FOREWORD AND DISCLAIMER: As Harvest Hosts (HH) requests a review of each host from those members who stay with them, I submitted the blog post below as my review, partly to avoid writing another one and partly to try to generate HH visitors to my blog. A representative of Spring Gate emailed me the next day to dispute my evaluation; continuing cordial back-and-forths revealed that, through a combination of my lack of attention to their emails, and their waitstaff’s lack of knowledge of Harvest Host procedures, I actually stayed in the wrong spot — although it is marked with HH signage, apparently I stayed in a Harvest Host overflow lot rather than the regularly (and, apparently, superior) spot. Nor did I have on hand the contact information to notify the host directly and rectify any concerns I might have had. Consequently, the following post is based on my inadvertently occupying a sub-optimal location and should be read with that understanding in mind. Readers, especially HH members, should therefore not read this post and make judgments about the quality of this Harvest Host.

A thankfully uneventful day brought me to Harrisburg, PA, where I type this while listening to a bar band 500 yards away playing mostly blues at the Spring Gate Vineyard. This is a satisfactory Harvest Host stop, but it is definitely not a place I would go out of my way to visit again. It’s partly because they have me situated in an ancillary parking lot next to the spot where they park their company trucks. There’s a lovely vineyard just barely visible through the trees behind the company trucks, but I can’t see it from my RV.

It’s also, I think, because the whole place has the air of an old, industrial-scale farm trying really hard to be a new, hip, cool winery destination; but they just can’t hide their roots. The sprawling campus is littered with outbuildings in varying states of repair, interspersed with a number of patios where patrons sip the large variety of wines and beers available here. The band “has its mojo working” as I type, “but it just won’t work on you”. I’ll show you what I mean:

Inside the main building is a fairly nice display space, but to access it you have to walk through an industrial space with cement floors and junk stacked in the corners.

More views of the facility appear below:

There are a number of food trucks scattered over the premises, again (I think) an attempt to appeal to the trendy, twenty- and thirty-something crowd. This one offered “Baltimore pit beef”; having never heard of it, I decided to try it (“when in Rome”, you know!). It’s a roast beef sandwich, with the beef cooked on a charcoal barbecue pit (or so the proprietor said). Pretty good, but to me indistinguishable from Arby’s. In my defense, I never pretended to be trendy. Nor will I ever again pass for thirty-something.

So, I’ll close with some advice from the band: “keep on rocking in the free world”. I hope they quit rocking before it’s too late. More tomorrow from Ohio if all goes well!