Old Friends, Cheese Steaks and Wine

 

We had a pretty peaceful ride down through Connecticut into New York.....

 

 

Then it all changed......

 

 

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.....and tunnels......

 

 

Which was a little nerve wracking because there was quite a few army vehicles all around us....

 

 

 

When they came up besides us we were eye level with them.....

 

 

Up over the George Washington Bridge..........

 

Into a state that I did not miss..........

 Along the NJ Turnpike we had the view over to New York and the 2 missing buildings in the skyline......

 

and more traffic down the turnpike.....

 

 

We pulled off into the rest area and de-stressed with a yummy homemade lunch of cheese, crackers, carrots, pepperoni and farmers cheese!

 

Tina continued to work through lunch.....

 

 

Once off of the NJ Turnpike the scenery started to change......

 

We drove through small farm towns.......

 

 

And quaint down towns......

 

 

some more funky than others......

 

Until we found what we were looking for.....

 

 

our Harvest Host for the night, Bellview Winery.

 

 

 

It was a small family run winery located in Landisville NJ.

We had looked them up in our Harvest Host directory and it sounded great.  We had yet to stay in an actual "Winery" and were excited to see what that entailed......

 

 

 

 

Matt our Harvest Host told us we could park anywhere on the property that we wanted to.....so we drove through the rows of grapes hanging from the vine until we found the big open field....

 

 

 

                                                                           

 

 

After we were settled, we hoped in the car and headed out.....to find.....

 

 

We heard the angels singing when this (meaning 4) was delivered to our table!

 

We ended up eating only about 15 minutes from where we had first lived in New Jersey! Needless to say there wasn't a lot of talking going on for the first 10 minutes......

 

 

 

 

                                                                 

 

 

Our bellies were full, which was perfect because our next stop was the grocery store.  Yes, my favorite place to be!

 I was on the phone with my best friend, Carolyn, (who happens to live less than 15 minutes away from the grocery store) who was giving me moral support while trying to corral both Tina and Joe....

not the easiest thing to do.....

 

trying to get them to the check out line.......

as you can see we made sure we had the essentials....burgers, toliet paper and marshmellows...... 

 

 When she tells me she is there...in the parking lot;)  It was such an awesome surprise!  I didn't think we would get to see each other for a few more days, even though we were so close to where she lived, we weren't going to be in town for longer than just some groceries and then head back down 40 minutes to the campground.  But she didn't want to wait:)  Could you really blame her though!

 

 It was after 900pm and we had to say our goodbyes in the parking lot of Shop Rite:(   We had a long drive back to the camper and had to turn down the offer of donuts and catching up at her house:(  Plus there was the whole, "we just went grocery shopping and the ice cream was beginning to melt" cry that Joe was making.  So we went our separate ways for the night......but would see them in a few days down the shore at the next campground!