Day Trip - Pennsylvania

As of late, Nanc has been complaining that we don't spend enough time together. I mean I spent the last 9 years living no closer than a 5 hour plane flight, and now we see each other on a daily basis, but you know what? Fine. You want me, ya got me.
So of course she spends the first 20min of our car ride on the phone with her friend Barb. She hangs up and is like:

Mom: Where are we going?
Me: YOU'RE DRIVING.
Dad: Check the glove compartment for maps.
Me: Virginia, Rhode Island, New York City.
Mom (to dad): Where's your GPS?
Dad: Lauren's car, where else?

Which, ok i'll admit for the most part i steal my dad's GPS, because i use it. Normally i put it back afterward, where it can just sit, unused, on his front window. And ok, it is his, but i totally plan on buying my own Global Positioning System one day, but this pay check was credit cards and a yoga mat, so oBvs it had to take a back seat. Anyway this conversation is obsolete because we're in my mom's car, where the GPS would never be anyway.

We cross into Pennsylvania and the traffic on 80W is absurd. Then mom's like, "Hey there's the Delaware water gap welcome center, lets go there and get a map and some pamphlets!" So we're like, fine, and she starts driving there, then like one light before the turn is like, "Hey maybe we should just take a right here, and see where it takes us!" Which is soooo typical Nanc. Normally i'm down for these adventures, but we have no map or idea where we are, so i'm like, "No. Welcome Center first." 

Dad picks up this pamphlet:

And we're like Cool! Then mom picks up this one:

And it's like, really? Anything but candles, please. But then i find this one:

And i think we'll be able to come to some sort of agreement. So Nanc is like, let's check out the view of the reservoir from the look out point on the top of the center and... it's a fucking perfect view:

Of highway 80, where there has obviously been some type of accident. So the Welcome center guy tells us to take 116, and gives us a free map of Pennsylvania to which my dad responds, "Well, we're obviously out of Jersey." So we hop back in the car, and i look at the little map on the back of the pamphlet, and determine we have to go South. So then my mom's like, "Oh! There's the turn!" and turns directly into a diner parking lot. So we're like, "I think it's actually that slow curve 10 feet ahead," and she's like, "It's always an adventure when mom's driving." Which, true. So we drive down a little, and find another look out point that Nanc swerves into, almost passes, then turns into the exit going the opposite way. And look! 

More highway! You really need to work on your view points, Pennsylvania. So we drive a little more down this super cool road with awesome little shops and restaurants, and  nature:

And then mom's like, hey i think we should have hit the highway by now, let me see that map. So i give her the pamphlet and she's like, "You're using this piece of shit? Why didn't you use the map the guy gave us?" And i just don't know, so she proceeds to use that one and determines that we are, in fact, going the wrong way. But hey, it was pretty. So eventually (like half an hour later) we get to the country junction:

Which is the weirdest store in the world. I mean where else can you buy a fake dead bald eagle and a reasonably priced carpet, all in the same pile?

I pretty much wandered around and took pictures including: A dragon, a stone steak, Captain Jack Sparrow (always!), an elephant and giraffe chilling with a triceratops, an old man in an out house, among many others. Eventually i find my dad who is probably thinking, "I wish this bar was real."

And we track down my mom in front of the mid-evil helmets and fake flower display:  

Then we go to lunch, which is gross. I had a stale pretzel, my mom had a sugar in-drenched smoothie, and dad had ice cream because god help the man if he goes 5 hours without it. The place looked cool from the outside, but inside was reminiscent to my high school cafeteria, gross.

 So while mom got more closely acquainted with the Country Junction:

Dad found a farm that must have been in our family for generations:

The words, "Get it? I'm Pappy!" Actually came out of his mouth right before this shot. Anyway the Country Junction was not worth the visit, but Phil said it best, "Yeah, but if we didn't come here, we always would have wondered." True. So i was like, "Hey next time let's just walk around the water and go eat at one of those cool restaurants we passed on that road we took by accident." And Dad was like, "If you feel like walking I don't mind parking the car two miles up the road, meet you there!" Ass. Anyway at this point we decided to go home, and not make that Candle Store stop, thank god:

Best two shots of the trip: Above on 80E right before leaving the state. Below further down 80E on the turn off to 206S.