Wawa Hoagie Day 2012

Yum. Free hoagies.

Wawa Hoagie Day is one of the events in the Welcome America festival (which Wawa also sponsors). Every year they've had this I've missed it for various reasons. Finally, this year I made it.

They always hype it as "everyone gets a piece of a giant hoagie" -- this year, they claimed it was 4.5 tons. Actually, it's not one big hoagie. It's a ton of small ones. But who cares? Give me a free hoagie, a bag of chips and a bottled tea/fruit drink/water and you can call it whatever you want. And even with hordes of people, the lines moved very quickly. They had a very efficient operation.

And there was a patriotic/charitable aspect as well. Police, fire and military personnel participated in a hoagie-building contest, raising funds for various charities (and I think the hoagies they made were taken to places such as homeless shelters). The USO show troupe "Liberty Bells" performed. And there was a table set up where you could write a note of thanks to be included in care packages being sent to the troops overseas.

As always, since I've given up on trying to put the slideshow right into this blog, here's a link to the album. If you want to know what I wrote in my note to the troops, go look at the pictures.

Long Overdue: My July 4th Post

Before we begin, I think I should get credit for getting this post up while it's still July...

Once again, the Welcome America festival took place in the days leading up to July 4th. It is full of great events, including free concerts and fireworks shows, as well as more fun and Philly-centric things such as Wawa Hoagie Day (which I still haven't gotten to) and one event that I've wanted to attend for years. This year, on the big day itself, I finally made it. Here's a link to all the photos I took that day. I've included a few here.

At Penn's Landing each year, the Super Scooper All-You-Can-Eat Ice Cream Festival raises money to help fight pediatric leukemia. A $7 donation gives you entrance into the big tent, as well as a plastic spoon, so you can go from table to table and get small cups of ice cream (as well as water ice and some other frozen stuff), as much as you want, all day. If you followed my updates on Twitter or Facebook that day, you know that I stopped at each of the almost 20 tables. (A number of the vendors had more than one table.) It was truly ice cream heaven. The picture above shows the size of the cup. (You weren't expecting pints or quarts, were you?) This one had rainbow water ice, not ice cream.

Thanks to a site called TwimeMachine that makes it easy to go back to look at your older tweets, here's the rundown of what I ate, and in order! Good Humor chocolate, Jack & Jill strawberry, ShopRite vanilla/chocolate, Ben & Jerry's French Toast, rainbow water ice, Turkey Hill cookies & cream, Friendly's orange sherbet, Bassetts chocolate, cotton candy water ice, Edy's mint chocolate chip, Icee raspberry frozen pop, Turkey Hill cookies & cream, Breyers cookies & cream, Haagen-Dazs chocolate, cotton candy water ice, Friendly's chocolate, orange Minute Maid juice bar, Ben & Jerry's English something (toffee?), Breyers chocolate peanut butter.