Lehigh Valley InSite

Wine clock

Now that the holidays are over, I can tell you (without spoiling the surprise) about some great gifts I discovered in Lehigh Valley to give this year.

Once again, I found some great unique items at Christkindlmarkt in Bethlehem. A new vendor, Art Klocks, was a lady from Tennessee who makes really clever themed clocks, complete with matching swinging pendulums. I bought three of them! My sister Kathy liked hers so much she went online and bought another for a friend. I’m guessing Art Klocks will be back again next year.

Courtesy of onepocket dot org

If money weren’t an issue (meaning, if I didn’t have to work), I’d spend my days writing New York Times bestsellers and my nights shooting pool around Lehigh Valley.

I love to play pool. In November, a coworker and I went to Indy for a conference and, of course, we had to find a place where we could shoot pool. That made me think, wouldn’t a list of places to shoot pool in Lehigh Valley be a fantastic resource for visitors and locals alike? So here are some of the places I’ve played at in the past six months:

Snowboarder

I just returned from nearly two full weeks off from work and guess how I spent most of it. If you said, “In the car driving around Lehigh Valley with my recently turned 16-year-old son,” you’re right.

I usually spend a ton of time with Jared in the car each winter because he holds a season-pass to Blue Mountain Ski Area, which is a 30-minute commute each way for us. What’s different though this year is that he did most of the driving while I observe, grab the door handle and indent my foot in the floor! (Actually, he’s doing quite well with it, but it’s still weird to have him in the driver’s seat.)

Courtesy of andrew kleiner

Taking the advantage of an unseasonably warm (mid-forties) December afternoon with no precipitation, I hurriedly made my way to Northampton Canal Park.

This ribbon of park is unique even in the briefest observation. With the wild Lehigh River on one side and the typical recreational aspect of a city park on the other, depending on the angle it would be hard to determine whether you were standing on a trail of wilderness or on a trail of recreational managed wildlife.

Runner

On Monday, I told you about two of the best places to run in Lehigh Valley. Today, in part two of my “best places to run in Lehigh Valley” series, I will reveal my third favorite running spot along with some honorable mentions.

Courtesy of trail running blog dot com

Lehigh Valley is an ideal place for runners. A number of trails criss-cross the region, offering everything from solitude to spectacular vistas. With Runner’s World magazine published right here in Emmaus, it’s no surprise that Lehigh Valley boasts a strong running community ranging from Olympic hopefuls to weekend warriors.

In the past 10 years, I’ve logged nearly 13,000 miles on countless roads, trails and paths nationwide. Luckily, most of those miles have been in Lehigh Valley, where I’ve found three trails to be among my all-time favorites.

Kemerer Museum

Last month I told you about a luncheon I attended at America on Wheels. Well, I've got another great location to tell you about. Yesterday I went to the Women's Business Council's "Holiday Tea & Trees" event held at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Artsin Bethlehem. Basically, it was a fund-raising event for the WBC's scholarship fund.

I've toured lots of museums in Lehigh Valley, including the Kemerer on several occasions, but many in the WBC had never been there until yesterday (ladies, you really need to get out more often!). Charlene Donchez-Mowers gave an abbreviated tour and everyone was really impressed with the collections on display for the holidays. It did my heart good to hear so many people say, "I'll have to come back with [fill in the name] to see the entire dollhouse collection!"

Meg & Rosie xmas tree

It’s Rosie’s first Christmas - very exciting times – so we headed out to Unangst Tree Farm in Bath to get the perfect tree. Well, more like Mike, Rosie and I went with my in-laws so THEY could hunt for the perfect LIVE tree. I didn’t want to take Rosie hunting in the garage for our perfect PRE-LIT ARTIFICIAL tree we bought a few years ago. Plus, if you read my blog from last week, you know that she likes the outdoors, so off we went to the tree farm in Bath.

Unangst Tree Farm is an experience. First, they take you on a hayride to the spot where the trees are. Then they provide the saws and the fun begins (oh, and by “fun” I mean four adults bickering over what the perfect tree looks like). Once the perfect tree was decided upon, my brother-in-law took the saw and start hacking away…TIMBER…Then the guys drug the tree back to the hayride stop where lumberjack-types tagged and bagged it for us. Once we got back to where we began our adventure, we went into the barn where you can shop for wreaths, swags, homemade jam, etc. All in all, our trip to Unangst Tree Farm was a very nice holiday experience.

Christkindlmarkt

I sometimes pick up a thing or two throughout the year for Christmas gifts, but I usually don’t have a specific recipient in mind. Those are items I really just bought because I couldn’t resist.

The bulk of my holiday shopping is done last minute at one of my favorite Lehigh Valley shopping destinations, Christkindlmarkt in Historic Bethlehem. I’ve already printed out my $1 off admission and 10% off participating vendors coupons for this year’s pilgrimage.

New-year-resolution-cartoon-1

It was about this time last year when I started coming up with my “Things do in Lehigh Valley” lists. These three lists (Top 5 Plays, Top 5 Restaurants, Top 5 Overall) were my New Year’s resolutions for 2009. Since the year is almost over, I’ve decided to take a look at how I did.

Lehigh Valley Theater: Top 5 Plays for 2009: I was three for five in this category (although one of the plays I planned to attend was actually canceled, so I was actually three for four). Here are my reviews of the performances I saw at three fantastic venues throughout Lehigh Valley: