Final journey, Pennsylvania

Sad as I am to report, this is the last post before we arrive home. It\’s been an interesting experience sharing everything about our lives for the past four weeks. We wanted to end off the trip with something exciting and were hoping to go to Cedars Point amusement park near Cleveland but there were a few issues. One it was supposed to rain on the day we were passing through and 2 we read that the wait times were two hours per ride. Instead, we headed towards the Turkey Hill factory to get a tour of their ice cream factory. It was udderly fantastic but my family doesn\’t want to look at ice cream ever again.

Father purchased a cowboy hat in ohio and has been wearing it every since. At the Turkey Hill Factory we participated in a lab where they showed us how to mix flavors swirls and candy into ice cream. Father had lots of questions and comments and the older lady in front of us scowled the whole time. We don\’t know what was more entertaining, father driving the employees crazy or the woman getting annoyed at the cowboy. Father\’s best question was \”how do they get the ice cream out of the turkeys?\” Next we made it to Hershey Park. It was supposed to rain all day but somehow the skies held out. Hershey allows you to buy a ticket for any day in the season and enter the park two hours at night on the day that you purchase the tickets. So we bought tickets for August when leah can drive the boys to Hershey and they ended up riding on everything in the park. It was a great ending to the most memorable trip of these kids lives (and ours). However everything in Pennsylvania smells like cow including the grey beast after a month of full time driving. I thought it would be good to be home but the whole family wants to turn back around and do it again.

Ten years apart they added a height restriction sometime with in the 10 years. Ezi is sitting on Naomi lap at 18 months in the first picture

Hershey factory tour

Our dinner was very inneresting

Indiana

Today was another big travel day. We woke up in Chicago and bought breakfast and lunch in the        avraham lincoln cafe. The only thing missing from the cafe was avrohom. It was a gas station that had a full milchig restaurant inside. We loaded up food wise for two days of milchigs just in case. But guess what…. We threw a lot of it out.

We got to Indianapolis at 2 pm and spent a few hours in the nearly deserted massive children\’s museum. They had lots of demonstrations and real archaeologists explaining the process of science discovery. Ezi finally figured out that an archeologist doesn\’t study arches.📚

Ezi doing kung fu scientifically

We drove through ohio and hit Columbus which had a kosher department in the local Krogers supermarket. We bought sushi!!!cedar planks and salmon as well as morningstar and tuna with salad. We drove to west Virginia and stayed in the worst hotel of the trip. These last few states are hard to drive and hard to make entertaining. But after three and a half weeks of travel everyone is a good sport except for father.

Father being a bad sport

Rochester, Minnesota

We drove so much this trip that we needed to do an oil change and no one was willing to do it on the spot. We have stopped at so many rest stops and it feels like we bought 1,000 rest stop coffees and commercial pastries. I don\’t want to ever step into Wal-Mart again. It\’s really bad when you don\’t care what the bathroom looks like at the rest stop.

I had forgotten to show pictures from our Dakota trip. We drove through a massive hail storm, rainbow and I think a tornado. I was oblivious to it all sitting in the back trying to get some work done. 

On Tuesday we left Rochester to visit Chicago. On the way we stopped off to go tubing but the rental place was closed. We turned the corner and saw people renting bikes at the general store so we stopped. What do you know they also rented tubes!

Father went searching for a place in town to get an oil change but got distracted by the sites.

Tandem Recumbant?

Shrek anyone? We decided as we hit the road that we should have hot dogs for lunch since the 9 days were starting at nightfall

It was a long drive to Chicago but we met up with our dear friends racherd and richel Silverman aka the Richardsons. There are certain friendships that even if you haven\’t seen each other in awhile it feels like you were never apart. We spent several hours social distance dinnering and shmoozing. It was a badly needed social interaction after a month of no friends (except for Shimmy ✋), and a week and a half of no access to kosher. We had shwarma, shnitzel, falafel and all the accompanying dips and stuff for our last fleishig hoorah. We were also the first ones to wish avigayil silverman a happy bat mitzvah may she be zocheh to have another 9 of them. Richard also successfully raised over $100,000 this past few weeks for his shul which really needed the funds. Our kids ran around the park together and made quick friends. Thanks again Richard and Rachel!!

Mt. Rushmore South Dakota

We rushed to Rushmore on Monday morning to meet up with the Rushmorons. We wondered what would happen if the Geyser Gazers would battle the Rushmorons and whose pocket protectors would get ruined. After quickly saying hi to george, abraham, theodore and thomas, we were back on the road. 

