You have no idea how hard it is to get a picture of this bastard.

Seriously, this took far too much effort. But there he is: Fred, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, behind the cut are the rest of the pictures from Longwood Gardens in the lovely [snicker] Philadelphia [chortle] Countryside [bwahahahahaha!]. There’s a bunch of frickin’ plants and a photo of Fred and his girlfriend, Amber. Long story short, yes, my roommate who is also my coworker is dating the little sister of my friend from high school who moved to Pennsylvania before graduation. Did I also mention that another one of my coworkers is a friend from college? My life is totally a cross between a sitcom with a limited budget for casting and a Charles Dickens novel.

Anyway, the photos. There are 47.

Tyrone Township, Penn., had a visit from its namesake today.

I woke up before Fred today. I know, it’s hard to believe because, like Chuck Norris, Fred doesn’t sleep. He had his reasons &#8212 he felt bad after inhaling Centralia fumes (or maybe it was him re-hydrating too soon and us not eating and him being on medication without eating) and ended up projectile vomiting out of the car whilst driving last night.

We got on the road at like 11 and headed over to the Spyglass Ridge Winery. The winery, much like that section of Pennsylvania, is totally awesome. The second we got in there, it was like they knew us for years. AND. EVERY. WINE. THEY. MAKE. IN. OAK. BARRELS. IS. delicious.

And so was their spring water, and the food the unofficial winery chef made (chicken smoked over grapevine, some of which marinated in maple syrup and black pepper).

Fred and I want to go back there really, really, really soon.

We now know where the winery is now. We got lost finding it the first time and ended up at this one cemetery where we turned around the first time we realized we were lost. If we ended up there again, we concluded that we had died in Centralia and were stuck in an episode of &#8220The Twilight Zone.&#8221

After that, we went on our quest to find Tyrone Township because the borough of Tyrone is way out in the state and would have been an extra couple hours.

A problem that we had was that, when we got off U.S. Route 15, we were already in the township so there were no signs for it. So we drove through it and decided to find a map or something in Gettysburg to help us locate it.

Gettysburg is horrible. There are tourist everywhere, a lot of college students and a traffic circle with no lane markings. All of this was fine except for the tourists and the traffic circle. We located the township and got out of there as soon as possible.

From my township, we planned on going to several wineries in Virginia but we did not have enough time. We were going to cram several thousand into the trip but it was quite impossible.

Instead, I took Fred on the Snickersville Turnpike. I don’t know what Fred’s impression was of it overall. He said it had interesting topography. He should see that interesting topography in the dark in the fog. At one point we either caught air or his car screamed in terror. He went across Hibbs Bridge (if you know your turnpike) way too fast and slammed on his brakes. His car made a sound. We’re still not sure what happened.

I think Fred liked the turnpike.

And now we’re back. Victorious. We have the brownies, saw how our newspaper should be through our tour of the Bloomsburg newspaper (we really should have more than four reporters but we all knew that), went to an awesome winery and saw and did many awesome things.

There are 12 photos under the cut

Fred and I left late Friday. I had several things to do at work before I could leave. We didn’t get to Kira’s apartment till a little after midnight. Kira, her sister Amber, Fred and I talked till about 4 a.m.

Every time I talk to Kira, I can’t help but to think how awesome it is for me to have managed to keep a friend who moved to Pennsylvania when we were in 11^th grade.

After we left Kira’s (after an awesome breakfast cooked by Amber), we went to Centralia, Penn. As in the place that’s is the site of an underground mine fire that will burn for the next 250 years. A lot of the buildings have been torn down and there’s random vents for the fire all over the place. On the old road to town, a huge crack opened up. In places, the pavement was hot underfoot. Random places in the ground and the hillsides smoldered. The air smelled of sulfur. It’s probably as close to Hell as one can get on Earth.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

It was awesome.

Fred and I met up with some people from eeriepa.net there. We followed them around for a bit. We took a lot of pictures but they don’t do justice. The lost town of Centralia is a testament of how much we’ve destroyed this planet.

Before we got there, we got lost because google maps told us to turn right on a road when we should have kept straight. It was only a minor inconvenience because we got to take picture of an awesome abandoned factory.

After Centralia, we got our quarry: the brownies. We haven’t had any yet. That will probably change tomorrow. After that, pretty much all we did was get here to the hotel, take needed showers after running around in Centralia, upload pictures and get ready for bed. Speaking of bed, it looks like Fred’s about to so I’m going to wrap this up with 12 of the 200-odd photos I took today (a lot were multiples). They are behind the cut.

Oh yeah, one last thing: The hotel room Fred and I are in right now is connected to a Mexican Restaurant. It’s called Casa Sanchez. I don’t think there’s a huge Hispanic population here. For some reason it doesn’t sound appealing.

Saturday’s Photos {12}