chaperones should chaperone.

The good news: Lydia's passport came.

The bad news: she can't go on the trip because of the vacation snafu. So I told her we would go somewhere vacationy to walk. She chose Longwood Gardens. We went yesterday.

This adventure started the day before. To order tickets online, I had to pick a time (for crowd control). We chose 9:30. It takes an hour and a half to get there, so we needed to leave no later than 8. Lyd showed up before 7:30, we took a short walk with the dog and headed out.

When I woke up at 5ish, there was a traffic report on the radio that 378 was closed between Seidersville Road and Black River Rd. I kind of forgot about it. I guess I should have listened to the traffic before we left.  I pulled out of the garage and headed up the hill. I turned right onto Wyandotte, went a few blocks, and traffic was at a standstill. Crap. The accident. That's fine I can get around it.

I moved into the right lane when it became available, and planned to make the Puggy Lane turn around. Then I could go up Mountain Drive and get on 78 in Hellertown. Then pick up 309.  Longer for sure, but beat going nowhere. It was a great plan until the intersection was blocked by traffic going towards the accident. By the time they cleared, the light changed, and the car in front of us was half turned, half not. I couldn't go anywhere. Then, just as the light is going to turn again,  a cop comes and parks right in front of us. Everybody was stuck. He must have heard me bitching in the car, because he turned around, looked right at my car and yelled at me.

Ten minutes later we could get thru. I was a unhappy camper. To make matters worse we also got stuck behind a school bus, a street cleaner, a garbage truck ... it was one of those morning. We reached the turnpike at 8:50. Thankfully the ride south was uneventful. But we didn't arrive until 10:30. We had no trouble getting in. But I was so stressed out I had a hard time enjoying myself.

Longwood is in the middle of a major renovation of the huge fountains in front of the conservancy. It's all ripped up there and a large portion next to it. The signs claim the fountain will look the same, but it will have all new plumbing and electric. I'm guessing the lights will be LED and computer controlled. Everything will be very eco-friendly. And probably drop the water bill. (Can you imagine their water bill!)  Because of the construction there was no place to get a great shot of the conservatory or the topiary.

We had maps but didn't really use them. Choose a path and see where it takes you. We walked a lot. We just followed roads until we got to a garden and then moved on to the next one.  We kept passing lovely little groups of school girls in "light blue" shirts. One adult with 4 girls. Each group had a clip board, pencil, and a camera of some sort. It sounded like a scavenger hunt. One thing you had to do was stand by your favorite flower and take a pic. This teacher had his/her act together.

There was a particularly interesting tree house we wanted to see and figured out how to get there. We wanted to go in. We were headed across the lawn and at the exact moment the "red"–out of control–school group arrived. (Yes, there were some adults.) What little brats. The just ran in and up and down the stairs. It was horrible. Maybe they sat on a bus for a long time, but someone needed to take control of them.

To make it worse, they seemed to follow us everywhere. If they went left, we went right. And we find them again. We finally lost them at the conservatory.

We took this at the pavilion near the meadow. The meadow is a large open green space. I'm guessing at one time it was a great lawn. They've left it go to seed. And things are staring to grow. Maybe in 20 years it will be interesting. I think they should have planted a few trees.

All in all we put in 4.5 miles at the gardens. Lydia took about 250 pictures.

I-4.5  (visitor center), I-3.5 (conservatory)

As always, when we got home we took Adonis for his walk. It looked like it was going to storm, so we just went to the grave yard. Shortly after he took care of business, the sky opened up and we got drenched walking home.