Summer Vacation Picture Recap

Since we are known to take a lot of pictures on our vacations, we generally do a video recap of some of the pictures that were taken along the way. So here is our closing Hollywood Four summer vacation highlight reel ... in pictures.

World's Largest General Store in 2 Minutes

As I mentioned in my post this morning, on one of our last day's of vacation we stopped at the Country Junction: The World's Largest General Store. Here is a bonus clip of the kids walking through the entire store in 2 minutes.

Summer Vacation Days 7-8

Our last couple days of vacation were spent in traveling to Harrisburg and Altoona, PA for minor league baseball games. On our way, we stopped at Country Junction: The World's Largest General Store. This was an interesting stop, to stay the least. That evening we attended a Harrisburg Senators game on City Island which was a very cool stadium. Unfortunately, we only made it through 3 innings before the game was rain postponed. The next day we were going to hike the 1,000 Steps Hiking Trail, but it was too rainy. So, after killing some time, we finished the day off at the Altoona Curve baseball game. This was another gem of a stadium, but again we were only able to enjoy 4 innings before more rain. So, we drove home last night and that ended our summer Hollywood Four vacation.

Summer Vacation Day 6

For day 6 of our Hollywood Four vacation, we planned on going to a big, local waterpark. However, I forgot to pre-purchase the tickets online and the price at the gate was too expensive (plus the place was a mad house). So we decided to take another hike down Indian Trail on Camelback Mountain. Despite this being less than 2 miles, in the 90+ degree weather, we were hot and drenched with sweat. So we headed for Sand Spring Lake in Hickory State Park for a refreshing swim at this "off-the-beaten-path" beach. It was a short swim, however, as the storm clouds began to roll in. So we left the beach and checked out the very cool Boulder Field in the park before we left (it was an endless field of boulders). To finish off our night, we had a huge pizza dinner at Trattoria's 903. On the way back to our room, we stopped at the Jim Thorpe memorial park to learn a little about the person to which this town is named. As a nightcap, we watched a family movie together (Smurfs).

Summer Vacation Day 5

On day 5 of our Hollywood Four vacation, we enjoyed a nice, hearty breakfast at the Broadway Grill and Pub then headed out for a 5 mile hike along the Glen Onoko Falls Trail in the Lehigh Gorge State Park. This turned out to be an awesome 3+ hour hike, with a lot of scenic payoffs along the way. The highlight video below captures many of the cool waterfalls we saw (keeping Andrew and Abby refreshed along the way). After our hike, we went to Mauch Chunk Lake for a quick dip to cool off from the 90 degree temperatures. After that we returned to our hotel to clean up before enjoying a nice dinner at Molly McGuire's Grille & Pub. For our nightcap, we played some cards and enjoyed a family Movie (Tin Tin) in our spacious hotel suite.

Summer Vacation Day 4

On the fourth day of our Hollywood Four vacation, we did some hiking in the Lehigh Gorge State Park along the Lehigh River. The trails were not challenging, but there were some nice waterfalls and views. Then we checked into nice little hotel called The Inn at Jim Thorpe where we have a large, one-bedroom suite with a queen sofa for the kids. The suite has been renovated and is very nice. It will be serving as our base of operations the next few days as we do more exploring. We also enjoyed a nice meal at the Inn's restaurant called the Broadway Grill and Pub.

Summer Vacation Days 1-3

Here are some of the highlights from the Hollywood Four 2012 summer vacation. This year we headed east again, starting with a stop in Pittsburgh, PA where we met up with the Plackowskis for a nice German dinner at Hofbräuhaus. The next morning Dad woke up with a head-to-rash from some new medication he was taking. So, we had to make an emergency stop at a pharmacy for some new stuff to get rid of the rash (seems to be working). Then we headed southeast to Frederick, MD where we walked around downtown and then took in a Frederick Keys minor league baseball game (Dad's 51st in a long list of professional baseball parks). On day 3, we made our way for the Poncono Mountains, but we made a couple pit-stops at the Gettysburg, PA historic park and the Hershey, PA chocolate factory.

Hollywood Four Baseball Travels

Last night the Hollywood Four went to the minor league Lake Erie Crushers baseball game in Avon, OH. This was the 50th unique professional baseball stadium that this Hollywood Dad has visited (29 major league ball parks; and 21 minor league ball parks). This doesn't include two spring training ballparks in Arizona, and is in addition to some other important baseball sites that we have visited: Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Field of Dreams, Louisville Slugger factory, and one World Series game. The rest of the Hollywood Four are not far behind, with Karen having visited 41 of these same stadiums, Abby having visited 34 of them, and Andrew having visited 30. You can click the image in the upper right to see a full chronology of our baseball travels. This summer we plan on visiting at least three new ball parks: Frederick Keys, Harrisburg Senators and Altoona Curve.

In true Hollywood style, the video below showcases the history of our travels to all of these baseball ball barks and sites. For the more recent stuff, I included actual photographs we took. However, I didn't feel like scanning our older photographs that were taken before digital photography.