April 15-21? Harrisburg, PA
by Chris Ransdell
Our visit to Harrisburg started with dinner in Harrisburg Wednesday night at the Sturges Speakeasy downtown with Brian's friend David. Dinner was great and way beyond what I expected from a place with speakeasy in the name. We also made a whirlwind tour of the 3 gay bars in town before driving back to Lancaster for the night.
Thursday as David left on his flight to San Francisco, Brian headed off to a recruiter meet and greet in Lancaster. After that was done he had a phone interview for the job in Newfoundland PA. I, of course, worked from the hotel. Once we got out of Lancaster, we wandered around Hershey PA a bit and had lunch at Wendy's. We then headed back into Harrisburg to unpack at David's house. Parking is not one of the charms of David's house downtown so we dropped the car off maybe 3/4 of a mile away in a spot that David has a permit for. We ended up going out to dinner in the car and when we came back I opted to park on the street and committed to get back outside to pay for parking by 8 am to avoid getting ticketed. The view outside his house is really cool since he lives next to a catholic church. His cat, Patches, is super cute and very meow meow also which was fun.
Friday we checked out the seemingly dominant bagel place in town, Bagel Lovers Cafe. It was a good start to the day. Next up we made a fun visit to Hollywood Casino about 15 miles from Harrisburg. It was fun and we were both pleased with the variety of games to choose from. On the way back to Harrisburg we stopped at PNC bank in Hershey for Brian to open a new checking account here in PA. I use Bank of America which has branches in a lot of PA cities but Brian's credit union wasn't going to cut it here. On the way back from Hershey we picked up a rental car and parked the Malibu (rental car is a newer Malibu!) so we can head to Chicago in a rental car and leave the car in the same city where we are retuning the moving van anyway.
Saturday we made it out for a hike at Little Buffalo State Park. The weather was absolutely beautiful. I got a trail map from trails.com which tied together a few different trails to make a 6 mile loop. There were a lot of turns to follow the route and we made it about half way before we were unable to figure out what to do next. We ended up coming back on the same trails we had used going out but a different section of one of them for variety. It ended up being a full 5 miles at least so we basically got what we came for.
Sunday we finally got out in Harrisburg for a capitol tour. It's very unusual to have a capitol building open at all on weekends so I was tickled that we could go at all. After entering the capitol on weekends, all you can do is sit under in the rotunda on folding chairs waiting for your tour to start. There is one bathroom you can get to but the rest of the building is only for tour groups. So, not a totally open experience but better than being locked out altogether. Our tour guide was great and very East coast in mannerisms. The tour was typical (senate room, house room, court room, a bit about the paintings) but the capitol building is pretty spectacular. She also pointed out bout 10 times that anything that looked like gold was real 23K gold leaf in the building. She also pointed out that PA had a supreme court decades before the country did. Either she had a lot of PA pride or a bit of an inferiority complex, I'm not sure.
Monday was Brian's in person interview for an HR director job at a non-profit. Unfortunately, the cat was a real pest Sunday night and apparently I snored extra loud so Brian was not running on a full night's sleep. I drove us to Newfoundland (140 miles?) leaving around 7:45 am. It was a good but long drive on the Interstates mostly. Brian's interview took about 2 hours so I wandered off to Promised Land state park to examine the hiking options. It was very wet that day or I could have done a short walk myself.
After the interview we had a good lunch of buffalo chicken pizza at Rolly's Pizza & Grill in Lakeview PA. Brian checked his email about 10 times. Finally, we headed to Scranton to look at apartment possibilities in case this interview came to be as a job offer. The first apartment complex we looked at was kind of depressing. It was from the early 70's and very little has been updated on it. We then went to another complex on the same road as the first and it was completely different. It looked better, the office manager was charming and we were really excited until she told us she had zero availability. Pushing our luck, we hurried over to a third complex which was a bit of a drive and arrived at 4:15 pm at Summit Pointe apartments. The manager, Tom, was very welcoming and didn't object at all to our late arrival. He had 2 units to show us but we liked the first one so much we just got all the application and pricing information and hoped Brian would hear back from his interview soon. Brian checked his email many times but nothing was seen by 5 pm.
