Back from our Trip Within a Trip
May. 31st, 2026 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerMay Family Visit Travelog #14½
Centralia, PA · Tue 26 May 2026. 9:30pm.
This blog got lost in my backlog a few days ago. I'll post it now because it's a good summary of the "trip within a trip" Hawk and I took in Pennsylvania while we were visiting her folks.
Tuesday evening we got home from our "trip within a trip". Well, home as in the home of Hawk's parents— which, for now, is our home away from home. We took a two day trip, just the two of us, to enjoy some hiking and also take a break from being with her parents 24/7. Where did we go/what did we do?
The one bit that's new since all of those previous blogs is that we stopped for dinner on the way home this evening. We could have stopped at a popular looking small-town drive-in burger stand in the next town over a few miles south of Centralia, but we didn't. I don't know what better option I was holding out for... because once we got out of that and back onto the interstate the options were basically McDonald's and Burger King. We ate at McDonald's. It was my first time at a McD's in 10 months. It was... not as bad as the sad McDonald's visit 10 months ago. Maybe I'll be ready to go again in 6 months after this.
Now we're back home... well, home away from home... and it's an empty house. MIL, FIL, and BIL are out getting ice cream. Hooray that MIL felt well enough to get out!
Centralia, PA · Tue 26 May 2026. 9:30pm.
This blog got lost in my backlog a few days ago. I'll post it now because it's a good summary of the "trip within a trip" Hawk and I took in Pennsylvania while we were visiting her folks.
Tuesday evening we got home from our "trip within a trip". Well, home as in the home of Hawk's parents— which, for now, is our home away from home. We took a two day trip, just the two of us, to enjoy some hiking and also take a break from being with her parents 24/7. Where did we go/what did we do?
- From near Harrisburg we drove toward Hickory Run State Park. We braved rain and heavy fog on the drive then considered hiking the SHADES OF DEATH trail... but it was more lame than metal so we skipped it.
- We hiked Hawk Falls at Hickory Run. Thankfully the rain had stopped though everything was still wet and the sky gloomy... which is actually good weather for enjoying waterfalls.
- We hiked the Seven Tubs trail near Wilkes-Barre.
- We stayed overnight near Wilkes-Barre. We could have day-tripped it out and back both days but decided to save some time, and give ourselves more of a break from family, by spending a night in a hotel.
- Tuesday we visited Ricketts Glen State Park, where there are an astonishing 21 named waterfalls on one loop trail. With the recent rains we saw more falls than that, plus we added official falls #22 after a late afternoon ice cream stop.
- We detoured slightly on the way home to the town of Centralia, where an underground coal mine fire has been burning for 64 years! Our notion of disaster touring came up a bit short as there was no sign of the underground fire we could see, just a town abandoned and razed so long ago that most of what was once the town center has returned to nature.
The one bit that's new since all of those previous blogs is that we stopped for dinner on the way home this evening. We could have stopped at a popular looking small-town drive-in burger stand in the next town over a few miles south of Centralia, but we didn't. I don't know what better option I was holding out for... because once we got out of that and back onto the interstate the options were basically McDonald's and Burger King. We ate at McDonald's. It was my first time at a McD's in 10 months. It was... not as bad as the sad McDonald's visit 10 months ago. Maybe I'll be ready to go again in 6 months after this.
Now we're back home... well, home away from home... and it's an empty house. MIL, FIL, and BIL are out getting ice cream. Hooray that MIL felt well enough to get out!
