Quarryville Yogi Bear June 2019

We don't normally go to Yogi Bear Jellystones because I think they are way to expensive and almost everything they have there costs extra money except the pools and bounce pillows and stuff. This year Paul got back from Afghanistan at the end of April and then he applied to the Maryland State Police Dept and if he got in he was going to be in a live in academy for 6 months right through summer. With this in mind we didn't make any concrete camping plans so that we didn't loss money. On top of that He was transferred and made FADO in the fire dept so he lost all of his vacation picks anyway. So needless to say we did a lot of last minute planning and couldn't get into a lot of the places we love to go to like Rocky Gap. So the first place we headed to was Jellystone. It's about an hour drive from our house so we had plenty of time to pack up the camper and take our time. So a left around noon with dog and bunny in tow and stopped at the local Cracker Barrel for some good down home cooking before we got on the road for real. When we know that we are going to be stopping for an extended period of time with Elle and Cal (dog, bunny) with us we make sure to bring the spare key for the truck so they can stay in the A/C while we get food we also try to get done ASAP.

Jellystones are expensive but they are always a nice place to go, always clean and the staff is very nice. This particular one we went to when the kids were little, they have a nice size water park, splash zone and 2 big pools and a family and an adult hot tub. You can also rent cabanas that have ,a table, chairs, a fan, mini fridge, and a TV, but they were way to expensive. The park also has 2 bounce pillows, an arcade, botchy ball court, volleyball, playground, and escape room. For an extra fee they also have laser tag.

We had a really spacious site and we liked it so much we decided to book the one next to it for Halloween with some friends that also have a camper. In true Perry family vacation fashion we got there and got the camper all set up and in rained. It poured for about an hour, while it rained we got the inside of the camper organized and just hung out. Nothing much to do outside in the rain. They close the pool as soon as they hear thunder so there wasn't any good reason to go there. That night we had hot dogs for dinner

An adult trip to Boston

Sandys first trip to Massachusetts

We left on a Sunday evening around 630 in the afternoon. Pauls parents took the kids to Ocean city Maryland so we figured we have a grown up trip. I have been wanting to take Paul to the Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston for a while because it’s really the only beer he likes. The GPS said it should take about 6 hours or so, we planned on stopping at some point to eat and pull full in Big Burtha so we knew it would take a little longer. Well at 930 pm on a Sunday the traffic going to the Washington bridge in New York right outside New York city was absolutely crazy! Try pulling a 41 foot trailer through a toll plaza while people are cutting in and out of the lanes geez even Paul was getting flustered. Once we got on the bridge it didn’t any better. Thank goodness it was dark because I probably would have been freaking out I don’t really like bridges in the first place. After we finally got through that mess the fun doesn’t stop there. We followed the GPS, we call her Lola, to another rd and of course once we get on it we figure out that we are to tall to be on this highway. So we quickly exit into a little neighborhood and stop on the side of the road. I’m now freaking out because I’m apparently the copilot and now it is my job to navigate throught this tiny neighborhood, with its tiny streets and its low hanging trees. I am not good at these things. I have never been good at these types of things. My husband if fully aware that I am not good at these types of things and yet he still expects me to do it…. About a year or more ago we were leaving western Maryland and we needed fuel so Paul says can ou look on the map and find a place for us to fuel up? Yeah sure no problem I can do that. Well I found one and I thought it had plenty of room, so we exit…. On this small ramp into this little main street town. Paul is not happy…. We pull into the gas station and we are hanging out into the road…. He even more mad. We get gas and then he says to me you need to go out and stop traffic so I can back out of here because the trailer is to tall to go around. So I’m pretty sure I have been scared for life. Long story short we took out some branches but we did manage to find I-95 in just a couple of turns. The next argument was a rest stop lol we pulled into a large one but couldn’t find the full pump so we left that one and stopped at the next one.



We fueled on and ate McDonalds on the tailgate of the truck with the dog and the rabbit chilling with us. We got back on the road after probably a half hour and arrived at the Hanscom Fam camp about 20 minutes outside of Boston.
   

So we have never stayed at a military campground before, but apparently the way it works is you just show up and pray that they have space for you …. It’s now 130 in the morning, we are both tired were driving around the pitch dark closed fam camp looking for the spot we found on the map that is suppose to be open. They have no full hook up sites available just water and electric. OK…. So if you have read any other post I have posted on this blog you will know that my other weakness and the thing that gives me the most anxiety is directing Paul backing up into a spot. I’m not good at this in the broad damn day light much less in the middle of the pitch black woods… another argument pursues. Eventually we get into the spot doesn’t take that long, plug everything in and of course we get an error code on the front A/C unit the cherry on top of a miserable day. My husband being the person that he is immediately starts taking things apart to try and figure out what is wrong. If I was in charge that would have waited until the morning because it was now 3am and I’m not having any of it. I just say lets just sleep in the back room where the kids usually sleep and work on it in the morning. Nope Paul needs to get it fixed right away… fine at this point I’m zero help so I go to sleep in the back room and he finally comes to bed at 6am and climbs in JPs bed so I assumed nothing was resolved. In the morning around 10 or so I wake up my entire bocy aching and climb my butt out of the top bunk because Paul took the ladder and go lay in my bed, the temperature is just fine we could have slept there all night. Paul wakes up an hour later and explains to me everything that he did in attempts to fix the problem. Including take the A/C unit apart, switching fuses, taking the converter apart which is behind a panel in an outside compartment. And putting all of it back together. At 6am he realizes that absolutely nothing is wrong with the camper and the problem is with the panel at the campground. Half of it isn’t working so only half of the camper is getting power….. he got that information after using his google machine to research. 11 am on Monday what an eventful trip we have had so far and we haven’t even left the trailer yet. The camp host, a older women with a very thick Boston accent, comes around to see who has left and arrived over night and tells us we need to come and register. When we go to register she informs us that a spot opened up that morning with a full hook up…. I was fine just staying where we were. Whatever so I have to take a navy shower not a big deal to me, but Paul wants to move…. So we pack up and move. The new spot is at the end of the street and once again I need to back him up, luckily it was straight and light so I didn’t really need to do much.

