Who doesn’t love those impromptu adventures where you don’t really have that much of a plan and just sort of go? We definitely do! Russ was planning to head to Hershey, PA tot pickup a server he found for sale on Facebook Marketplace and wanted me to go with, so I packed up my work laptop and set up my hotspot so I could work in the car for our spontaneous road trip. Not wanting to drive all that way just for a server and knowing we wouldn’t have enough time to go to Hershey Park because I was working in the car after all, we decided to incorporate a spur of the moment trip my dad and I had taken when I was about 11 or so when our plans to go to Hershey Park one spring day didn’t work out.
When I was a kid, my dad took me to Hershey Park, but when we got there it was closed for some reason that I can’t remember. Needing something else to do to salvage our daddy-daughter day, we hit up one of those spots with all those brochures with all the things to do in the area and looked until a place popped up that sounded like a lot of fun – Penn’s Cave! Penn’s Cave is a historic wildlife park steeped in Native American history and an awesome water cavern. What is a road trip if you don’t hit a few snags along the way? We arrived at Penn’s Cave around 3:30pm, only an hour and a half before they closed and browsed the gift shop until our cavern tour started at 4:00pm.
The walk down the steep hill to the cavern entrance and the tour itself brought back a lot of really nice memories from when my dad and I had our trip all those years ago, which only made our impromptu trip all the better. The cavern itself was rather chilly, so we were thankful for our jackets as we climbed into the narrow boat and embarked on our adventure. The caverns are very unique since it is the only known cavern that you can only view by water. We were geeking out the entire time and grinning from ear to ear.
The end of the cave was man made since how it naturally formed, it was closed off, however they re-routed the water flow by blasting a hole in the end. With the new exit, we exited into a small lake that allowed us a view of the nature preserve that you go through if you are doing the wildlife tour. We saw a herd of elk, which was very cool since they are definitely bigger in person than I would have thought. We then turned around to head back to the docks and end our tour. We definitely plan to come back and will likely do the cavern tour again, but definitely plan to do the wildlife tour next time since I never did it when I went with my dad all those years ago.
If you’re looking for fun adventure to do within a couple hour’s drive of Hershey Park, PA, we highly recommend Penn’s Cave. After our tour was finished, we hopped back into the car to head to Hershey and pickup Russ’s very anticipated server before grabbing dinner at a true “hole in the wall” – The Mount Gretna Hide-A-Way. The atmosphere was very charming and the staff friendly enough. It was definitely the local watering hole since we had to wait around half an hour for a table and the restaurant was PACKED! We both ordered a Caesar salad to start, which was good but slightly over dressed. It had freshly grated cheese on top, which we both love since it was chunks versus those small shreds from bagged shredded cheese. For our entrees, we ordered the ribeye, which was on special for the evening. The flavors were okay, but mine was a tad overcooked and not as tender as it should have been. Not being able to leave a new restaurant without trying the dessert, we ordered the cookie skillet. It was good, but very rich and nowhere near as good as some of the recent cookie skillets we’ve had.
All in all, it was an absolutely delightfully fun spur of the moment adventure and we can’t wait for the next one! Where are some of the places you’ve had impromptu road trips to? Let us know in the comments below and maybe we’ll add it to our adventure list!
Happy travels,
L & R
Dreamers on the Go 
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