About a week before Groundhog Day, Kevin scheduled some vacation time, we booked a hotel room in a nearby town, and I ordered some cold weather gear from REI. Ready, set, go!
We drove out to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, and we finally arrived in Punxsutawney. Our first stop was that cute little square that is featured in the movie Groundhog Day. You know, that little park in the middle of town where the groundhog festivities take place. We found the park with no problems, as the town is very small, and there was a nice little festival going on. But that isn't where the groundhog actually comes out of his stump.
We were then directed to Gobbler's Knob, which is actually in the middle of the woods near the town.
We went to check it out on Groundhog Eve. The clearing had been prepared with a thick layer of straw and some sort of pine mulch to keep the ground from getting too muddy.
We then drove to our hotel for a nice early dinner and an early bedtime. We told the boys that we were going to wake them up in the middle of the night to go and see the groundhog when the sun came up. I set my alarm for 2:30 AM, and went to bed myself.
Lex woke up at 1:15 AM, hopped out of bed, and ran to grab the car keys, which he then brought to me. He was ready to get his groundhog on! So, I got out of bed and made some coffee.
There is not sufficient parking at Gobbler's Knob for the Groundhog Day crowd, being out in the middle of the woods and all, so there are shuttles that run from the local McDonald's and Wal-Mart to the clearing. We got the boys up, checked out of the hotel, and drove over to Wal-Mart. We parked our car in the lot and proceeded to don many layers of warm clothing.
Seriously. The boys were both wearing base layer cold gear, with an old fashioned thermal underwear layer over the top of that. Then they were wearing a regular shirt and pants layer, topped with a fleece layer. The outer layer was their snow pants and coats. They both had fleece face masks, hats and gloves. Wool socks (two pairs) and boots. Kevin and I were dressed similarly.
Once we were all bundled up (which took like 45 minutes in the parking lot), we boarded a "Knob Bus" to go to Gobbler's Knob. It was just a Punxsutawney Local School Bus, but Connor and Lex were thrilled. It was their first time on a school bus.
We arrived at Gobbler's Knob around 5:30 AM. It was sleeting. I was all prepared for a nice, DRY cold morning in the dark woods. I wasn't anticipating rain. But, with our layers and little pocket warmers and a well-timed hot dog, we made it to 6:30 AM without incident.
The festivities at Gobbler's Knob began at 3:00 AM. When we got there, there was live music and dancing on stage. And around 6:30 AM, there was a fantastic fireworks show that seemed to last forever. The fireworks were let off entirely too close to the crowd, though, as several times there were burning embers that landed right next to us. (I'm not really complaining, though...I really liked the fireworks.) After the smoke from the fireworks cleared, the sky cleared up, too. The rain stopped. The sun came up.
When Lex realized that the sun had come up and it got light, he kept babbling excitedly and pointing up into the sky. He was really impressed with the sunrise. I think that the fireworks and the sunrise were his favorite parts.
After the fireworks ended, the Inner Circle came out and woke Phil up and he gave us all the good news: expect an early spring!
After the official prognostication was made, we could have stuck around and waited for the press photographers to finish in order get our own photo with Punxsy Phil...but Connor said he was ready to go because his toes hurt. So, we boarded another school bus and were shuttled back to Wal-Mart where our car was waiting.
On the way home, we passed the biggest rainbow that I have ever seen. We could see the entire arch. The good weather lasted all the way until we reached Akron, where we ran into the Blizzard of 2011. But we made it home safely, where we sat in front of a fire and watched Groundhog Day.
2 comments:
Neat! The best part for me was the well-timed hot dog, of course. Maybe a liiiiiiittle gross at 6 a.m., but what can you do.
I was a little surprised by the typical concession stand fare: there was hot dogs, nachos, pretzels, pop, coffee and hot chocolate. It was just like a Friday night football game or something. I think they would have made a killing selling egg sandwiches or something.
Post a Comment