Penn State Weekend

Hey, at least I'm getting around to posting about last weekend before another one has passed. On Friday afternoon (10/9), Rich and Shaun once again picked me up from work and we headed to PA. It was a long drive, thanks to the 5 miles of construction traffic near Wilkes-Barre that took over an hour to get through, and then metro Harrisburg traffic. We traveled that direction to stay with one of Rich's PSU friends in York, as we weren't able to get the camper for the weekend and stay on campus like we did last year. It's fun either way though - I mean, it's college football! (And it was Notre Dame's bye weekend so we didn't miss a game!) We had the same crowd as our Philly trip in March, minus John and Sarah, because they unfortunately had to stay in DC for the weekend to be on call for work.

Friday night we chilled at Ben's house, ordered pizza, and played games. Then on Saturday we got up pretty early (silly Big 10 and their noon games) and made the should-have-been-2-hour-but-was-actually-3-with-game-day-traffic drive to State College. In the parking lot, Ben whipped out his awesome griddle and we quickly cooked up some pancakes and bacon before heading over to the stadium.



We had a pretty cool perspective from the front of the end zone. In this picture the Penn State Blue Band is on the field - Jess is a proud former member so we had some fun band nerd moments watching and listening to them.



Touchdown Nittany Lions! It wasn't the most exciting of games, however - Penn State beat up on Eastern Illinois 52-3.



After the game, we came back and cooked some burgers and hot dogs. Here was the view from our tailgating spot...not too shabby.



Another angle...the hills of the Northeast can make for treacherous driving sometimes, but they're so gorgeous in the fall.





Beautiful sunset shots from Shaun (actually, I think he took all of these but the first one). It was a chilly, windy day, but nice to be outside to see this sky.

After we were done eating, and sufficiently frozen, we headed back to Ben's place. Even a few hours after the game ended, we ran into traffic from a truck that broke down, closing the road. Frustrating! But once we got back to the house we were able to relax, and pretty much spent the rest of the weekend playing games. We played Apples to Apples, Ticket to Ride, and lots of The Game of Things. Possibly my favorite "Things" answer of the weekend was to the prompt, "Things that take courage". There were the typical answers - "public speaking" and "blind dates"...and then there was Shaun's answer: "A vending machine in a world where the currency is courage". A lot of times we can guess Shaun's answers right away, but he continues to show his creativity to make us laugh - and we appreciate it!

Anyway...now it's back to focusing on Notre Dame football. Will tomorrow be the first time we've beaten USC since 2001? I sure hope so! Go Irish!