Halloween Weekend Trip — 2023
For Halloween in 2023, one of our friends invited us to her Halloween party in Michigan. We decided to accept, so we drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana after work on a Friday night. Our hotel’s key system was down, so the front desk manager had to walk everyone to their rooms whenever they needed to get inside their rooms! It was a bit of a hassle, but they had been trying for several hours to fix the system.
We dropped off our luggage and headed to 2 Toms Brewing Company. It was only a 2 minute drive from our hotel, and they advertised having a dark beer made with nitrogen. Since David loves Guinness, a dark beer made with nitrogen, I figured he would like this beer. Unfortunately, they were sold out, and I cannot even find record of this beer on their website as I write about this trip a few weeks later! David ended up trying a pear cider, and I had their mango dragonfruit hard seltzer. We shared pretzel sticks while sitting on a couch sipping our drinks.
The next morning, David walked across the hotel’s parking lot to Tim Horton’s. I am not sure if I have tried the food and/or drinks from this place before, but I had heard that it was popular in Canada. We were surprised to see one in Fort Wayne, Indiana, so we just had to try it! Also, the key system in the hotel was still down, and we didn’t want to have to deal with waiting to be let into our room after eating our continental office. So David went to get our breakfast while I stayed in the room to get ready. David liked their coffee, and I liked their donuts.
We then went to the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo right when they opened; my goal was to see their new red panda exhibit! We made a mad dash to the Red Panda Ridge and spotted three adorably cute and fluffy red pandas! We watched them walk across the tree limbs and drink water from a stream. They ate leaves too. They were so incredibly cute! I loved seeing them! We then walked around the zoo seeing the other animals, as well as the families dressed up in Halloween costumes walking around getting candy from the zoo’s workers. After eating lunch and seeing the tiger, we made our way back to the Red Panda Ridge to say our goodbyes to the still cute red pandas.
Next, we drove up to Michigan to the next hotel that we would be staying at. We dropped off our luggage and got dinner at Condado Tacos, which was really good. We changed into our Halloween costumes and went to our friend’s party. It was good to catch up with old friends and make some new friends.
We got back to our hotel around 11 pm and went to sleep. Slightly before 2 am, the fire alarm woke us up! We got up and grabbed the essentials like my purse and David’s car keys, and we hurried out the door and down three flights of stairs. Outside, it was slightly raining, so we went into our car to wait while the firefighter came and checked out the hotel. We found out later that it was a false alarm, so we went back to our room and tried to get some sleep before driving home. We did find another Tim Horton’s on our way home, so we stopped to get more coffee and donuts. Overall, we had a fun trip despite the hotel snafus. And of course, I loved seeing the red pandas and our friends!