Before we left we decided that Monday would be an exploration day to see what we had to do to get into town. A friend of ours suggested taking the subway from the furthest station called Alewife, but considering the chain of events we encountered we just stayed in and went to a little pizza place and had pizza and mozzarella sticks. Then we went on base to try to buy trolley tickets but they were closed. That night we watched a movie and went to bed.

Tuesday we had ticket for a tour at the Samuel Adams brewery at 1pm so we woke up at 10 left to go on base got our ticket and went to the Alewife subway station and took the subway from the red line to the orange line and got to the brewery with a 45 minutes to spare before our tour so we decided to have a flight of beer… on an empty stomach…smart. What I thought was going to be an exclusive tour with some really great samplings of beer wound up being a tour with that was mostly sitting in the barrel room with a group of ten, which was cool not a lot of people get to do that. Well we were sampling 3 different types of beer which we were excited about until they said the word “sour”. We just looked at each other like WTF does that mean, we it mean exactly what it sounds like, the beer that we were about to consume was indeed sour, like pucker your lips sour. It was in no way shape or form good and the last one tasted like balsamic vinegar, Paul and I both dumped that one. Very disappointed and I felt really bad because I thought it was something way different, but we did get to experience something that not everyone gets to so all in all it was a good experience and we got to keep the sampling cup. The flight of beer that we had before we went in was good I had a milk shake beer, hibiscus, sam 76, and porch rocker, which was by far my favorite.

  












After we left we realized that we lost our subway ticket so we had to pay for a new one and we made our way to state street in the heart of down town Boston. We found our trolley and took an hour tour of Boston with a talking guide who was also driving what a character.  By now its like 430 and we are starving and we have headaches because we had all that beer so we go to an Italian restaurant that was also recommended by our friend. When we got there we weren’t sure if we were dressed appropriately but they let us in. It was much fancier then what we were looking for but we were starving so we didn’t care I would have spent 100 dollars on dinner if I had to at this point. We had bread with a roasted garlic, olive oil, and a white bean puree it was really good. The appetizer was a ricotta stuffed zucchini flower and circle of roasted veggies, for the main course I had seafood risotto and Paul had Pasta with truffle on top. Before the main course our waitress came and took our silverware from the appetizer and gave us a brand new set and used a crumb scrapper to remove the crumbs from the table cloth, very fancy. Surprisingly the meal only cost 88 dollars I think which isn’t bad considering Paul and I have 60 dollars a piece for a meal before, well worth it by the way. After we left there we went across the street and got a canoli and a cup cake from Mikes Pastry, another recommendation, I was not impressed it was just OK. We took a short walk down the freedom trail past the Paul Revere house, that was closed, and to Faneuil Hall Market, and hopped back on the subway after about a half hour walk, back to Alewife and drove to the BX to get snacks then back to the fam camp. That night we went to the stop and shop to get food for the next day and snacks it’s basically a Giant supermarket.

Wednesday was our last day so we got up ate breakfast and set out for Alewife. We walked about a half hour to the aquarium and spent most of the day there. The Boston aquarium isn’t as big as the national aquarium in Baltimore its very quaint and has just enough to see. The center piece is a 23-foot-deep 45 feet wide tank with all kinds of species of fish including 2 bonnet sharks, 3 sea turtle one of which is 85ish years old and weights over 500 pounds. There’s also a very long eel that’s a beautiful shade of yellow, in the center of the tank is a man-made coral reef and on the top floor you can look all the way down to the bottom of the tanks and see the hustle and bustle of the fish below. They also have 3 types of penguins they all have bands on their arms and you can use the screen to look them up and see the names of all the penguins. On the first floor they have a touch tank with small sharks and sting rays, in the basement they have a display with shark eggs. The shark eggs are in a glass case in the wall and they have a light shinning through the egg so you can see the baby shark inside moving around. When we left the aquarium, it looked like it was going to pour buckets so we went to the Ye ole Union Oyster house to eat. I had some real new England clam chowder and it was so good the clams casino I had was crap, they were tough and chewy and greasy. We left and continued on the freedom trial where we saw the state house the Benjamin franklin statue, the Granary burying ground where Samuel Adams was buried along with John Hancock and Paul Revere. We also saw the park street church where Boston meth addicts seem to hangout. We took a stole through the Boston Commons and the Boston public garden where we saw a very majestic statue of George Washington atop a horse. The tour guide we had the day before told us a story about a lady who paid 500,000 dollars for a parking space right by the Boston commons, crazy people but we able to see the house with the crazy expensive parking spot. We took the park street subway station back to Alewife and went out of the way to find diesel. We got back to the trailer and played rummy and had left over pizza before going to bed.

We woke up at 9 am pack everything up and we were on the road around 1130. It was raining so traffic was absolutely horrible and it took us an hour to get past New York, we stopped in Jersey to get diesel and we didn’t get home until 830 at night GAG. I don’t think we will be taking the trailer back to Boston any time soon it was a very stressful drive t and from for us both.