After a pretty good night’s sleep, we got up slowly, eventually got ready, and had…the most lacking hotel breakfast of the trip downstairs. Seriously this one was pitiful. So breakfast was quick.
We got on the road shortly after 9. It was a very uneventful, but beautiful, drive through the mountains of West Virginia. We passed into Maryland eventually, where we grabbed lunch from a Chick-fil-A drive through just east of Cumberland. Chick-fil-A really should be tasked with managing well…everything. Their drive throughs are a thing of beauty in how efficiently they operate.
From here it was non-stop to State College, PA. We pulled into my sister’s driveway just about 2:15. Laura gave us a tour of her house, since she’s moved since the last time I was in State College, and then we piled into her car for a tour of Penn State, which, of course, started with ice cream at the Creamery. They have very good (and HUGE) servings here. Nick had never been to Penn State before, so Laura drove us around campus so he could see how big it is. Then we went back to her house and visited until Josh got home from work.
Once Josh was ready we all piled into Laura’s car and drove over to the next town: Bellefonte. Laura had been wanting to check out Axemann Brewery and having us in town apparently provided a great opportunity to do so. Axemann has a pretty unique set-up. They have a huge open indoor space, with lawn games, a bar, lots of tables, and a food window that’s got a kitchen shared by two food truck operators. We sat at the bar, the boys had some beers, the girls had some cocktails, and we got some pizzas. The food and cocktails were great. The beers apparently were not the world’s best. The atmosphere was VERY loud, but it was quite busy and it’s really a pretty cool set-up. They also have a big wall of upgraded garage doors that they can open in nice weather to have air flow and move some of the cornhole boards outside. Neat concept, and we enjoyed ourselves.
After dinner, Laura drove us over to Big Spring distillery, which was just a couple streets away. They actually make a lot of the (flavored) liquors that were used in the cocktails at Axemann. We grabbed a table here and each ordered a cocktail. We also were provided with samples of some dragonfruit cocktail. We had fun here too.
Once we’d finished our beverages, we headed back to Laura and Josh’s, where we chatted for a few more minutes, and then Nick and I hopped into the car for the quick 5 minute drive over to our hotel for the evening, the Hilton Garden Inn State College.
Check in was quick, the guy at the front desk explained how breakfast works now that gold members get a set value credit towards breakfast rather than a full free breakfast (thanks HHonors…) and we headed for our room, on the 4th floor, at the end of the hallway, facing the woods. The room was in great shape, clean, and had NO road noise. After a week of staying in cities and next to highways, no road noise was amazing. We both crashed hard and slept soundly.
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