Dave's trip to the USA - Part 1

I took my sons Tatsuki and Satoshi to Pennsylvania in the US for three weeks during our summer break. We stayed at my parents’ house in Quarryville. We were very busy having fun every day. The weather was mostly good, it was cooler than Okayama and much less humid. There were some thunderstorms on a few days and a hurricane passed by, but the winds were not strong when it finally reached us.

Here is a quick look at all of the fun that we had during the first week and a half:

My brother, his family, and some of my aunts and uncles came to visit us in Quarryville.

The weather was nice, so we all spent time visiting in my parents’ backyard.

We went bowling at my parents’ retirement community. They still live at home, but participate in social activities there.

I tried pickleball for the first time. It is like tennis and table tennis combined. It was fun, I would like to try it again.

We went to a huge indoor water park called Great Wolf Lodge. They had a lot of slides and a wave pool.

We played miniature golf at the water park. Everything was inside so that families can go there in the summer heat and the winter cold.

Me and the boys did the high ropes course there, too. I could pass most of the obstacles without relying on my safety harness.

I did some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training with one of my old high school friends. He is a very experienced martial artist.

We did an escape room. The theme for this escape room was the American Revolution (around 1777 in this case). We had to save the American flag from the British forces. We barely escaped the room after 58 minutes. The time limit was 1 hour, so it was very close.

Some evenings we just relaxed at home and played card games, such as Uno.

We went “tubing”. Tubing is when you float down a stream on an innertube. This tubing trip took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. When we finished, a small bus took us back to the starting area.

There were some fast sections of water, but mostly it was nice and slow. Two of my brothers and an old friend joined us. It was great to chat to my family and friend as we floated down the river and cooled off.

After tubing, we enjoyed “Jimmy Juice” (a local cocktail) and some junk food.

We watched a local professional wrestling event. I got to hold the championship belt before the event started.

The venue for the pro wrestling was unique. It was outdoors at a minor league baseball stadium. It would have been a great place to watch, but unfortunately, it was a bit rainy that night. The wrestlers didn’t give up and performed in the rain. We were feeling quite wet and cold by the end, but they put on a surprisingly good show for the fans that stayed through the bad weather.

The final match for the Heavyweight Championship was the best one. Tatsuki and Satoshi asked me a lot of questions about wrestling because it was the first time for them to see it.

Well, that was our first 10 days in America. I’ll add more blog posts in the coming days.