Family Weekend Getaway for the First Time

Family Weekend Getaway for the First Time
To finish off a great summer with lots of first, we took our first family road trip as our little one turned 6 months. We drove up to Pocono Mountains region in Pennsylvania where we enjoyed local fair and stayed overnight. It was an inexpensive family mini vacation.

First stop on our kiddos first road trip, was a winery. Of course.
We went to Mountain View Vineyard to sample some of their wines. They also have a distillery with flavored vodkas. We arrived there early, before the place even opened as we were planning to feed the baby before hand so she would be nice and full and less fussy. It worked at least for half of the visit. While waiting for the place to open and getting some food, we met a big dog that turned out to be quite friendly. And also met a rooster, which turned out to be the bad-ass of the place and we were warned, after the fact, to not let him get to close to us.

There was good wine at this winery but no phone service. We have Verizon as the provider, and we barely had any bars. This rarely happened in many of our travel. We were trying to look up the address of the next winery and could not get to it. Since we were not too far from our home base, I didn't even think about doing the Google Maps offline ahead of time. We did get pointed to correct way by some of the locals and were on our way.
Next stop was the (Sorrenti) Cherry Valley Vineyard. Unfortunately, on their site and other marketing they chose to exclude Sorrenti from the name, hence why it was so hard to find.
The food there was great, we enjoyed our pizza with some sangria and bread sticks. The property is spread out and has a fountain, gazebo, and lots of sitting areas.
The wines are ok, though well made. Though the wine servers were impersonal and standoffish. Which dampened the experience quite a bit.


While in the car we had some kids gadgets along. A very helpful one that I use even on shorter trips around the town is the mirror that you can view in your rear-view to see your kin in a back facing carseat. The one we have, BRICA In-Sight Magical Firefly Mirror, also has entertainment for the little one with music lights and shapes. It comes with a remote, so that I can easily turn it on from the front seat. One caveat, is that it has to be manually turned on before starting the drive, which is actual an OK feature, though would have like on/off button on the remote.

Overnight we stayed at the Holiday Inn. At check-in we were able to upgrade to a Jacuzzi room for less than $10. The room looked great. It was huge, see picture below. Just enough room for 3 of us :)

The bathroom could have been cleaner. There were some hairs around it and some small stains left over. Overall, the place looked clean

The phone chargers came in handy. I was charging my phone throughout the trip via the Griffin Dual USB Car Charger in the car and my wife powered up hers with Pebble Smartstick 2200mAh Portable Charger and with the Griffin USB AC Adaptor in the room. It saved a lot of time and worry while traveling and not having to look out for the power remain percentage.

While those are great, I have updated our mobile charger just recently. We got the Mophie Powerstation that has 4000mAh

The next day, our first stop was a butterfly farm. I have never been to one of these, and we were both wondering what the kiddo's reaction is going to be since she is so little. It was quite an experience. There were a whole lot of pretty free flying butterflies. She loved every moment of it. It was fun for an entire family

The following stop was the Largest County Store. That was also an experience. A whole lot of space filled with all kinds of stuff

We had one more stop afterwards at a winery. This time at The Big Creek Vineyard, where we met one of the owners and had a nice sampling of their wines as well as a chat. We ended up getting a couple of bottles for the road home as their wine was good and their atmosphere was pleasant.

Other gadgets that we had with us in our trusted Lowepro Passport bag:
Canon Rebel XSi DSLR Camera
TP-LINK Wi-Fi Range Extender
iPhone cable
iPhone
Blue Panasonic Lumix waterproof camera for selfies and just quick shots

None of this is sponsored, except for amazon links. All opinions are my own

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Our Last Hoorah... For Now

Celebratory Road Trip down to Delaware

Last weekend plus 3 more days, we went on road trip down to Delaware. When my wife first brought up the idea for this trip, my first reaction, as well as likely most of you, was "What's in Delaware?" Turns out, quite a bit of things we like to do. The magic words that got me interested were beer, Oktoberfest, and fun drives.
The trip started off on a great note with a lunch stop at Iron Hill Brewery in Wilmington, DE. They have a brewery downstairs and rooftop sitting. I ordered a flight of their beers which comes in glasses a bit larger than regular shot glass. My favorite was Vienna Red Lager. This was paired nicely with guacamole and tortilla chips followed by grilled chicken sandwich. The weather was great and the view overlooked the riverfront.
Next stop was the Nemours Mansion by duPont. We got a tour of the gardens as well as the tour of the house. It was interesting to find out about that some of his story seems to be out of the book "The Great Gatsby," where a guy builds a huge mansion with whole lot of expansive decor to make a woman fall in love with him. And just like in the book, it does not really work out.


After we checked into the hotel, our next stop for the first day was the Delaware Saengerbund Oktoberfest. While this was a fun event, unfortunately, it was raining quite a bit that evening. All the folks were crowded into the tent with all the food and booze. It was quite a spectacle with people soaked from rain or spilled beer, beer cup stacking contest, all kind of costumes and entertainment.


The following day we hit the farmers' market to gather up ingredients for our scenic valley picnic. We took a ride on the doodlebug train via the Wilmington & Western railroad. It was a fun, relaxing, and scenic ride along the river and some very nice properties.


To wash down our lunch, we stopped in at Pizzadili Winery. Nope, they don't serve pizza there. Though they did have vineyards and good wines to sample.


After the winery, we headed to our final destination of the road trip, Rehoboth Beach. There we stopped in at restaurant "Salt Air" for dinner. They have a great menu of seafood and other local ingredients. We had Corn and Crab Chowder, which was delicious, followed by Bacon Wrapped Baby Potatoes, mmm bacon. And for entree we had Eastern Shore Crab Cakes.
And to finish off a day of great tasting, we stopped in at The Ice Cream Store, a place with hundreds of different ice cream flavors. If you are ever in the Rehoboth, come by this place and try some of their flavors. If nothing else, they have some interesting combinations and names. That evening we also got in a few games of skeeball, points donated to a couple of kids that need to get them over 4,000.


And what trip to Rehoboth be complete without visiting the staples. The following day we had dinner at DogFish Head Restaurant and Brewery, food was good and so was the brew. My favorite is the Midas Touch. For lunch next day we had fries from famous Thrashers, which got shared with some quick grabbing seagulls.

The same day we headed out to Nassau Winery and finished the day with dinner at Oyster House to celebrate our 3rd year anniversary. 

To break up the trip, we also made some interesting and scenic stops. First was in a very tiny town of Odessa, population 364. Then Heritage Winery for some more sampling of wine and grapes, and a walk through campus of the university and dessert at a local Turkish restaurant in Princeton.


This trip was our vacation/celebration/baby moon. That's right! We are expecting. So don't be surprised when some of the travel gadgets start to more and more lean towards kids travel gadgets :)

Sound-off: Do you have a trip planned this fall? Let us know below

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