catena

I’m not sure what you’d go to see, but my family and old friends are there, so it’s always worth visiting for me. ;)

Unlike the town, the campus is great to be in, and the surrounding countryside is beautiful.

I lived north and south of town in the early 90s. Unless you’re a student, there’s not much to do in Happy Valley. Go to a cabin in a forest instead, and enjoy the beauty of Pennsylvania. I was an engineering major though, so maybe I didn’t have the time to fully appreciate the places off campus. I did get a chance to go caving, and there’s a very cool cave with a wee tiny entrance that I quite liked.

You’re at Penn State, where Ben and Jerry learned to make ice cream, and you buy the mass-produced knockoff when you can get the real thing? Stop, exit, walk north across the campus to the Creamery, and have the best.

Freshest, most flavorful ice cream I’ve ever had, mixed with fresh, real ingredients. One thing I really miss from Penn State. Oberweis is very good, Cold Stone is good, but Ben And Jerry’s is a poor substitute, and has way too much random stuff in it.

I found my granduncle Dominick Fanani’s Ed.D. thesis in the stacks, typed by my grandaunt. :)

When I went to Penn State, there was a large Charles Addams work hanging in the main room.

There is no dark side of the moon, really.
As a matter of fact, it’s all dark.

I hear the future is a lot like the present, only more so, and without the things they left behind.

My family visited Disneyland when I was in early elementary school. As we entered, they told me to go to a certain building on the left if I didn’t see them. About ten minutes after that, I didn’t see them, so I asked someone in a bright friendly shirt to direct me to the building. The person took me there, where I waited with a coloring book for my frantic parents to finally come to the last place they expected me to go. ;)

Seriously, there’s so much to see here that you should plan two full days to see everything, if you’re interested in animals, or if you have kids (who will tire of walking after half the zoo). You can certainly breeze past everything in one day, but if you actually want to observe the animals in their routines, you have to spend some time at each exhibit.

For the most part, the exhibits bring you into the animals’ world, rather than the reverse, and you don’t feel that the animals are uncomfortable (especially since they’re medically cared for, and safe from poachers and natural predators). In particular, the monkey house is very well designed, and I’m looking forward to when my son’s old enough for the petting zoo.