After 4 weeks on the road, 3 spent travelling through the Midwest states and a final week cutting across from Chicago to Philadelphia via Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, we were a just a day away from returning home to the UK.
We had spent most of the day in Ohio, visiting Cleveland then driving through Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was now late afternoon and we still had to make it to tonight’s stopover point at a motel on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Leaving Ohio behind, we briefly cut through a corner of West Virginia, a deliberate detour as it was another state we had not visited before. Here, we had a stop planned in the town of Chester as it is home to the World’s largest teapot! Finding this roadside stop easily – it was hard to miss! – we pulled over and jumped out, posing under it for photos holding empty Starbucks cups we had kept purely for this occasion!
Then, after a quick visit to the local CVS to purchase a West Virginia souvenir, it was back on the road and we were crossing the border into Pennsylvania just minutes later.
Battling rush hour traffic around Pittsburgh, we were relieved when we finally made it to our motel to relax for what was left of the evening.
The next day, we were excited to be visiting the town of Punxsutawney, another last minute addition to our road trip itinerary – and quite a hefty diversion from our original route! – after I had happened to watch Groundhog Day just a few weeks before we departed and, seeing it was set in Pennsylvania, had the idea to visit the groundhog!
Although the movie wasn’t actually filmed in Punxsutawney itself, the annual Groundhog Day ceremony is actually help there each year and the town has plenty of Groundhog-related reasons for stopping by!
Upon arriving in Punxsutawney, we were greeted by a giant, top hat wearing Groundhog welcoming us.
After a quick stop for photos, we continued into the town where we quickly found Phil’s Burrow, we den where Punxsutawney Phil sleeps the rest of the year either side of the Groundhog Day festivities. As we peered in, we could see the cute groundhog snuggled up inside and at one point, he even looked up at us, stretching and yawning before snuggling back down again!
The town had figures of groundhogs dressed in various ways dotted around it and after having a quick look around, we drove to the interestingly-named Gobblers Knob, site of the annual Groundhog Day ceremony, for more fun photo opportunities!
After that fun diversion, it was a bit of a race against time to reach our destination for the day, Gettysburg, where we had booked a historical tour of the battlefields on horseback.
Having done horse-riding in Wyoming on our Trek America tour a few years before, we were both eager to fit it in somewhere on our trip this time and this tour seemed like a good way of ticking that off our list as well as finding out some of the history of Gettysburg.
We arrived too late to spend any time exploring the town, instead having to quickly drop our things at our motel before checking in for our horseback tour.
Unfortunately, it was a sweltering humid day and way too hot to be sat on the back of a horse, out in the middle of a field with no shade, listening to a history lesson on the American Civil War! At one point, I was so uncomfortable, I thought I was going to pass out! Luckily I didn’t but I spent so much time concentrating on not fainting in the heat that I found I wasn’t really following what was being said by our guide.
We also both felt that the tour had taken for granted that those on it would have some background knowledge of the Civil War as I guess most Americans would have studied it at school whereas being from the UK, our knowledge was less than even basic which made the tour even harder to follow.
I did at least enjoy the parts of the tour where we were trotting past the battlefields with a slight breeze blowing through my hair but these parts came too few and far between.
The next morning, we visited the Gettysburg National Military Park’s Visitor Centre and Museum which we felt we got more out of than on the horse back tour the previous evening. Then it was back on the road to drive towards the final destination of our road trip, Philadelphia.
We still had a few stops scheduled before returning our hire car to the Avis drop off at Philadelphia Airport, starting with a visit to Hershey’s Chocolate World!
As well as the huge Hershey store, Hershey’s Chocolate World operates a free tour to all visitors. We arrived early just after opening time but the site was already pretty busy. The queue for the tour moved quickly though and acted as part of the attraction as information boards along where we queued told us the history of Hershey’s chocolate. The main attraction though was a ride through a mocked up Hershey’s chocolate factory. We sat in a small car which took us around the factory while Hershey products including chocolate drops, talked and sang to us explaining how the chocolate was made.
As part of the tour, we were also given some free chocolate bars to sample. Definitely worth the stop!
From Hershey World, we continued on our way and soon found ourselves in Amish Country, finding ourselves sharing the roads with horse-drawn Amish buggies a few times as we drove through the Pennsylvania countryside stopping briefly in Lancaster.
After our stop, we would be leaving Pennsylvania briefly, driving into Delaware en route to Philadelphia to finally complete our road trip!
Miss Travels 
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