Vanishing Act

For many years, travelling up Rt 31 to see my family meant traditional stops at Jann's Sweet Shop in Pennington for wonderful coffee, homemade ice cream and the most fabulous muffins and, at one time, the best ever scones.  The scones were a thing of the past, but the coffee and muffins were still the best.  The other traditional stop was Penny Town, again, at Pennington, where you could enjoy a stroll under shade trees along a pond, let the kids enjoy the various animals that lived there - sheep, goats, ducks, chickens and, on occasion, have a delicious meal at HI Ribs.  So, in keeping with tradition, when we arrived in Pennington on the way to Ringoes the other day, we realized we were early and decided to stop for coffee and a few muffins to take home with us.  Driving into the lot, we were happy to see that although most of the shops in the little strip mall were closed, Jann's was still there.  Comforting to know.  Until we stepped inside.
Seems that it's been longer than we realized since we'd made the trip up home, now that my mom is gone.  In that time, Jann's closed!  The original owner has since reopened, but he serves only ice cream now.  It's still wonderful and homemade, but the shop just isn't the same.
Lar had an ice cream and then we continued on.  Suddenly we both realized we were confused about where we were.  Something was wrong!  A major landmark appeared not to have appeared!  We finally realized we were just where we should be, but still, something was wrong.
On our return trip, we carefully sought out the huge facility of PennyTown.  There should be a pond, animals, trees, a huge log restaurant, many other buildings that once housed crafts and artisans, but now should be the offices and businesses we knew resided there.

This is what we found.  The last picture is where the lovely little pond was with all sorts of animals milling about to delight the youngsters.
Wow!  It had all vanished and it seemed as if it had never been there.  We are glad we have the pictures to prove it....when I find them, I'll include a couple.  (or maybe not...maybe it was all my imagination!)