Still HOT TUB Season!

Shawn & Becky, repeat Annville Inn guests.

Our guests love hottubbing out under the stars, during a softly falling snow and even during ice storms! Some of the most popular times are late fall, early winter and early spring--our current season. With nighttime temps dipping down to the 30's and 40's, it is the perfect time for a romantic, torch-lit experience, complimented by a sky punctuated with stars slung from horizon to horizon. Hot Tubbers enjoy being out in the cold night air, wrapped in a 104 degree water blanket--nice and cozy! Even though our swimming pool opens in May, we have had guests opt for the hot tub even in warm weather, albeit with water substantially lower than 104!

Welcome back, Spring!

We say goodbye to winter this time of the year, and prepare our three acres of lawn and gardens for spring, summer and fall glory. To the right is one of the last remnants of winter, the arils (fleshy covered seed pods) of Burning Bush (euonymus alatus), which we keep contained to keep from becoming invasive. In designing our outdoor landscape, we look at each garden as an outdoor "room," which helps us to design the landscape around different themes. Our "Ashie's Garden," for example, is watched over by two life size cow statues, symbolic of the dairy business here in the lush Lebanon Valley, where the Inn is located. We think these scarlet arils foreshadow the trusses of hanging red and pink blooms of the bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) that we grow in the same garden.

Our Romance Garden will have a new feature this spring, a beautiful fountain, which we have been working on over winter to prepare for its debut. Later this summer, plans are for a special garden wall for this area. Craig is hoping for a garden scale railroad for his birthday, which will be installed in one of our twelve specific garden areas. It will probably not go into the butterfly garden, as we don't want to scare away any of the hundreds of butterflies in that area.

At left, one of the first signs of spring in our gardens (in addition to the tulips, which have pushed up three inches of growth in the last two weeks (except for the ones dug up by our resident squirrel.)) This is a branch of silver maple (Acer saccharinum) in our Romance Garden showing buds getting ready to set its famous "helicopter seed pods," which are somewhat of a gardening issue, but managable!

Well Known Author Selects Annville Inn

Author, Photographer and Adventurer Cindy Ross with model Jo Ann Micklusky, working on an article at Annville Inn .

Readers of this blog, and guests at Annville Inn (http://www.annvilleinn.com/) who are fellow adventurers in life are probably very familiar with prolific author Cindy Ross, adventurer extraordinaire, who has written over a thousand newspaper and magazine articles for such luminary publications as the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Backpacker Magazine, Outdoor Life, Harrisburg Magazine, Pennsylvania Magazine, every boating magazine and every motorcycling magazine you can think of as well as countless travel magazines.

Cindy stayed with us this past week, and brought model JoAnn Micklusky with her in order to use Annville Inn Bed & Breakfast as a backdrop for one of her upcoming articles!

Cindy is also the author of four books, one of which is Scraping Heaven, published by McGraw-Hill, and the book currently on our bedside table. We highly recommend it. Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle who said, "This is both an epic adventure of the first order and the heartwarming story of the family who accomplished it," her book is definitely a page turner.

The book's dust jacket proclaims, "On the high rocky mountain slopes the line between heaven and disaster is razor thin, yet it was there that Cindy Ross and her husband were irresistibly drawn with their two small children. This is the story of their five-summer 3,100 mile trek over the rooftop of North America--a rousing adventure with a powerful message for parents. "

The first two pages immediately brings the reader into one of the family's nightmares in paradise, leaving the reader wondering whether or not they will live--a question raised by one of their children.

They do, in fact survive, and learn many lessons along the way. We felt privileged to have Cindy Ross (and her sister/model, JoAnn , who has children who are also adventurers, one who is about to have the Scouting adventure of a lifetime--going to Philmont, New Mexico) here at the Inn.

Craig, who along with his buddies has hiked much of the Appalachian Trail and ancillary trail systems, and who has had many adventures (bear attacks, near drownings, run away fires, explosions) while camping, found much in common with Cindy. Both Rosalie and Craig are certain they have made two wonderful new friends in Cindy and JoAnn. Their sentiment regarding Cindy and all their wonderful guests: "What a blessing it is to have our Inn!"
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