Your Guide to Family-Friendly Day Trips in New Jersey, New York…and Beyond
Have you ever pet a capybara? I’m guessing you have not. We hadn’t either, until we visited the Ghost Ranch Exotics and Funny Foot Farm outside of Tucson. You get to pet more than capybaras – you can pet warthogs, bulls, emus, porcupines and even hold baby goats. This Tucson exotic petting zoo is a lot of fun.
Continue reading “Tucson Exotic Petting Zoo – With Kids”
Here’s something you don’t usually do on vacation in Phoenix – visit a worm farm in Arizona. But that’s what we did in December, and we loved it. These worms are grown for composting and fertilizer. The Arizona Worm Farm sells worms, castings and black soldier fly larvae direct-to-consumers (gardeners and farmers). This is a 10-acre urban farm (though the area itself does not feel urban).
Continue reading “Visit a Worm Farm in Arizona With Kids”
If you’ve been in the Atlantic City area, you probably have heard about or seen Lucy the Elephant. Touted as the top roadside attraction in America, Lucy has been around in various forms since 1881, in Margate – just south of Atlantic City.
If you’re in need of a vacation away from the kids, and don’t want to go far, go to New York City. Spend the weekend in New York without kids. It won’t be cheap, but if you live within train or bus distance, you save on plane fare. Here’s a sample itinerary for a weekend in New York without kids.
We’ve stayed at a number of hotels in New York City, from StayPineapple, to Hotel Elysee, to The Muse, to Hotel Giraffe, to Yotel. And that doesn’t include all the more corporate hotels I’ve stayed in for conferences, since I didn’t want to head home late at night. This time we stayed at the Archer Hotel in midtown. It was a few blocks from Bryant Park, a good place in the summer to go for outdoor drinks.
Continue reading “Weekend in New York Without Kids”We took a Scott’s Pizza Tour with kids in 2013 and loved it. We learned so much and we constantly refer to things we learned when taking that tour. We decided to take another Scott’s pizza tour with kids this summer, and we were glad to see Scott’s business survived the pandemic.
I write about supply chain management (logistics, operations, transportation etc.) so touring an Amazon fulfillment center (FC) seems like more than a fun thing to do – it seemed necessary for work! There are currently 23 warehouses/fulfillment centers in the U.S. that give tours, including 3 in New Jersey. You can take an Amazon tour with kids, but most tours are on the weekday, which can make it difficult unless you’re home schooling. Here’s what I learned on my Amazon tour.
By the way, you can’t take photos inside the warehouse, so these photos are screenshots from a virtual tour last week, run by Amazon for FIRST Robotics – an international STEM robotics program I’m involved with. You can watch the virtual Amazon tour here which was meant as an Amazon tour with kids, or at least for kids.
Continue reading “Amazon Tour with Kids”
It’s okay. You can be a local and still take the Radio City Music Hall tour. In fact, you should. Your kids would like it too. There are details for those who care greatly about architecture, art and design. And it’s fun to wander around back stage and see Rockettes’ costumes up close (and meet a Rockette in person). And if you’re lucky like us, you’ll show up on one of the 40 or so days a year when there’s not a performance and they aren’t setting up for one. And you’ll be able to on STAGE. Yeah, we got lucky.
I have to admit, I’m not a home shopping on TV kind of gal, (or even home shopping on the internet person). Certainly I buy things online, but I rarely browse sites just to see what they’re selling, and if I’m going to watch TV, it’s not going to be a shopping show. While I’m not alone in that, I am in QVC’s demographic, of women 35-64, who are educated homeowners. BUT, I can’t resist a factory tour, and the QVC tour of the studio sounded like too much fun to pass up.
This is part two in our post about the Manischewitz factory tour. Part one is a tour of the Manischewitz matzah production.
**UPDATE – it appears this Manischewitz Newark factory is closing. We’ll update the post if we get additional tour information.**
The Manischewitz factory has four main production lines: Continue reading “Touring the Manischewitz Factory Part 2”
If you grew up in the New Jersey area, you may have taken an Manischewitz factory tour through religious school, in Jersey City. That factory closed, and the new global headquarters and manufacturing plant is now in Newark. It opened in the fall 2016, and you can book group tours there. I love factory tours, and even more so when it’s the actual factory, and not a fake one (I’m talking to you, Hershey’s).
**UPDATE – it appears this Manischewitz Newark factory is closing. We’ll update the post if we get additional tour information.**
In this tour, you walk through a lot of the 186,000 square feet of the factory. What you’ll see being produced depends on the day, as they make more than 400 products. Continue reading “Touring the Manischewitz Factory – Part 1”