So, according to Yahoo! maps, driving from York, PA to Canoe Creek, PA is about 150 miles and should take about 2.5 hours. Well, not so much. I've been dying to go up and see the bats in what is supposed to be PA's largest bat colony for awhile, so yesterday we set off. We left at noon, so I figure we'll be there 2:30-ish, Matt and Sara can do some fishing while I read, we'll take a nice nature walk, let sara swim, eat dinner, see the bats and go home. Me, the genius that I am, looked at the map and saw we could take route 30 most of the way, instead of the major highway. 30 is more scenic, so that's the way we went, completely forgetting that all those scenic little towns have 30 mile an hour speed limits. Plus the road winds right through the Blue Mountain reagion of PA so there was a lot of going straight up, only to come straight down...I'd hate to live there in the winter! Couple that with summer road work and it was 4:30 when we pulled in the park.

I had hurt my back earlier in the week, and 4 hours in the car with no back support left me barely able to walk. SO, we went to the swimming area and Matt and I sat at a picnic bench while Sara swam for awhile.

Sara managed to pack her pockets full of pretty rocks she just HAD to bring home...though I didn't protest TOO much, I remember at her age coming home from Verona beach with buckets of "seashells"...at least her rocks didn't smell like dead fish :-).

We grilled dinner, and I must say fresh corn on the cob grilled out is one of the best things in the world!

I know a lot of these pictures are a bit blurry, but because of my back, I was shaking a lot when I stood up.

The bats actually live in a church which is located off the park grounds, so after dinner we headed over to get good seats.

The black square in the church is an open hole into the attic, where the bats spend their day.

We got there early (about 8-ish) and a few more groups joined us as it got darker (Ladybird would not stop jumping around and dancing until we let her go over and meet each person as they joined us on the lawn...luckily they all liked dogs!

I TRIED to get some pictures as the bats streamed out of the barn, but by that time it was dark, the bats were flying very fast, and my camera is not that good. Here is one where a bat (the white blob) got caught in my flash..I tried to mark the bats with arrows (and I did make sure it was ok to use my flash before I took any pics of the bats).

I know, pretty crappy, but as we were leaving I did see this little fella on the wall of the church:

We left about 10:15, but even taking the highway route back, we didn't hit home till 1:30 am...ug, what a LONG day! I loved seeing the bats, though as Matt pointed out we could've stayed home and just viewed the park's bat-cam here: http://www.pennfuture.org/bats/canoecreekbatcam.html