First Out of State Trip

I have felt a little trapped in my own house since the baby was born.  I really can't leave with both boys, since I am not supposed to lift Theodore and there are too many instances in any trip where I would have to lift him and I haven't fully started driving yet after my surgery.  And Brian is working as much as possible, so he can't really take us many places.  But today, I made him take us for a little outing.

We couldn't really decide what to do, but I've been wanting to drive up to Lancaster for a while now, so we headed north without any real plans except to find some "orange trees" as we instructed Theo.

By the time we got there around noon, we were quite hungry so we searched for restaurants on our GPS and randomly picked the fifth one it listed - The Smoketown Diner.  Apparently, Smoketown is one of the many, many towns that cluster outside of Lancaster.  It was a small diner, loud enough that Theo wasn't too distracting to everyone else, but quiet enough that the baby stayed asleep pretty much the whole time.  It was a cheap meal, and pretty filling but not too large portions, though we had to wait a bit.  Though I normally don't order dessert, I was excited to see peanut butter pie on the menu and disappointed when they didn't have any.

We picked up a guide and a map here, and were interested by a dairy, and a pretzel shop, and headed that way.

The dairy, Oregon Dairy, turned out to be the perfect place to spend one of the last nice days of the year with both boys.  We ordered some really tasty ice cream and ate out on the ice cream deck which was perfect with the sun warming us.  Theodore then had a great time playing on the playground, and I enjoyed seeing all the white deer they kept there.

Then we traveled just a bit more and came to a nice, historic town called Lititz.  We found  "the first commercial pretzel bakery in America,"  Sturgis Pretzel Bakery.  Though it was too close to nap time for us to take the tour, it looked interesting and was only a couple bucks a person.  We picked up some bags of pretzels, and a few hot freshly baked ones as well.

On our way out, we enjoyed the rest of our scenic, winding drive, and headed home a different route through Gap.  Of course, we had to stop at our cheese shoppe there.  Theo, always the chatterbox, thanked Bill for the cheese as we left with Manchego and an Irish cheddar with porter.

Elijah only cried a little on the drive home, as he was getting a little hungry.  Overall, it was a very successful first outing as a family of four, and Elijah's first time out of his home state.