A few minutes away from rushmore we enjoyed a run on the presidential mountain coaster. Hats weren\’t allowed on the ride. 

We also saw the back of Rushmore

We attempted to go to a hovercraft activity as well as to Bear Country USA, a bear drive thru (not a beer drive thru which would be irresponsible). Unfortunately both were closed. The ranger told us \”there\’s a 3 hour wait and we don\’t know why.\” We found that answer strange and speculated that perhaps Lenny and Klondike were holding things up. Speaking about Lenny, father stepped into something and brought it into the car requiring a car wash no easy feat with it packed up.

As you can see we are on the road trippiest part of our journey with strange stops to break up the trip. We visited one of the strangest places where \”something is off with the gravity\”. At least that is what they told us. 

This day took forever to experience, that is probably why it is taking me three days to write it up. Next we hit the wall drug store, the most touristy trap location we ever saw.

Our last stop before dinner was the Corn Palace. Naomi\’s maiden name is Kern and her whole life she has received jokes about corn because it sounds like Kern. In fact we call my father in law popkern.

Nazi Corn?

Montana part 2 and South Dakota

We awoke Sunday after an amazing shabbos in Big Sky very depumped, if thats a word, because we didn\’ t have anything planned to break up our 8 hour drive to the presidentially faced mountain in Dakota. We were considering calling the slaughter gang on retro  walkie talkies to jump off the Green bridge again, but it turned out the Gallatin river keeps 2 day shabbos and it hadn\’t started flowing yet. Mother was upset that we didn\’t go horse back riding on friday since Montana is known for it. We were getting antsy when mother called one more time and got a reservation. Mother asked \”Can M\’usband ride if he\’s one of those people who can\’t fit through slot canyons.\” The lady answered\” horses can carry a lot of &@:6#&\”. We didn\’t really appreciate her calling my father that but we still wanted to go riding. M\’orse was named klondike and I tried to take a bite out of klondike, but it just tasted like horse. Father\’s horse, Lenny, was massive and was 2 feet above us all. Klondike and pinny were right behind father and lenny most of the time. I don\’t know what lenny ate before this journey but lets just say things didn\’t go so well for pinny and klondike, snd the rest of us. Pinny tried to get in front of lenny for some fresh air and for his eyes to stop watering but was kept captive behind a constant barrage of visuals and smells. All in all everyone had a great time, unless you were in lenny\’s range. Akiva decided that when he grows up he wants to be a blayblade sensei that rides on mountain horses.

the horse in the bottom was too hailig (holy) to ride due to the fact that it had purple splotches 

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Big Sky, Montana

Who knew that Big Sky was the largest ski resort in North America? I certainly did. It\’s also very beautiful and was our favorite weekend stay.

We are not sure what this abomination of a street light is

 We came to Big Sky with grand plans to go white water rafting, tubing, paddle boarding or something water related, but nothing seemed to have worked out. We drove an hour to Bozeman to go tubing but there were no busses available to take our tubes down to the river. The rental company offered us a 14 person paddle board but we opted out since we had to go through the hassle of pumping it up and transporting it and Ezi was too lightheaded to help blow it up. Instead we ended up finding a bridge right off the road and decided to try jumping off the bridge into the river. Pinny a boy possessing great bravery and courage, jumped into the river and was shocked at how cold it was. 

Father was going to jump next but chickened out. I\’m just kidding, it didn\’t even enter father\’s mind to jump. Some local Montanians saw us jumping, a group of boys ranging from 12 to 17 years old. They were very cool since they had their own lingo and they called themselves the slaughter gang. They called the boy filming footy which we assume was short for footage or possibly because he was wearing two left shoes.  They arrived at the bridge in a small volvo with kids piled in, some were even sitting in the trunk; it looked like a clown car. Leah and I followed the slaughter gang\’s lead and did some back flips off of the 15 foot bridge. Akiva decided at the last moment that he wanted to jump but it was too late since they turned off the river right before shabbos. It\’s kind of funny how something free can be one of the best activities.

   

Hey it\’s Ezi now, as you see, my brother is not very knowledgeable, or he would\’ve told you that big sky is tied with parc kity in being the biggest ski resort in north america 

Sauce

I also noticed that pinny didn\’t mention that I also jumped off the bridge. I was too amazing for him to comment. 

The only difference between Pinny, Leah and myself is that I had nothing to prove to the slaughter gang. Oh snap! Also, they should be thankful that I was there to capture these videos

Whoops that wasn\’t the video, that was just a flattering still from the video.

