We had a fun week with the grandkids. Now we’re exhausted. We had a couple of “interesting” experiences this week. We spent a couple of days in the Lancaster area, staying at the Red Caboose Hotel. The second day we decided to go to the Turkey Hill Ice Cream Experience on Linden St. We set the GPS and took off for adventure. It turns out that Linden St. in the Lancaster area is like Voltaire St. in France, or Lincoln Park in Iowa. After half an hour of driving, we found ourselves on the wrong Linden St. The highlight of the Experience is making a pint of your own flavor of ice cream. After that the entire pint of ice cream is promptly consumed. These are timed tickets with every time slot filled to the max. We took off for the correct Linden St. We arrived, walked directly to our ice cream lab, and they closed the door behind us. I don’t generally enjoy standing in lines, but standing in line is a lot less stressful than sliding in at the last second.

Liz took a flight home Saturday morning because her school starts early. Bryon decided he wants to spend a week with Ryn working on the farm. So I drove Bryon up to Gibson, PA where I would meet Ryn and transfer Bryon. To break up the 4-hour ride, we stopped at the Echo Dell Cave. It was a nice tour. Smart phone cameras are absolutely amazing. I got several very good available light pictures just holding the phone. Somehow the electronics takes a long exposure while un-jiggling the picture to compensate for my jiggling hands. As the tour was about to end, I walked into the ceiling. Then I fell on my butt. I remember thinking “I hit my head, why am I going to fall on my butt?” Then I bruised myself and made my pants absolutely filthy from the wet clay floor. The head wound bled. It being a head wound, there was blood everywhere. I made a bee-line for the outdoors with blood all over my face and hands. I went up the 71 steps. The Echo Dell folks sent somebody out to give me a hand. They gave me a roll of paper towels, two ice packs, free passes for a future visit, and a bottle of cold water. The wound didn’t bleed for long. I was able to clean the blood in their wash room. Then we ate our lunch at their picnic table (as planned) while I held ice packs on my head (as not planned). I didn’t have a spare pair of pants, so I washed them out in the hotel as best I could.

Ryn and I had a lot of fun working out an elaborate transfer process for Bryon. It involved encrypted messages, flashing lights, beeping horns, and more. It was so complicated we ended up just using the token I created by tearing a playing card and mailing one half to Ryn.

Danita and I will drive up to Gibson together next weekend. On the way back, we plan to stop at a car museum. Hopefully, that will be safer than a cave.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.