I'm not posting this in the Knoebels thread specifically as the TR has other places as well, but if mods think it's better off there, feel free to move it!
Anyway, for the last few years, I've tried to put one big trip together to gather friends from around the country for. Last time it was Disney World; this year we decided to do something a bit more affordable to save for the next big one...and, as it turned out, too many of my friends had never been to Knoebels! That had to be fixed...and of course everyone that had been there before was more than happy to go back. It isn't really Knoebels if you just stay in a hotel off site, but no one really wanted to tent camp for a full week, so...a cottage it was! I wasn't too afraid to give one a try; it's Knoebels, how bad can anything there be? Back in the spring, I reserved one; I wasn't able to get my first choice, the Cedar Log cabin, which looks awesome in the pics, but I did score the Glass House, which looked nice enough and was big enough for the group I was bringing, apart from the...slight...issue of having one bathroom for ten people. So....how did it go?
As usual, apologies for the half-assed photos; I'm really not a photographer at all, and a lot of them are terrible, or I just entirely forgot to take pictures of some things I should have!
Day 1 - Monday
We headed down from Rhode Island a bit after 9, and had a nice easy drive...as far as the Connecticut border. At which point traffic immediately came to a complete standstill, because I-95 in Connecticut...
- almost 45 minutes of this, and we find out all the slowdown was caused by a car pulled entirely off the road, well out of everyone's way, that everyone had to stop and gawk at. of course.
Once we got past that, things were fine until New Jersey, where a truck kicked up a rock that put a nice big hole in my windshield. The windshield that I replaced three weeks ago because a truck put a hole in it. Fortunately that was the end of the bad luck for the vast majority of the week...once we hit PA the drive was fine, and as anyone who's driven into Knoebels through the Delaware Water gap area knows, absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, since I was driving...no pictures there. Soon enough, we were turning down the road into the back side of Knoebels, and pulled up to see our cottage up close for the first time!
- Okay, not bad! A bit rustic, but cute!
A quick run down to the main Knoebels office to get the keys, and we could take a look around inside and see what we were in for.
- The kitchen and dining area is pretty nice! Very airy and open with all the glass. Cheap table, but it did the job fine.
- All the basics included; refrigerator, stove, microwave, etc, and pretty much every kitchen tool and utensil you could think of, in a collection that apparently grows every time someone rents the cottage and leaves something else behind.
- That chair on the left was far more comfortable than it looked. Minor wars were fought over it.
- ...okay, I'm not really sure what I was trying to take a picture of here, but the high ceiling out here made the place feel bigger.
- Okay, I could maybe do without the Jesus clock, but...details.
- This was a little unfortunate, if understandable. Being a dog friendly park, it would have been great if they could stay in the cabins too. We had a couple people along who would have loved to bring theirs along.
Only real issue out here...I have no idea what was going on with the flooring. It's so uneven it looks like it was once liquid and just frozen mid-wave. It's not sagging, exactly. It just has bumps, ripples, and valleys. A bit disconcerting, but no huge deal.
Out in the living room...well, this is looking even better!
- Cozy! Sadly, visible-but-not-touchable, the incredibly soft carpet that we could have just slept on right there.
- Plenty of room, super comfy couches...it's not as if we're planning on spending a lot of time indoors here, but still, this is really nice!
- The pictures on the Knoebels website show an ancient tiny CRT TV. I'm happy to say that, in case of a rainy day, there is actually a real TV.
Wait, why would you be staying inside at Knoebels and watching TV, just because of a little rain? This didn't get used.
- The decor in here was...interesting. As one of our group put it, it looked like someone let two grandmas into the place, lit their fuses, and ran. It was pleasant enough though.
- A bit odd, but I'll take her over the Jesus clock.
- Bathroom was fine! Modern ish shower with plenty of hot water (and pressure like a firehose), and...despite the website saying toilet paper wasn't to be provided, about a year's supply of it. Okay then.
- No terrible surprises lurking here either!
So what about the bedrooms? Well, downstairs we find...
- Okay, so the place was clearly furnished by yard sale, but it has a sort of charm to it.
Somehow I neglected to take any pictures of the bed situation, but it was fine. Mattress, box spring, nothing half-assed. Not a huge fan of the plastic mattress cover, but then, also not a fan of sleeping in a mattress with someone's kid's pee stains on it, so...the plastic was fine, I suppose. Only minor complaint here; we paid the extra for bed linins to be provided, but what we got for that extra $10 a person wasn't great. Two plain top sheets, no fitted ones, that all just slid right off the bed. We ended up making a run to Walmart anyway to get proper bed sets. I'd definitely suggest bringing bedding for yourself.
And...upstairs!
- These are some interesting stairs...it's hard to tell in the picture exactly how steep they actually were. The steps were barely big enough to get a foot on.
- The upstairs bedrooms were a bit more...basic. Some beds had box springs, some were just mattresses on a wire mesh base, not much for decorations on the plywood walls.
- Still, they weren't /bad/, exactly, and no one spent any time up there except to crash after a long day. Maybe don't plan on a nice romantic rendezvous up there though.
- ...but you get to look out at Knoebels from them!
So, cottage is for the most part a big win! No one had any real complaints, and we looked like we'd have every we needed for a cozy, content week! All settled in, we just needed to go get food. Definitely getting food first. Everyone's hungry, no time to stop for rides...
- ...just have to walk past here...
- ...yeah, no big deal, it's just a roller coaster, and we really should eat...
- Yeah, right. We're at Knoebels. First things first.
At this point, I'm not really sure what there is to say about Phoenix. It's Phoenix, and everyone here has heard it all...and it's all true, of course. It was running as amazingly as always last week. I let friends have the magic third row, and settled for sitting behind them; there's a definitely difference in the airtime just moving one car back, but...it's still Phoenix.
Okay, NOW we can get food. There's an Alamo hot turkey sandwich swimming in a lake of gravy in my future!
- Oh. Okay. Well...further in my future than I'd been hoping for.
So, we hit Cesari's instead. They were out of their awesome Sicilian pizza, so I went with taco pizza and a promise to myself that I'd get back there for Sicilian later in the week...which I'm only now realizing that I never actually did do. A horrible failure on my part, but it's not as if we didn't get tons of other Knoebels food!
- Knoebels just looking pretty like always
We had a few things we needed to pick up for the week, so a stop at the camp store was in order.
- Despite its small size, Knoebels' camp store manages to have nearly everything you might need for a week of camping; toiletries, charcoal and grilling tools, flashlights and batteries, hamburgers and buns, whatever you can think of. Also, most importantly, Catawissa orange cream soda.
No one really wanted to end our first night early, so it was time to break out some board and card games for a bit.
- ...I don't actually remember why the stuffed corgi was at the table. It likely had something to do with one of the hex cards that "punish" players who lose a round in this game.
- Exhibit A
And that was day one. The cottage lived up to expectations, and seemed a great value at that price, so I think I can safely recommend them to anyone, as long as you're not a four star hotel minimum type!
I'll update later with Day 2, and Penn's Cave and Wildlife Park!
