The Flowers Explore - Hershey Pennsylvania Thousand Trails RV Pt2 - 2021/08/24-31

Time to continue the rest of our stay at Hershey Thousand Trails! 

Any time the pool looked free, the kids wanted to stop by. Makes sense because in a few weeks it's going to get cold and the pools aren't going to be so enticing. Both kids piled on top of Ethan and he'd swim underwater with both of them holding on. 

On Friday morning, the Candy Guessing bin finally came out! This week is themed to the "Back to School Blues" so all the candy inside is colored blue. 

The kids are super excited! That's a lot of candy there. Wouldn't it be so awesome if we won it? 

Looking closer they also saw that there are some limited edition blue Dum-Dums. We've got to win those so we can do a taste test!

On a nearby table was a sheet where you write your name and your guess. The first person to guess the correct answer without going over is the winner! Writing it down on the paper where everyone could see it did add an interesting wrinkle. It made it easy for someone to pull a "Price Is Right" move on you and bid 1 over yours. We wrote our guesses, the very first on the list, and headed off to our next activity. 

Mini golf! The first hole is a straight shot with no obstacles. It lulls you into a false sense of ease.  Ethan even got a hole-in-one on it! The rest of the holes aren't nearly as easy. 

Lots of them had slopes leading to the holes. 

There were bridges that you had to go under, unless you decided to be a renegade and jump off the course and try to land on the bottom near the hole. It's only a penalty if you go out of bounds!

This was a really difficult course. There were lots of balls that went out of bounds, lots of Maximum Score possibles, and of course a lot of laughs and fun too. In the end, I pulled out the win. 

Finally! A farmer's market! Theresa, Rita, and the kids were excited!

They had lots of fresh veggies. 

"Freestone peaches" does not mean they are free kids. 

These Doughnut Peaches were some of the best that Theresa has tasted. We'd end up coming back to this stand 2 more times while we were here. 

They love having older cousins. 

It's a pickleball match!

Bring it on!

Boy versus girls. Ian and Alli can use a little more practice, but we'll have plenty of time on the road to work on that. 

I guess that's comfortable. 

On Sunday morning, it was time to go see who won the Candy Guessing game. Any time we walked by the activity office we'd look over the list. There's about 50 guesses on the list. Hopefully we'll have good luck!

Walking over to the Activity Center desk, the bin of candy is still there. That's a good sign!

On the top is a post-it note. "Joe Flowers"

Boy did the kids get excited! We won! 

Ian let out a giant "YEEEAAAHHHH!"

That's going to be a lot of candy to get through. 

A short time later the employee working the activity center came over to give us our prize. We told her how excited the kids were, how they wouldn't stop talking about it, how it was the first thing they asked about when they woke up, etc. She said she was really happy we won then, because some people just come and collect it without even a thank you. 

It's turning out to be a pretty good blues weekend for us. This was a chalk drawing one of the workers made. 

That is a lot of blue candy. And there's something like 20 Limited Edition Hawaiian Punch Dum Dums that will be finding their way into a taste test soon. And for the record, my guess was 167 and there happened to be 168. Yes!

As I was working outside the RV, one of the neighbors who had rented a cabin asked if we'd like some of the food they couldn't fit into the car. Of course! That's a lot of good things we'll be able to incorporate into our meals over the next few weeks!

Alli got a hair wrap a few months ago while we were in Michigan. It's been growing out and it's time to get it replaced. Aubrey brought all her materials with her to give her another one. 

There's only a few more hours to hang out with our visitors. There's only one place we haven't gone that the kids have been eyeing. 

They for 75 cents a match, they started learning how to play pool. It'll help when they get a little taller. 

There was a fun game of ping-pong happening at the next table over. 

It was a fun few days and we loved having visitors! Thank you for coming out to see us!

Goodbyes are always hard. 

Better get some swimming in. 

When we got here we asked if there was a good bike trail that we could ride. They recommended a flat gravel path called the Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails walking path. 

This tree looks like it's come down recently! It's right across the path. We carried our bikes over it. 

Otherwise, it was a beautiful trail. The woods helped keep the bright sunshine off us, so we were able to get more miles than we were expecting in. 

On weekends they sell snacks and root beer from this giant barrel. 

Hershey Pennsylvania is beautiful. 

The trail maintenance crew is on top of it! They were already cleaning up the fallen tree. 

Our previous longest bike ride was something over 10 miles. Ian wanted to beat that!

And when he learned that a half marathon is 13.1 miles, that became our new goal. And we did it! Our first half marathon on bikes! Great job kids! Especially Alli on her single-speed bike! 

Who is ready to start their first day of school! Ian got a taste of this at the end of the year as we were moving from California. Now that we're full-time RVers, he's starting his first year of home school! We've got a lot of big plans. Online school will take care of the basics, then we'll take care of the extracurriculars. Field trips, music lessons, foreign language, computer skills, and more! 

And Alli is starting her first year of Kindergarten! She's loving it!

A baby deer and his friend were hanging out at the entrance to our campground. They kids loved seeing them. 

We've been driving by this pink front loader whenever we got out exploring. Alli had to have a picture of it before we go. Anything that is pink with her. 

Despite the heat, the kids want to make dinner over the fire. Ian and I got these giant logs burning and we got some hot dogs and our roasting sticks. It was a tasty dinner!

But our time is up here in Hershey and it's time to move on. Hershey Thousand Trails has certainly been one of our favorite places to stay so far!

Ian - Hershey thosand trails - My favorite part was winning the candy guss. We had Aubrey Rita and Ethan visit. we did swan boats. me and Alli played our first game of pool there. I like Hershey. 

Alli - hrshy - My favorite prt was getting the candy in the bin. We gon on swon bots for free. We went swimming. We got ice cream.