Category: GFCA

10 Places To VIsit in Pennsylvania that Aren’t Pittsburgh and Philadelphia

The other day, while perusing a whole lot of travel blogs and websites to come up with post ideas, I noticed (or I should say, re-noticed) that when Pennsylvania in concerned, the large majority of writers break up the state into three parts: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and “The Amish.”  Now, I’m not hear to disagree with

Continue reading

Just a Few of the Reasons I’m Excited to be Back in NEPA

My last two posts were basically an extended lament about leaving Lancaster and returning to the NEPA motherland. I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea. While I am genuinely sad about leaving Lancaster, I’m not necessarily upset to be returning home. Sure, Lancaster has a lot of things Northeastern PA doesn’t. For one thing,

Continue reading

A Culinary Tour of NEPA

Whenever the topic of “Pennsylvania food” comes up you hear about cheesesteaks, Philly “wudder” ice, soft pretzels, Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple and whoopie pies, Lebanon bologna, and Pittsburgh’s Primanti Brothers French fry topped sandwiches (although as an aside: my brother who lives in Pittsburgh, speaks very low of this establishment). That’s all well and good and I’m not going

Continue reading

Top NEPA Bars

Last week I clued you into my favorite Scranton bars as part of my March, “Favorite Bars of Pennsylvania series,” in case you find yourself at Scranton’s parade day this weekend and are looking for somewhere to imbibe. This week, I’ll be expanding to my top 10 favorite bars in Northeastern Pennsylvania in case you somehow find

Continue reading

Deep Thoughts on an Evolving NEPA

I grew up in semi-rural North Eastern Pennsylvania (NEPA), on a tiny blip on the map called Browndale. I usually have to tell people I’m from Forest City, a slightly larger speck on the map known for being the starting spot of the Steamtown Marathon, having what the Forest City News thinks is the largest memorial to

Continue reading

Where to Cross Country Ski in Pennsylvania

It’s pretty much my unofficial goal to become a cross-country ski bum. I’ve outlined before why one of my favorite outdoor activities and am stoked that this winter has been generous with the snow thus far. I think I skied five times last year and two of those required traveling up to Lake Placid for a weekend. I was

Continue reading

The Dying NEPA Picnic Scene

Growing up in NEPA,  summertime always meant picnic season. If you want to know the ins and outs of what exactly it is and what picnics are still occurring check out my post from last summer, but in the meantime, here’s the abridged version: NEPA has a long history of volunteer fire departments and various (mostly) Catholic

Continue reading

Hiking Elk Mountain

Memorial Day weekend (or #MDW if I want to be trendy) has long been the unofficial start of summer (even though my personal unofficial start of summer is whenever school lets out) and I’m happy to say that I’ve already been able to start crossing off items from my 2013 Summer to-do List. My mother and I

Continue reading

PICNIC SEASON

“What do you like better, Christmas or Wedding Season?”  “The answer would be, um, Picnic Season?” Picnic season in NEPA is a big deal.  It’s a dying deal, but still a big deal nonetheless, and something that, to me, defines summertime and growing up. Every summer, for as long as I can remember, weekends were dominated

Continue reading

4th of July Week in Pictures…Very Limited Pictures

As noted in my previous post, I was camping in upstate New York over the 4th of July Weekend (I’m actually not sure whether last weekend or the weekend prior was considered the “4th weekend”, but just go with it). I went in with the intention of taking alot of photographs, especially on the drive between Narrowsburg,

Continue reading