By the way my lips are completely healed from the sunburn. I am able to lip pop again despite the fact that it annoys the whole family.

I am sad to report that Akiva\’s sunburn doesn\’t look great and his transition into becoming drax from guardians of the galaxy is almost complete

We are really having trouble figuring out how to make high altitude chulent but it is getting better than the park city chulent.

Yellowstone Why Omg part 2

So we spent the day at Yellowstone National Park and many are asking \”did you find yogi bear?\”

No

Father looks like a cartoon animal… Weird

But we did find a bison. Although dissecting the name does not describe the animal …two son. We ended up calling it bis-li which is Hebrew for my bis and also the kids favorite snack food. Seeing such a large animal and the excitement of the visitors was quite comical. Naomi was calculating how many steaks could she get out of it.

\”Bisli\” needs corrective neck surgery or something

This was the hardest day for father by far as there was no internet in the park. Father kept asking mother why she researched every detail of the trip other than the cell service. We still aren\’t sure if he was serious or not because he \”likes\” to make jokes.

We started off taking pictures with the tetons in the background on the way to Yellowstone where it appears that akiva was wearing tefillin. 

It\’s a camera strap

Next we headed towards Old Faithful, a natural geyser. While waiting an hour for the thing to shpritz some water, we found out that die hard fans are called geyser gazers. These guys are serious about following the multitude of geysers throughout the area armed with walkie talkies and the knowledge of when they are going to spring forth. Suffice it to say we were not impressed by this and are likely not going to become geyser gazers.

Next we walked around some of the natural springs and surprisingly we took some pictures.

Here we are at the Grand Prismatic, the largest hot spring in the US and third largest in the world. It kind of looks like a giant toilet that hadn\’t been used for years and formed rust around the edges of the water then you added the blue tablets in it and wala… Clean.

 As we drove to the grand canyon we passed by another geyser.

I was checking if you were paying attention. We are on our way to the grand canyon of Yellowstone not that other grand canyon we went to last week. It\’s kind of like McGill is the Harvard of Canada, this was the grand canyon of Yellowstone. 

Ezi called this a reverse geyser

At this point, mother\’s ability to pull out dinner from the cooler feels like Eliyahu\’s blessing of limitless oil and flour. Only difference is that Mother was pulling out marinated meat and chicken for three full weeks instead of oil and flour. We ended up sleeping in Big Sky, Montana.

Wyoming Part 1

We left Parc Kity and headed towards Wyoming to the grand tetons.  At this point in our journey we are so used to 5 and 6 hour drives, that the half day spent in the car flew by. Looking out the window at the changing topography is still exciting, each drive a new one that was never done before by the Hirschfelds. Jackson is the first half normal city in Wyoming where they had a main street and even an Albertsons. I heard that albert and jack were friends and their children made the albertson in jackson. We also passed by Jackson Hole, a world renowned ski resort with one of the most famous trails, Corbert\’s Coulier, which we were unable to see because it isn\’t winter. But our final destination or final journey because the trip doesn\’t have a real destination….. grand teton national park was something special. We arrived at 4pm and hiked for a few hours and found a stunning bar b que spot right next to a lake where we ate dinner in the park. It was light outside the whole time.

We hiked many different trails over the past three weeks but Grand Teton was the grandest, probably top two hikes. We started off on a boat ride across Lake Jenny lake (I don\’t remember if the lake was before or after the Jenny) to the mouth of the hike. 

The hike itself was stunning as evidenced by the pictures.

We had dinner at 9:30 pm and were shocked it was still light. Don\’t worry, we bewared the bears.

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Father doing manly grill things with smoky grill

Childrens Shadows on left side of image in front of lake.

Tznius Skirt Steak

Park City Utah, I guess Utah part 4

When we last left off in our blog story, our heroes founded the land of lost vegas and made their way to Parc kity, utah. The chevra woke up with the day unplanned and Pinny, the eldest of the three bears, my bad, I meant to write brothers, was pushing mother to go mountain biking, and no he didnt do this physically. As I read this out loud, Brother bear akiva, told me to tell you his sunburn is hurting and now as I am proof reading he just told me that he also got a scratch from mountain biking. $600 later and we were up on the mountain, biking. I got a really bad sunburn on my lips which turned them red. 

