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| Old Inn along the Delaware River - Pennsylvania |
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I touched just briefly on our recent visits to Pennsylvania and Ohio during previous posts about NYC and a 4 month recap of our travels; but would like to comment a bit more about both of these states, each of which I think we found much more beautiful and mostly enjoyable than we otherwise might have expected. First, in this blog post, will be Pennsylvania, where we spent two weeks in the middle of October.
Okay, so we hit a few few rough patches, quite literally at times, in Pennsylvania. The freeways were, in a word, some of the worst we'd seen for "bumpiness." Not long after entering the State from New York over a month ago now (on Oct 10), we hit one gigantic bump in a construction area, followed, for miles and miles, by many smaller bumps and rattles and the like. And when we stopped at a rest area eventually, first thing we did, remembering back to the infamous "olive oil" spill discovered back in Burns, Oregon at the start of our long journey, was check inside the trailer. There were a couple cabinets open, a few glass bottles lying around, thankfully none broken this time; but it took us a while to sort things out because the kitchen floor was covered in hundreds of shards from a broken "CorelWare" dish. Other dishes and bowls had fallen out too, but amazingly only one broke. Welcome to Pennyslvania and the worst freeways in the US interstate system (in our experience)!
We finally bumped our way to Quakertown in the Eastern part of the State, where our "home" would be parked for the next couple weeks. What was already shaping up to be the "Pennsylvania Jinx" soon rose it's ugly head again while setting up the trailer; namely one of our power jacks up front, used to level and support the front of the trailer when unhitched, basically broke, making the 5th Wheel (trailer) a "one legged animal" for awhile. We got it set up well enough, if not exactly level, by propping the broken jack up with blocks; but it was obviously a short-term fix. More on this ( the "Ugly Chapter") to come later.
We had barely set up, on a Thursday evening, when we left our "broken jack" problem behind for awhile and headed off for Newark on Friday to meet our long-time good friends, Connie and Addison Manley, for a much anticipated three day trip to NYC, riding the NJ transit rail into Manhattan. I won't bore you with all the details again as I've already posted about this weekend trip in a previous blog ("New York New York!"). We returned from that wonderful 3 day weekend jaunt on Monday and spent the rest of the week prior to Connie and Addison returning to Eugene exploring other great spots in Pennsylvania, notably Amish country near Lancaster, and Gettysburg, the park itself closed because of the US Government partial shutdown, but with a truly great visitor center and museum that remained open, and several of the battlefield settings still available by public roads.
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| Amish Farm in Lancaster County |
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| Road Sign in Lancaster County, redefining the meaning of "Full Service Meat Market" |
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| Feeling right at home in Gettysburg, PA |
We capped the week with our friends spending part of a day in Philly before they winged back to Eugene that Friday (Oct 18th). No Chip Kelly sightings that day, but then I never saw the guy out and about in Eugene either. What we did see was a lot of early American history, the Liberty Bell itself, of course, and the centuries old buildings and halls where our Country first took form in the late 1700's. What I had forgotten until being reminded during our short visit, was that Philadelphia was the first Capitol of the new US Government headed by President George Washington. Government did not move to the newly created Washington DC until 1800. So "George" lived there during his term as our First President, as did Ben (Franklin), Thomas (Jefferson)and many other notable figures involved in the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution.
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| Independence Hall |
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| Liberty Bell |
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The capper to the Philly visit, for me, was lunch out at one of the original "Philly Cheese Steak" joints in South Philly, called, fittingly enough, "Pat's"! This was no luxury dining experience, mind you, but curbside walk-up (in a big line that, however, moved along fast) to place your order, pick it up moments later from the next window down, and then find a table out on the sidewalk to dig in. The Philly Cheese Steaks were delicious; fugeddabout the calories for an afternoon! And a bonus treat for this old rock and roll fan was the side of a building across from "Pat's" painted with images of noted crooners from the neighborhood (South Philly), guys I'd sung along with ( off-key, of course, I'm a terrible singer!) while playing their hits on 45 RPM Records (aka "vinyls"), Chubby Checker, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Bobby Rydell among the notables. If these names don't ring a bell with you, then you don't know nuthin; either that or you're just a whole lot younger than I am. And if you don't know what a "vinyl record" is, then you double don't know nuthin!
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| Fine Dining at "Pat's, King of (Cheese) Steaks" |
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| Teen Idols from South Philly - The "Vinyl Kings" |
Connie and Addison winged off for Eugene that afternoon... we missed them as soon as they had departed... and we had another week to kill before packing up the 5th Wheel and heading to Ohio. We spent most of that week exploring our family histories, both of which had deep roots in Bucks County where we were staying. We found cemeteries where Elaine's ancestors dating back to the early 1700's were buried; had less success pinpointing the final resting places for my ancestors from the same period, that being mostly the result of my being so much less organized in my genealogy research. But in any event, like Philly, the whole state is filled with ancient history, and pretty scenic as well. The Homestead Campground we stayed in near Quakertown was one of the prettiest we'd seen; and, like it had been in Cooperstown NY earlier, we had our section of the campground virtually to ourselves.
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| Our Pennsylvania "Home" |
Now to some more of the Pennsylvania Jinx (the "Ugly Chapter" referred to above). Seems like, in getting our broken jack fixed, a bigger, likely much more expensive, problem developed. We called a mobile RV repairman out who immediately diagnosed the problem; but to fix the problem he needed to take weight off the jacks. Only way to do that out in the park like this was to hitch the 5th Wheel up to our pickup. But it wasn't as easy as it usually is due to the one jack still being inoperable. To make a long story short, with the repair guy guiding me, I backed the truck up to the trailer hitch, but the hitch wasn't jacked up high enough and instead of hooking up, the trailer rolled back off the propped up jacks, pushing one slide-out into a post and dropping the front of the trailer on to the pickup rails, "bruising" both truck and trailer. The repair guy got our 10,000 lb. trailer off the truck rails after some effort, and fixed the original problem, the broken jack, for a modest sum of $100; but the expensive part still waits, fixing body damage to both truck and trailer and dealing with two different insurance claims. Such fun (not!), but the repairs will have to wait until we return to Colorado later in November, and both vehicles are still functional until then.
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| Wounded Road Warrior #1 - Farmers Claim Pending |
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| Wounded Road Warrior #2 - National Gen'l Claim Pending |
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The Pennsylvania Jinx had surfaced one last time, though it failed to dampen our appreciation for other parts of this beautiful state. Soon it was on to Ohio, subject of my next blog (I think).
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| One more look back at our beautiful Pennsylvania "Home" |
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