Heading to Middletown and Hershey, PA

Wednesday was our day to drive to the campground in Middletown. Since it was only about 45 miles away it didn't make any sense to turn in the rental car in New Holland and pick up another one in Harrisburg, so I was going to follow in the car behind David in the mortorhome. Our check out time in Intercourse is noon so we decided not to leave the campground until about that time. It looked like a good opportunity for us to go out to breakfast. David found a great restaurant in Lancaster called Gracies on West Main.  http://gracieslancaster.com/ Luckily we got there before the crowd because it fill up really fast, They had wonderful, food and plenty of it. Too much for us to eat it all. On the table was a menu of desserts that was a bit unusual.

It's too bad we were leaving town as we would have loved to had another meal here.

On to Middletown. We got all checked in and set up. Since my meeting started the next morning at 8, I wanted to drive over to Hershey and pick up my registration packet and find my way around to the classrooms. It was a bit odd in the way things were laid out, but I did find my way. I kept noticing the designs in the carpets. What a great pattern for a quilt.

This area seemed to have no shortage of good places to eat. The distance from where we were staying and the meeting in Hershey was only 7 miles apart, so we looked for places near by for dinner. We found steak and seafood places, Italian, several grills with brew pubs and several others we would have liked to try and some we would have liked to returned to. Needless to say, I am in my fat pants again. But we're on vacation and we intend to enjoy it.

My meetings started early each morning for 4 days. I signed up with some wonderful longarm instructors and they were fantastic.The classes just seemed to get better as the week went along.  But 8 am to 6 pm made for a long day. They did give us a 2 hr lunch break between classes which was plenty of time to take in the quilt show and shop in the vendors mall. One of my instructors had her own little show at the show with 16 of her quilts on display. Many of them I recognized from winning first and second place at various quilt shows around the country and in Chattanooga. She actually won first and second place for 2 other quilts in this show. She is the main reason I came to this show, to be able to take classes from her. She is a quilting wizard. Her little samplers that she used for demos looked like show winners.

The vendor area was very nice as well. The vendors there offered different types of things than at the Chattanooga show. I even found an LED light for my Featherweight machine. I bought a couple of patterns from local quilters and that was it.

The week was very tiring and I was glad it was over. My head is spinning with new ideas for custom quilts. All of these instructors were great.

We did take Sunday (my birthday) after class to eat lunch at Red Robin, visit Hershey's Chocolate World and have dinner on our way back to the campground.

We are headed home now and back to the real world of low carb eating and our regular routine. The kitties will be very happy to get home so they can go out on their back porch to watch the birdies and lay in the sunshine. I've got a bunch of quilts to get quilted too.

A great vacation though.