A weekend with no plans and Valentine’s weekend to boot. Combine that with over two weeks of mostly being frozen in. When I said, “we need to do something this weekend to get out of the house”, Steve suggested a day trip to Lancaster. That turned into, “we need to dump Spud’s tank on Sunday when it will finally be warm enough. Let’s take Spud and spend the night.” Some quick research on Harvest Host found a Meadery right in Lancaster, in the Arts District that had availability.
Friday, I went to get Spud ready. It still needed cleaning since our last long trip and then packing up. First, I asked Steve if we could move Spud to the middle of the driveway so I wouldn’t have to keep walking on the slippery ice and snow. That proved a bit of a challenge. When Steve went to back up the van before centering it, he quickly got stuck on a mound of icy snow. Finally, he had to resort to an axe to chop away the snow to free poor Spud, but once that was accomplished, I was able to ready everything for our adventure.
Saturday morning, we headed to the Lancaster Central Market, always a favorite shopping spot. Parking in the very crowded downtown, with a lot of the spots full of snow was a challenge, but Steve prevailed. In the market we picked up some veggies, gluten free bread, and such. Then we walked to The Southern Market (you can read about it in past Lancaster posts) and had some of our favorite Pho.
We decided to drive up to Adamstown which is supposedly the Antique Capital of the World for shopping, or maybe the U.S. For us, it was a new place to explore. We went to two of the many Antique Malls. I found just three records for our daughter’s art, but one was a Cabbage Patch Kids, so very cool and they were running a sale, so I spent less than three dollars.
We took the scenic route from Adamstown to Lititz, where their annual Fire & Ice Festival was going on. There were no fires, not only because it was daytime but because they do those the second weekend. I assume that is to preserve the ice sculptures. A lot of the sculptures were lovely but may had already deteriorated. For one of the coldest winters in a long time, the festival got stuck with the warmest week in a while. Still, we wandered around admiring the sculptures and ducked into a few stores. The line at Wilber Chocolates was crazy long. Not sure if they were doing Valentine’s specials but not interested enough to find out.
When we got to Medusled Meadery, they started giving us samples of the different meads on tap to try. They told us they no longer serve food but we were welcome to bring our own. A quick look at the gluten free app said a vegan restaurant, Bad Garden Kitchen, that we had tried before was a five minute walk. When we got there Steve decided to take out from the Thai place next door, while I got a veggie burger and sweet potato fries, with what turned out to be the best honey mustard dipping sauce!
We took our food back to the Meadery and decided to order a flight which included the three Meads we had tried earlier and another that they just restocked, which was flavored with Green Tea and wound up being my favorite. We ate, drank and played one of the board games they had on some shelves, a silly Pirate Dice game that kept us amused. Then we picked up some bottles for taking home, including for our youngest son. Our son will really have to make it there himself, as one of the men working there has all the same interests as he does, from D&D, Magic The Gathering, Art, Mead and probably more. The Meadery also has some axe throwing targets and many years ago our youngest son worked teaching axe throwing.
The parking lot was across the street and although there was some road noise, we heard very little of it tucked under the warm covers in Spud. It was good to be back on Spudventures.
In the morning we decided to have breakfast out. We picked On Orange from the gluten free app and Yelp recommendations. The menu was small but they were great with accommodating gluten free /dairy free and subbing choices. The staff were all super friendly and helpful. Parking in town was easier early on a Sunday too, so a plus.
We had no plans for Sunday, except van maintenance on the way home, so I couldn’t pass up an opportunity for another Farm Market. Media Farmer’s Market is every other Sunday in the winter. A lot of my favorite vendors were there, Midnight Mushrooms, Taste of Peubla, (which has great gluten free vegan tamales, that make a quick and easy dinner out of the freezer), Sazon to Go with their vegan empanadas and more. Even got some organic winter veggies, though I was pretty stocked.
Normally we extend trips as much as we can, but since this started as a day trip and they were predicting afternoon rain, we did a few errands on the way home and got home to unpack and relax. Still a few weeks until our next long trip, but who knows if we will have another short Spudventure or two in the meantime. Stay tuned.