On the way home I tried driving on US 6 west out of Clark's Summit (near Scranton). It was a beautiful drive from about 5 to 7 pm with no obvious rush hour traffic and amazing views of mountains and water and lots of attractive farms and homes in the country. Unfortunately, as we drove, Brian started to look at how long the trip back to Harrisburg was going to take and it was looking extremely long the way I was headed. I was enjoying the drive and hadn't really thought much about the time impact. We headed south along US 220 to try to get a more direct heading to Harrisburg but as we drove South the weather changed rapidly to nasty and thunder storm clouds. At one point the hail was frighteningly loud and we took respite briefly under an overpass. The hail was very brief but the downpour was long lasting and the lightning show was impressive. We ended up having a wait for the weather McDinner along I-80 and somewhat overshot where we wanted to be so we ended up coming into Harrisburg from the West which was unfortunate since Scranton is decidedly East of Harrisburg. On the upside, Brian finally got word that the non-profit wants to 'move forward' on the HR Director position he interviewed for so that is great. We made it home safely about 11 pm.
After spending 4 nights in Harrisburg (which wasn't really at the top of our relocation list) and increasingly focusing on the coming move, finding out Brian probably has a job brought a new sense of energy to us both. Tuesday I had to bolt out of bed about 7:45 am to start paying the meter where the rental car was parked. We rapidly filled out apartment applications and I headed off to Staples to fax them to Summit Pointe. They also wanted pay stubs so I used a Staples by the minute PC to print (by the page) then fax (by the page again) those documents. It all worked pretty well but is kind of an irritating expense. We also made reservations in Scranton for Tuesday night because we want to drop the stuff off that we don't need into the new apartment and also to scope out move in details. On the way to Scranton, Brian had another bout of pretty severe kidney pain on the opposite side as the known kidney stone. As I write this, we are at the hospital in Wilkes-Barre and Brian is having tests done to see what is going on. Not a good end to the day but hopefully we can get this kidney stuff figured out so Brian can feel like himself again.
Our visit to Harrisburg started with dinner in Harrisburg Wednesday night at the Sturges Speakeasy downtown with Brian's friend David. Dinner was great and way beyond what I expected from a place with speakeasy in the name. We also made a whirlwind tour of the 3 gay bars in town before driving back to Lancaster for the night.
Thursday as David left on his flight to San Francisco, Brian headed off to a recruiter meet and greet in Lancaster. After that was done he had a phone interview for the job in Newfoundland PA. I, of course, worked from the hotel. Once we got out of Lancaster, we wandered around Hershey PA a bit and had lunch at Wendy's. We then headed back into Harrisburg to unpack at David's house. Parking is not one of the charms of David's house downtown so we dropped the car off maybe 3/4 of a mile away in a spot that David has a permit for. We ended up going out to dinner in the car and when we came back I opted to park on the street and committed to get back outside to pay for parking by 8 am to avoid getting ticketed. The view outside his house is really cool since he lives next to a catholic church. His cat, Patches, is super cute and very meow meow also which was fun.
Friday we checked out the seemingly dominant bagel place in town, Bagel Lovers Cafe. It was a good start to the day. Next up we made a fun visit to Hollywood Casino about 15 miles from Harrisburg. It was fun and we were both pleased with the variety of games to choose from. On the way back to Harrisburg we stopped at PNC bank in Hershey for Brian to open a new checking account here in PA. I use Bank of America which has branches in a lot of PA cities but Brian's credit union wasn't going to cut it here. On the way back from Hershey we picked up a rental car and parked the Malibu (rental car is a newer Malibu!) so we can head to Chicago in a rental car and leave the car in the same city where we are retuning the moving van anyway.
Saturday we made it out for a hike at Little Buffalo State Park. The weather was absolutely beautiful. I got a trail map from trails.com which tied together a few different trails to make a 6 mile loop. There were a lot of turns to follow the route and we made it about half way before we were unable to figure out what to do next. We ended up coming back on the same trails we had used going out but a different section of one of them for variety. It ended up being a full 5 miles at least so we basically got what we came for.
