Today marks many milestones: we crossed the 1,000 mile threshold to much rejoicing, we drove through East Berlin, West York, Bird in Hand, and Lancaster county (only saw one horse and buggy sadly) and crossed the very wide but not particularly deep Susquehanna River before arriving at today’s final destination of West Chester PA.

If you are ever in West Chester, you should consider staying at the Brinton Inn and Suites as it is fairly informal. Dawn, who claims to be the only current employee, greeted us wearing a mask that said, and I quote “This mask is bullsh*t” and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Bill and Hillary smiling with the tag line, and again I quote “Clintons: we can’t all commit suicide”. Needless to say, we felt right at home although it was several minutes before I hung my mask off my ear. We were provided an actual key to the room – I feel young again staying here. The room has a nice patio that I’m sitting at as I write.

Despite all the milestones, and getting the same waitress two days in a row and three pieces of bacon at our Perkins breakfast, the highlight of the day was our visit to Longwood Gardens. The goods: beauty around every bend. The bads: now my sunburn has sunburn.

My biggest takeaway from our visit is that it’s good to rich as Longwood Gardens started out as a hobby for Pierre Du Pont. Now, because he found out about a farm with rare trees was going to razed, we have access to an amazing garden at merely high and un-discounted prices.

Tomorrow on to New York. We’ll try to sneak in so they don’t stop us at the border.

The odds of spending nights in our car got worse today: the Airbnb near Acadia National Park texted and said due to a family emergency it will be difficult to honor our reservation. We surveyed our options and found only one other, texted her back we’re going to switch and she said don’t be hasty as she is working her extensive friend network (my paraphrase) so I have no idea what she means or what will happen but tomorrow is another day and the reservation is for next week so I’m hoping the fact that I got three pieces of bacon instead of two at breakfast this morning means I won’t have to sleep in the car. You should see how I pick horses at the race track!

Unanswerable Questions: Why in Pennsylvania is it not enough that a restaurant sells food, why does the patron have to order food when ordering an adult beverage? Does the virus make that distinction between restaurants and bars? Unanswering for a friend.

I’m stuck with this selfie since I forgot everything I ever knew about selfies when I took the first one so MBH is a teeny tiny bit peeved with me. Don’t worry, we’re both used to that.
May the bird of paradise make a nest in your bippee.
I give you the Italianate Water Garden. And by give I mean show a picture that FB probably has stolen the rights to since I foolishly posted it there.
Who doesn’t love looking at Orchids? Taking care of, now that’s a different story
Vacation in the time of Coronavirus. Since restaurants make such a big deal about disinfecting their seats, I figured I should protect mine while walking around.
There were a lot of flowers, I mean a lot. I will be posting flower pictures for years to come from this visit, but I won’t bore you now.
View from the hotel patio.if you  👀 closely, you can see the hummingbirds. I don’t think the rabbit had showed up yet