We went up 2 ski lifts to get to the summit, the start of the holy roller trail. We expected to see a bunch of bowlers on the trail but they were no where to be seen. Holy moley that\’s a corny joke. As we descended the mountain I came to the conclusion that it was the most fun thing I\’ve ever done. And I have done some fun things in my life like snow boarding, jeeping, puzzle building, and face painting.  It was like riding on our own individual jeeps and at certain points we were getting air on our jumps. Ezi was struggling to breathe because of the altitude and the extra air from the jump really gave him a boost. This helped ezi overcome his lightheadedness.

Well eveything was going fine and dandy until we lost sight of akiva and mother. We had to hike back up the mountain to get them and we found out that Akiva\’ s camelback was throwing him off balance. Pinny offered to take akiva\’s camelback and now had two camelbacks making Pinny the first human two hump camelbacker🐪.

After a few difficult runs, Mother and akiva got separated from LPE (leah pinny and ezi) and headed for the car. LPE still had some time to kill before our 4 o clock woodward appointment but Leah wanted to be early and take the lift down. After much negotiation pinny convinced leah to take the mid mountain trail. This resulted in lots of crying, panic attacks and screaming because Ezi fell off of cliffs twice, Leah hurt her knee and ankle falling head over handlebars and Pinny was nervous that they would not be able to make it down in time to enjoy woodward. To add to the drama, it was 4 o\’clock and LPE didn\’t have access to their lunch, hadn\’t eaten all day and Pinny had accidentally took Mother\’s keys with him the whole day in an unzippered pocket. After such a difficult day we decided to start a new tzedaka called mountain biking for chai. Thankfully the amazing and talented Mother was able to push off our woodward appointment to 6:00. 

Woodward is a place for people to learn how to do tricks on skies, snowboards, skikes (look it up), skateboards and really any kind of parkour or dangerous sport involving flipping. We got to enjoy the super bouncy trampolines where we bounced ten feet in the air onto  ginormous pillows, flipping but mostly face planting. We also got to meet the Woodwarden also known as the mask checker. While a fellow was performing a series of 30-40 back flips in a row and landed on his face the Woodwarden was quick to tell him to put his mask back on. Sadly the foam pits weren\’t open and we weren\’t able to do some double helix corkscrew lutses that we had planned. Even more sadly, Leah wasn\’t able to do some of her tricks because of her injured ankle. But looking on the brightside we got to jump on the trampolines with a snowboard. 

We left Woodward and made our way back to the house for a delicious dinner and collapsed in our beds due to exhaustion 

Vegas, Nevada and Park City Utah

We started off the day as we have done for the past few weeks….. waking up.This was particular hard for Leah, our two week going strong in house sleeper agent. She had gone to sleep the night before at 4 a.m after an unsuccessful attempt to find the very best Vegas magnet.

Leah Sized coffee

 We spent the day exploring Venice and were debating whether to go on a gondola ride but we opted out. We were very happy about our decision when we saw the gondaleerist singing to the wincing tourists who were dumb enough to pay $29 for a 1,000 foot boat ride. 

We then went to Walgreens where we bought water to rejuvenate ourselves from the 3 minute walk in 117 degree weather. Next we made our way to The Forum shops and Caesar\’s Palace where we saw spiral escalators and ironically non \”dressed\” statues (I say ironically because Caeser is a dressing). 

After we left the shops, 4 minutes passed before we needed to buy another huge water bottle. We made our way to Paris for a tour of the Eiffel tower and other french stores like Lewis Vooton and Goochi. 

We tried to absorb  all of the AC and brave the heat again to go to New York. We attempted to ride the NY roller coaster but we were impatient new Yorkers and unwilling to wait. 

Next up was the M&M factory where we purchased personalized M&M\’s with our faces on it. This allows us to bite each other\’s heads off without consequence. All agreed that Akiva\’s face tasted the most delicious especially the red ones which were sunburned. 

We ran back to our hotel and made it just in time for checkout. Even though we were supposed to go ten days without kosher food, we found kosher pizza on the way out of Vegas and convinced Mother to let us get some. However, the owner kicked us out of the store because she had just mopped the floors and the pizza wouldn\’t be ready for a half hour (sheesh out of town food establishments). The tease of real food was too great and we decided to go to a shwarma place instead. It probably would have been more cost effective and less time consuming to stick with pizza. As most of the family waited in the car with the 117 degree heat baking down on them, the air conditioning in the grey beast gave up and started blowing heat. Leah the extraordinaire drove the car in circles around the parking lot 51 times until the food was ready, we called it area 51. Onwards to Park City Utah a 7 hour drive.

  

We arrived at 11pm at Park City and had a late dinner and off to bed. Thankfully the kids had eaten a large and late lunch so it wasn\’t as torturous of a drive as it might sound.