We decided to take part in a Pennsylvania tradition this year and traveled, with a couple of friends, to see Phil the groundhog make his yearly weather prediction – 6 more weeks of winter, or an early spring.
Punxsutawney embraces their "groundhogness" and puts on a really good time for all. If you get the chance, this event is well worth the time spent.
People who know John well, may find his attendance at an event surrounding the celebration of a groundhog, a bit of a contradiction, but he’s been a good sport about all the teasing and has gotten into the spirit of the holiday.
Here we are posing with a carving of of a groundhog we found in the middle of town.
We found many other unique features around town, one being the groundhog statues. These statues are similar to the decorative pigs that you see around Williamsport and in our parades. Below are a couple of pictures of my favorites. More can be seen in the photo album for this trip.
Towards evening we started looking for a place to watch the Super Bowl. There were several places hosting parties; we decided on the Pantall hotel and settled in to watch the Super Bowl. Here John and I are posing with the partying groundhog "Phil".
After the Steeler’s victory, we hung out for a while and enjoyed the two man band playing 70’s and 80’s rock, before heading off to the Community Center, where we were crashing for the night.
Hotels around the area can be a bit scarce but for $5 you can find a place in the old school – now Community Center – and sleep on the floor. That was an experience in itself. It got surprisingly more crowded than I thought it would, though it was mostly college aged kids, about 40 in all.
The highlight of the night was when the cops came in and arrested a guy who was snoring very loudly. In my half asleep, little bit tipsy, stupor I thought he was getting arrested for snoring too loudly. So for the rest of the night I kept nudging John so he wouldn’t snore and get arrested. Turns out this guy was pretty drunk and had wandered in and fell asleep on someone else’s sleeping bag.
Our host came in and woke the whole room up around 3:00am. So we and our friends, Andy and Candy, got up and around 4:30 and headed for the knob. Before loading on the school buses that would take us up to the hill, we filled up our thermoses with hot chocolate for the long 3 hour wait for Phil to make his weather prediction.
By morning the crowd was estimated at about 13,000 or so, not bad for a Monday following the Super Bowl. There were news trucks, food vendors and a large bonfire to warm up by, at the knob. Down on stage there was constant entertainment for the crowd. At about 6:30am they shot off a very nice display of fireworks. At about 7:10am they start the "pomp and circumstance" leading up to bringing Phil out of his stump.
Unfortunately the prediction the great Prognosticator made was that we will be having 6 more weeks of winter. All in all we had a great time and plan to make the trip again in two years for the 125th anniversary.