Sunday we finally got out in Harrisburg for a capitol tour. It's very unusual to have a capitol building open at all on weekends so I was tickled that we could go at all. After entering the capitol on weekends, all you can do is sit under in the rotunda on folding chairs waiting for your tour to start. There is one bathroom you can get to but the rest of the building is only for tour groups. So, not a totally open experience but better than being locked out altogether. Our tour guide was great and very East coast in mannerisms. The tour was typical (senate room, house room, court room, a bit about the paintings) but the capitol building is pretty spectacular. She also pointed out bout 10 times that anything that looked like gold was real 23K gold leaf in the building. She also pointed out that PA had a supreme court decades before the country did. Either she had a lot of PA pride or a bit of an inferiority complex, I'm not sure.
Monday was Brian's in person interview for an HR director job at a non-profit. Unfortunately, the cat was a real pest Sunday night and apparently I snored extra loud so Brian was not running on a full night's sleep. I drove us to Newfoundland (140 miles?) leaving around 7:45 am. It was a good but long drive on the Interstates mostly. Brian's interview took about 2 hours so I wandered off to Promised Land state park to examine the hiking options. It was very wet that day or I could have done a short walk myself.
After the interview we had a good lunch of buffalo chicken pizza at Rolly's Pizza & Grill in Lakeview PA. Brian checked his email about 10 times. Finally, we headed to Scranton to look at apartment possibilities in case this interview came to be as a job offer. The first apartment complex we looked at was kind of depressing. It was from the early 70's and very little has been updated on it. We then went to another complex on the same road as the first and it was completely different. It looked better, the office manager was charming and we were really excited until she told us she had zero availability. Pushing our luck, we hurried over to a third complex which was a bit of a drive and arrived at 4:15 pm at Summit Pointe apartments. The manager, Tom, was very welcoming and didn't object at all to our late arrival. He had 2 units to show us but we liked the first one so much we just got all the application and pricing information and hoped Brian would hear back from his interview soon. Brian checked his email many times but nothing was seen by 5 pm.
On the way home I tried driving on US 6 west out of Clark's Summit (near Scranton). It was a beautiful drive from about 5 to 7 pm with no obvious rush hour traffic and amazing views of mountains and water and lots of attractive farms and homes in the country. Unfortunately, as we drove, Brian started to look at how long the trip back to Harrisburg was going to take and it was looking extremely long the way I was headed. I was enjoying the drive and hadn't really thought much about the time impact. We headed south along US 220 to try to get a more direct heading to Harrisburg but as we drove South the weather changed rapidly to nasty and thunder storm clouds. At one point the hail was frighteningly loud and we took respite briefly under an overpass. The hail was very brief but the downpour was long lasting and the lightning show was impressive. We ended up having a wait for the weather McDinner along I-80 and somewhat overshot where we wanted to be so we ended up coming into Harrisburg from the West which was unfortunate since Scranton is decidedly East of Harrisburg. On the upside, Brian finally got word that the non-profit wants to 'move forward' on the HR Director position he interviewed for so that is great. We made it home safely about 11 pm.
After spending 4 nights in Harrisburg (which wasn't really at the top of our relocation list) and increasingly focusing on the coming move, finding out Brian probably has a job brought a new sense of energy to us both. Tuesday I had to bolt out of bed about 7:45 am to start paying the meter where the rental car was parked. We rapidly filled out apartment applications and I headed off to Staples to fax them to Summit Pointe. They also wanted pay stubs so I used a Staples by the minute PC to print (by the page) then fax (by the page again) those documents. It all worked pretty well but is kind of an irritating expense. We also made reservations in Scranton for Tuesday night because we want to drop the stuff off that we don't need into the new apartment and also to scope out move in details. On the way to Scranton, Brian had another bout of pretty severe kidney pain on the opposite side as the known kidney stone. As I write this, we are at the hospital in Wilkes-Barre and Brian is having tests done to see what is going on. Not a good end to the day but hopefully we can get this kidney stuff figured out so Brian can feel like himself again.
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