Passing Through PA With a Side Trip to Maryland

We spent the last month visiting our hometown, Pittsburgh, PA and enjoying our family and friends. We stayed at Mountain Top Campground again. It has become our home park while we are back in the Pittsburgh area. The location works out well for us; somewhat central to where much of our family lives. One benefit to this campground are the gorgeous sunsets over the rolling hills.

This is our third year at this site at Mountain Top

Sunsets are my favorite

The view from the outside sites are fabulous. They are adding sewer to these sites but don’t typically make them available to monthly renters. At least we can walk over and enjoy the view mid week when these sites are empty..

The view from our campsite of the sunset reflecting off of the clouds was pretty great too.

Entertainment on our last evening at the campground. They have a Bluegrass Band one Saturday a month during the summer.

The first weekend we were able to meet up with my brother John and sister-in-law Carol. We met them at the cemetery where my parents are buried and then went out to Sunday breakfast. They do a great job taking care of flowers at the gravesite for the family. We found a cute little diner in Lower Burrell for breakfast and the food was quite good.

We spent quite a bit of time visiting Katie, Jon and baby Rosie. We want to spend as much time as we can with this little one. Being a grandparent is wonderful and of course she is the absolute cutest. We found some time to visit some of our friends and family. I know we didn’t get to see everyone and hopefully we will see a few more when we are back in August/September.

Rosie really enjoys this musical toy. She wiggles and giggles to the music.

Rosie and Grandpa Tom

She really likes chewing on her fingers

An evening out with friends. It was so good to see them and catch up on our lives.

During the month, we took a little vacation to Ocean City, MD and spent a couple days of that trip for our daughter Whitney’s wedding in Cambridge, MD. When we joined Thousand Trails, we received a membership to Resort Parks International for 2 years. That membership included a $500 vacation credit to use towards a condo or a cruise. We decided to take advantage of that credit for Whitney’s wedding. The closest condo we could rent was in Ocean City, a little over an hours drive to the wedding venue. We rented a 2 bedroom condo for the week and invited our friends Paul and Mary to join us for the week at the beach. They agreed to babysit Rosie during the wedding which was perfect. The condo was really nice and close enough to everything that we could walk to the beach, stores and restaurants.

We walked over to the beach a few times during our stay. It was fairly empty in the mornings. Definitely a good time to go.

While we were in Ocean City, Paul, Mary and I took a drive to Assateague Island. What a beautiful place. We highly enjoyed driving around the island and I actually liked the marsh side of the island better than the beaches. That may have been because we saw quite a few of the horses in the marshes and there were less people in that area. We had some spots almost to ourselves.

Mary and Paul at Assetague

They warned us not to get too close to the horses. They bite!

I liked this little beach on the bay side better than the larger beaches on the ocean side. This family had it all to themselves.

Sand dunes on the ocean side of the island.

Our last stop at Assateague was at the largest beach. We sat on a bench at the top of the dune and took in the view for a few minutes.

We had a wonderful week at the beach and the wedding was beautiful. The wedding was at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay and it was an absolutely gorgeous venue for a wedding. Whitney and Ian planned some wonderful events during the 2 days that we spent at the resort. Rehearsal dinner overlooked the golf course; the wedding was on the dock over the water; a cocktail hour with a violinist and caricature artists entertaining the guests was outside with a view of the bay and then the reception in the ballroom. During the sit-down dinner, the violinist entertained the guests and then the DJ took over for dancing later. A cigar bar, photo booth and more snacks later in the evening kept the party going for quite a few hours.

Waiting for rehearsal to start. Rosie is rocking it in her hat and sunglasses!

Thanks to Dawn Derbyshire Photography for these beautiful wedding photos.

While we were at the resort for rehearsal, I was able to find time to get together with a high school friend that i hadn’t seen in 42 years. My friend, Mindy, has lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore since graduating college and I was only out that way to visit a few times the first couple of years after college. We have kept in touch over the years so made plans to meet for lunch at the resort. We spent a few hours talking, laughing and catching up. It was like we just picked up where we left off 42 years ago. Lifelong friendships are like that. i was so glad that we were able to get together.

Mindy and I enjoying our visit

I had to add a shot with Trent. He enjoyed the visit to the resort too.

On our last day in the area, we decided to go over to Delaware. We found a great little restaurant on the bay with a view of Ocean City across the water. We had a relaxing lunch with a few drinks and just relaxed and enjoyed the view. We needed a relaxing day after 2 busy days of wedding activities.

Enjoying our last day of vacation. That is Ocean City, MD across the water. This outdoor restaurant in delaware was really cute and the food was pretty good.

another view of the bay and ocean city.

Unfortunately, after we got back to Pittsburgh, I got sick and it turned out to be Covid. That messed up our last week in town and we didn’t really go anywhere or see everyone that we wanted too. I even had to miss my family reunion. Luckily Tim didn’t get it. We will be back in late August for another month so hopefully we catch everyone then.