10 Days In Harrisburg, PA – Here’s What We Did

Our month in Pennsylvania saw us staying in three cities – Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.

We stayed in Harrisburg for a total of 10 nights to maximize our award redemption at the hotel we were staying at, plus there were quite a few things we wanted to do while in the area.

Here’s a round up of our time in Harrisburg, from where we stayed to what we did to where we ate and drank.

Where We Stayed In Harrisburg, PA

Homewood Suites Harrisburg/West Hershey Area

We stayed all 10 nights at the Homewood Suites Harrisburg/West Hershey Area. Homewood Suites is a Hilton brand and you get every 5th night free on award stays if you have any kind of status with Hilton (n.b. you can get Hilton Silver status with their fee-free American Express credit card). That meant we got both our 5th and 10th nights free.

One of the great things about the Homewood Suites brand is that every suite has a full kitchen which makes longer stays much more enjoyable and convenient. We were also able to book straight into a one bedroom suite for the standard number of points rather than having to book a studio suite which is something we appreciated as we much prefer having a separate bedroom and living room. It was a great place to stay and was conveniently placed for all the places we wanted to visit during our time there.

You can read my full review of the Homewood Suites Harrisburg/West Hershey Area here.

Things To Do In & Around Harrisburg, PA

Turkey Hill Experience

If you’ve never heard of Turkey Hill, they’re a large ice cream manufacturer. You’ll more commonly find their ice creams in grocery stores on the east coast, but they’ve expanded to have a presence in grocery stores in nearly all 50 states in recent years.

The Turkey Hill Experience isn’t located where they make their ice cream, so you don’t get to see behind-the-scenes of the manufacturing process like you do at Ben & Jerry’s. Instead, it shares the history of the company, you learn about how they make the ice cream and get to try different ice creams.

They also have a ticket add-on option where you can create your own ice cream with different flavors and mix-ins, so Shae and I did that too. Check out this post for more about our visit to the Turkey Hill Experience.

Gettysburg National Military Park

Gettysburg National Military Park is about 40 minutes south of Harrisburg. Shae visited there once without me to tour the museum while I worked, then we returned together for a ranger-led guided tour.

Something worth noting is that although it’s free to visit the park, it costs $12.75 per adult if you want to visit the museum as it’s run by the Gettysburg Foundation rather than the National Park Service.

Unfortunately our joint visit was a bust. What made it disappointing was our ranger-led tour. For starters, it was meant to last 1.5 hours, but went on for almost 3 hours. If all three hours had been information-filled and engaging, that would be one thing. That wasn’t the case though. Instead, most of the overrun was due to weird tangents our guide went on, from a co-ranger to whom he’s attracted to discipline he received at school decades ago to how his home is decorated and more.

The worst part of the tour though was the fact that our ranger gave an almost three hour pro-Confederate tour. While I think it’s important to be aware of Confederate viewpoints and stories from the Civil War, this was something else. To give an idea of how pro-Confederate our ranger was, one of the tangents he went on was that he has a picture of Robert E. Lee in his home.

Add in comments from the ranger about a nearby crack (read African-American) neighborhood, him commenting repeatedly about a lady wearing a Wiccan t-shirt to the point that she had to keep correcting him and one of the people on the tour (who was friends with the ranger) talking about “the China flu” regarding COVID, it made for an eye-rolling three hours which made it hard to concentrate on the history. (n.b. Shae contacted the park to give feedback about our experience and they were genuinely apologetic.)

Amish Country

Shae, Truffles and I spent a day in Amish country, visiting Lancaster Central Market, took a ride with Abe’s Buggy Rides and toured the Amish Farm & House which included a 90 minute bus ride through Amish country. You can read all about these pet-friendly experiences here.

Hershey

Hershey is about 30 minutes east of Harrisburg and is home to the Hershey Chocolate Company. We spent an afternoon and evening there, going to Hershey Chocolate World, the Hershey Story museum and the Hotel Hershey. Shae wrote about our day out there, so check out this post for more.

Pennsylvania State Capitol

On our way out of Harrisburg to Delaware (our next state), we stopped downtown to visit the State Capitol quickly.

Where We Ate & Drank In & Around Harrisburg, PA

Jack’s Hard Cider

After our leeeeeeengthy tour at Gettysburg, we hoped our afternoon would get better by going to Jack’s Hard Cider.

It didn’t.

Their cider wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t at all memorable, to the point that we found it hard to distinguish between the different ones we tried on our flights despite them supposedly having vastly different flavors (e.g. pear, peach chipotle bourbon, cherry pumpkin, etc.).

That was rounded off with the lady working there that day changing the diaper of her granddaughter on one of the tables. To be fair, she did do that on a mat, but even so – it’s hardly sanitary doing that on a table where people are going to be drinking.

The Fridge

A much better drinking place was The Fridge in Lancaster which we visited on our day in Amish country. We only had time for one drink, but I loved my stout and Shae liked that they served wine which isn’t always the case at beer-focused locations.

Deerfoot Downtown

A place with even better wine was Deerfoot Downtown, also in downtown Lancaster. Shae did some wine tasting there and enjoyed all of them, with a very friendly server too.

Shady Maple Smorgasbord

One of the suggestions we received from readers before visiting Pennsylvania was that we should eat at Shady Maple Smorgasbord. That’s because with more than 200 feet of food serving areas, it’s the largest buffet in the US.

It was fun getting to eat at the largest buffet in the US, but in terms of quality of food I wouldn’t say it was any better than Golden Corral. That’s not meant as an insult because we like eating at Golden Corral sometimes – it’s just that if all you’re looking for is a buffet with lots of food, Golden Corral is a cheaper option.

The Hotel Hershey

As mentioned earlier, we stayed all 10 nights at the Homewood Suites in Harrisburg. During our day out in Hershey though we did stop at The Hotel Hershey for a drink. The reason why is that The Hotel Hershey serves a Hershey Kisses Signature Chocolate Martini. This contains 360 chocolate vodka, Smirnoff vanilla vodka, white crème de cacao and a Hershey’s chocolate Kiss in the bottom.