Streakin’ Ain’t Easy – Hershey Park & Niagara Falls vs. My First Run Streak

So many great times!

Good morning! I’m finally back home in my own comfy chair after a week of action packed vacation time and a near 10 hour car ride home yesterday. We had an AMAZING time, but it’s great to be back. I’ll warn you: This post is mainly about my vacation and not so much about running.

The last time I checked in here, I had just made up my mind to start a run streak. I had no idea how long I’d streak, but in my mind it was going to be BIG. I respect you long term streakers now more than ever. I got to 8 days. Eight. Days. I was disappointed in myself to say the least, but I figured unneeded pressure about running was probably counter productive to my recovery. Besides that, I was on vacation!

Our first stop was Hershey, PA. We had a place to stay with friends and said friend works for Hershey, so that was kind of awesome. He had a box of Skor bars ready for me (Michael always does), but of course we ate most of his other candy. The Goffs were excellent hosts and amazing tour guides for what to do at Hershey Park. For those of you that haven’t been, Hershey Park is GREAT. All of my kids (11, 7 and 2) had great times, as did the adults. The layout is great, since there are little kid things, bigger kid things and biggest kid things all kind of put together throughout the park. The kids loved the waterpark portion too and could have spent the whole day there.

After nearly 3 days in Hershey, we freed our friends from their burden of dealing with us and had a day to kill. I really didn’t plan anything so the morning of, I googled the route to Niagara Falls and looked at what was in between. I decided on Williamsport, PA, the home of the Little League World Series! I booked us a room at the Genetti Hotel for one night. When we first pulled up, I thought I’d made a HUGE mistake and that Jen might not be too pleased. It little a LITTLE run down from the outside haha. The inside was definitely dated, but in a Fenway Park kind of way. Pretty cool. Our room had THREE beds, which was perfect! The family loved it. I managed to sneak out and try a flight at Bullfrog Brewery, which was right across the street.

All pretty good beers. The coffee stout was excellent!

On to Niagara Falls we went. We met up with a brother of mine from the Navy and his family. Honestly, I can’t express just how awesome the Falls are. You have to see them. It’s amazing to me that they formed naturally. We went to the Canada side, because pretty much everyone told me to. The food, beer and coffee were all great. I had everything that I needed. My family really seemed to enjoy it all too. They would have liked to spend more time with all of the fun and games type stuff, but I explained that we were there for the Falls and they seemed to understand well. Poor Ben was pushed to his limits most of the time, but ice cream helped.

The kids, checking out the view from our room.

I did manage to do some running along the Falls while I was there. I would have liked to run more, but running clothes and energy were limiting factors. My buddy even joined me for some of the miles. A sight like that gave my running such energy!

I was in no danger during the capture of this image (I promise, Mom).

So, that about does it for this week’s vacation recap. I’d like another one soon, but it’ll have to wait until Christmas.