Pennsylvania in April (Part 1)

I planned a trip to visit my parents for Easter weekend after checking to see what Seth's exam schedule looked like. I wanted him to be able to go down this time since he had not seen his grandparents since November of 2019. Shane was also going on his own trip: the Boston Marathon! 
So on Saturday morning, we packed up two cars, closed up the house and drove together toward the border in Maine a little over an hour away. Then a couple of hours into Maine, we stopped at a rest stop together, refreshed ourselves and said goodbye to Shane who was heading to his hotel outside of Boston while we were headed much further south into eastern Pennsylvania.
We spent Easter Sunday with my childhood church family and then picked up lunch to take it to my parents' apartment. After lunch, we joined my parents in going to my brother's home which is in the same little town. My brother and his wife are amazing cooks and the food they prepare for all of us is always so good. Seth was able to catch up with his three cousins in person after not having seen any of them for six years. The oldest is just three weeks older than Seth and is also graduating from university this month with a business degree. 
On Monday, we did some shopping including the mall that I grew up going to with friends before heading over to my parents' apartment to watch Shane finish the Boston marathon and to cook and eat supper with my parents. I also prepared a picnic lunch for the following day's trip to Lancaster County.
Tuesday morning we drove along many of the routes that I have traveled as both a child and an adult and I tried to process all the changes I noticed both in the landscape and the roadways. We arrived in downtown Lancaster, parked in a parking garage and headed for the library to get our bearings and wi-fi for me. We walked towards Lancaster Central Market, admiring the urban brickwork and the spring flora unfurling all around. 
Crossing the street, we noticed a beautiful park tucked in between the buildings giving tribute to two local newspaper brothers, with a restaurant under a waterfall feature. It was mid-morning and quiet, but it seemed like a lovely place to find refuge from the noisy street traffic.

Steinman Park and Waterfall from Public Art Archive

We walked back out onto the street trying to complete a square to keep our parking garage accessible without having to walk miles back to it. Kate has no interest in sight-seeing so we are always keeping her restlessness in check while giving the rest of us an enjoyable outing.
Along the way, we found plenty of fountains, monuments, cemeteries, and church parks to help us enjoy the urban experience despite the noisy trucks that thunder through the downtown route. The clean streets, well preserved architecture and historic streetscape environment amongst the flowering trees was gorgeous. 

As we went through a crosswalk, I looked up the side street and noticed a cemetery full of blooming trees and flowers and in the spirit of my cemetery-loving friend, Chantelle, I ushered us all into this beautiful sanctuary of the St. James Episcopal Church and Cemetery. We wandered around looking at the various tombstones, garden structures and memorial plaques.

Back out onto the street, we walked back towards the busy intersection where our parking garage awaited, the girls having had enough of the urban experience and Seth and I using our phones to look for a park outside the downtown area to enjoy our picnic lunch.

Seth found Lancaster Central Park on Google Maps, so we followed the directions out of the city and into the countryside where we turned onto a side road leading us up into the winding and hilly park laneways. We were kept busy interpreting all the park signs and arrows looking for an area where we could sit at picnic table and enjoy the warm spring day. We turned around a couple of times, trying different sections of this massive park and then finally at Seth's direction, we came up over a steep hill and looking down, we saw this historic house and property and I recognized it as Historic Rock Ford, from my planning sessions on Google Maps.

It was perfect place to enjoy our lunch on the wide porch of the house and then walk around enjoying the property as we discussed what to do with our afternoon.

We settled on visiting The National Toy Train Museum in nearby Strasburg. We didn't know what to expect so it was a delightful surprise to be able to activate most of the model train displays ourselves and enjoy all the action from so many different sizes and styles of model trains. 

I made a little video of this Civil War train display. Sometimes there was so much to see and notice for each display, you had to come back and run it again from a different side to see all the action.

Driving to the toy train museum had meant driving through Strasburg itself and seeing the actual train that you can ride. So after leaving the museum, we drove back into town and I decided we should just park at the train station and see what we could enjoy just by walking around.
We were rewarded with one of the engines steaming back down the track to fill up its water reservoir, blowing its horn and giving us all the touristy vibes.

We walked along the station area and looked inside the newly arrived trains that had just disembarked its riders. The Strasburg train is one of at least three that still offer rides in Eastern Pennsylvania. My grandfather was a railroader and back in 2014, we visited the museum that was created from his workplace in Scranton, Pennsylvania known as the Steamtown National Historic Site. 

At some point he started collecting model trains and for years he kept a working model train display upstairs in a bedroom of their house. He would let us go with him and we would stand next to the huge table while he ran all the different trains on the tracks for us. He passed away in 1990 when I was almost into high school and he was the first grandparent that I was old enough to remember losing.