Missing Mondays

This is my meme where I share things that I miss...This week only one thing.

~ Family vacations: When I was a little girl up until about my 2nd year in college mom, dad and I would make our yearly pilgrimage to two of my favorite places in the world, Erie and Lancaster. Every so often we'd go somewhere else, like Seaworld or Niagra Falls, but for the most part we either went to Erie or Lancaster. Now mom and dad are too old or sick to travel that much, and well, the car just isn't good enough to make long trips either.

I found postcards of one of my favorite places in Lancaster this weekend during my cleaning spree. They are of a family amusement park located on Lincoln Highway (RT 30) in Lancaster. It's called Dutch Wonderland. Like all small amusement parks, it was bought up, but by Hersheypark. So it's still much the same park only with a few more rides for the older riders aka the parents.

One of the postcards has the old monorail. That made me smile the most because that particular ride was charred one year when we went. The monorail had been hit by lightning. The new monorail looked more like a box on the track rather than the futuristic car that used to move over the rails.





Another place we used to go was The Choo Choo Barn. A lovely spot heading out to Strasburg. It's a toy train place, only with a twist. The scenery around the trains is Lancaster. You'll see miniature versions of all the sites of the area. I loved it as a small girl.

And Strasburg, where you could take a short ride on the old steam engines. One of the cars on the train came from the film Hello Dolly. That was the car I always wanted to ride on.

Then there was Kitchen Kettle Village and the Farmers Markets, where all kinds of yummy goodies could be bought and eaten.

And speaking of eats....there was Good N' Plenty a Family Style restaurant where you sat at a long table with about 4 other families and enjoyed all kinds of great Amish food. Mmmm. Fresh bread, apple butter, homemade butter. My waistline is growing just thinking about it.

And on almost every trip to Lancaster we'd go almost into Philly to Kennett Square to Longwood Gardens. I've been back 3 times since, but it's not the same without my mom, who loves the place, but can't walk well anymore.

I miss this so badly. Those were good times.