces everywhere

Around the time of this trip I had been getting really into Dune, and so we had all been playing a lot of the Dune board game. It's still one of my favorite games, but Josh was never quite a fan because the game is very obviously not balanced. I actually wrote about Dune the board game here.

photo of a man leaning up against a pillar in a movie theater. In the top left there is also a photo of a man and woman taking a selfie. The photo has the word BeReal at the bottom.

Speaking of Dune, while we were in PA Dune 2 was in theaters and so we all went to see it! I was the only one who had read any of the books at this point, so it was cool to get my friends' reactions of the movie since they had no knowledge of the story itself.

photo of a man in a museum, surrounded by art, laying down on a bench. It appears he's sleeping

Because we were only at this place for about 4 or 5 days I think, we tried to cram a lot together. One of the things we did was visit The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Mat was absolutely beat from how much we were doing, and so laid down for a moment at the museum. It also didn't help we arrived at the museum very close to its closing time, so we basically rushed through it. Definitely want to head back there one day.

After the museum, we walked over to a really cool restaurant a block or so away. I forget what the name of it was unfortunately.

Picture of a woman holding a pink camera taking a photo of the person taking a photo of her. She is wearing a blue sweatshirt

For Christmas this past year I got myself, Michelle and my brothers all Camp Snap Camera's, and I've really liked having them! Most of the photos in this post are from my Camp Snap camera. You can also read about them more here if you want.

Picture of 2 men on a couch, looking off in the distance. They are playing some video game.

I just really liked this photo of Mat and I. I have no clue what video game we were engrossed in. My guess would be Rivals of Aether.

Picture of a woman smiling in front of a Hershey Land Express mural

One thing Michelle really wanted to do was visit Hersheyland while we were there. So on one of the rainy days, Michelle and I went! It was a good time, but one of those places I think would be more fun if you were a kid.

Picture of a bunch of 2 lb kit kat bars that say snack size

This cracked me up. There were giant, 2 lb Kit Kat bars labeled as "Snack Size".

Picture of a woman putting on a white apron with a hairnet on smiling at the camera

One of the things you could do at Hersheyland is design your own chocolate bar! Michelle was really excited for this part of the day.

Picture of a printed paper wrapper around a metallic tin. The wrapper shows 2024, a bonfire where chocolate bars are the logs, a trolley car, and a man with a bow tie. It also Says Steven on it.

Unfortunately, something went wrong when desiging our Chocolates and Michelle was not able to decorate her wrapper. I was able to decorate mine though.

Picture of a bunch of people around a table in a kitchen. You can see a Happy Birthday banner in the distance. There is a dog half out of the frame towards the bottom of the photo.

On the way back home to Vermont, I stopped off at my parents house to celebrate my birthday with them. In the photo (Starting on the left of the table) you can see my mom, Step dad Scott, Youngest brother Orrin hugging his Significant Other Jay. In the green is my middle brother Joseph, and in the blue myself.

This trip was a whole hell of a lot of fun, and I'm hoping to do something like it again in the future. It was so nice getting to hang out with friends that I can rarely see due to distance, all be in the same place!