Beginning the journey west through Pennsylvania

There are few moments in my life that make make me super sentimental. I don't mind admitting that heading down the driveway on Friday morning was a huge moment for me that made me pause at the end of the drive and tell the kids, "This is a monumental moment for us. We're doing something really big here." We said a prayer for travel and left for our journey.

The general itinerary for our trip will take us as far north as Billings, Montana; as far west as Idaho Falls, Idaho; and as far south as New Orleans, Louisiana. We didn't include the west coast as far as the ocean because we just didn't have enough time in six weeks to go that far without having to keep moving relentlessly every day. That wasn't the objective of the trip.

Leaving West Chester in a simply westerly direction, we meandered through Marley's favorite countryside near our home, Amish Country. Since some of you aren't from Pennsylvania or haven't experienced the Amish firsthand, I would like to take the opportunity to give a few snippets I've learned through direct contact with their society over the past 16 years.

The Amish are wonderful people. They are joyous, kind to a fault, private and family orientated. However, they are also often cruel to animals (they are constantly being shut down for running puppy-mills), they are insulated (they must shun their children who move away from the faith and cannot make close friendships outside of their faith once they are baptized), and grow up in a kind of ignorance that leaves them very few choices in life other than the one they were born into. Because of their long history of not accepting converts to their faith (a bit fascist) they have many genetic issues and their child mortality rates are problematic. But all that being said, they make beautiful quilts, delicious foods, and are never idle. Marley loves farm animals so she's in heaven in Amish country so I figured that she would appreciate leaving southeastern Pennsylvania along Route 340 (The King's Highway) to Route 30 Old Lincoln Highway that extends from Philadelphia to San Francisco, California.

We stopped at That Fish Place in Centerville which is a huge pet store and a destination in itself! The store has the largest fresh and salt water fish for sale in central Pennsylvania. There is a sting ray petting tank and a garden of salt water creatures like anemones, live coral, and urchins. They have all kinds of friendly animals to pet as they were all hand raised. It's such a lovely place and best of all, it's free! We spent time just looking at everything and Cole said it was better than a museum because since there are prices, you can see the name of everything and how valuable it is based on how much you'd have to pay for it!

Traveling along Old Lincoln Highway, we eventually went through the charming little towns of New Oxford and Gettysburg. The towns are picturesque and best of all, filled with German-style barns which are my favorite. I have included a picture of one that I didn't see until Cumberland County, but it is typical of the kinds of barns all around central Pennsylvania. I love them because they have such interesting windows and a covered porch-like feature for the animals to be outside even if it's raining. They are just lovely and they are literally everywhere.

I wanted to pop into a rinky-dink place where I brought the kids when they were toddlers. It's called Land of Little Horses and it is so friendly and engaging that it's worth the small admission fee. Miniature horses put on a show complete with costumes and tricks. Some are allowed to walk around the park all fat and sassy from being hand fed from the children who buy copious amounts of food to feed them. Marley was simply thrilled to watch the show. It was so campy and ridiculous that I couldn't help but have a great time. What's most bizarre about the Land of Little Horses is that it sits directly next to the Gettysburg Battlefield. It's a weird contrast. At the end of the the Land of Little Horses' drive is a monument to the first soldier killed at Gettysburg on July 1, 1864 at 7:30 am (just in case you were feeling good petting all the sweet little animals).

Traveling from Gettysburg to Carlisle, Pennsylvania through Biglerville, we rode up and down the wave-like roads through the enormous apple orchards and up into the hill country. It was a perfect day of little towns and puffy clouds. Biglerville is the home of a large apple museum that we decided to pass up. We were tired and hustled to the Hotel Carlisle (for an extra ounce of fun, check out the Hotel Carlisle on Expedia and look for reviews about the hotel. Mine is there. I just love that rickety place!) Most people are creeped out by the hotel. The kids and I just loved loved loved the pool! Cole takes great underwater pictures!

The next morning Cole requested stopping by an interesting place we saw on the side of the road. It is called the Army Heritage Museum. What's also easy to guess is that it's free. (Anyone want to sign up after seeing the sterile / blood free but impressive exhibits???). Cole had so much fun. Marley was a good sport about it too.

It was outdoors and there were hands-on experiences such as touring a completed WWI trench, a barracks from WWII with props, hands-on boot camp obstacles, temporary housing during the Revolution and the Civil War, helicopters and the barracks of the Vietnam War including a lookout house that towers over palm trees. It was all super interesting...and super disturbing if you have a good imagination about war.

We left for the Laurel Highlands and I told the kids about the landforms all around us. If you imagine Pennsylvania as being like a rectangular carpet, imagine that someone slides the two ends toward each other; the center will form ridges. The mountains of the Laurel Highlands are very pretty. The greenery and the farms were idyllic. Now, I don't want to bore anyone with talk about restaurants but I wanted to give a round of applause to Eat-n-Park. This is a Western Pennsylvania "local-chain" and they always give such great service, decently healthy food, and make cookies that smile back at you. All chains should use them as a template. :-) The kids are shown here with their smile face cookies. I bought a cookie sticker for my car. It's zero calories and fat-free that way!

We followed the Connemaugh River to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Now, there is a lot to say about Johnstown and my interest in the town, but I will put it in the simplest form I can:

On May 31, 1889 a dam broke north of Johnstown. The dam was used to create a lake for the Pittsburgh elite (Carnegie and Mellon to name a few) who had summer homes near Johnstown. They did not want to pay for maintenance on the dam and when there was a big storm that late spring, it finally gave way. The wall of water that raced down the valley was 40 feet high and was full of debris, animals, and corpses.

To add insult to the incident, the wall of water crashed into a BARBED WIRE FACTORY (!!!!) and continued to pick up whole houses, carriages, trains, trees, and people who were now imprisoned in the wire. When it finally hit Johnstown, (the city sits like a spoon with mountain ridges all around) the wall of water smashed into a large mountain and back washed with another tidal wave slapping down on the city.

The debris was caught in front of a stone train bridge and then a coal stove ignited the fuel from the factories and the whole enormous pile of debris ignited, creating a funeral pyre. People were trapped in the wire and the fire burned for 2 days. It was a huge American tragedy of its day with 2,209 people dead within an hour of the disaster (2,995 people died on 9/11).

The Flood Museum was created in the Andrew Carnegie Library that I noted was built in 1891 (I wonder what BP will build?). The museum is small but really well done. A movie about the whole day of the flood is shown in the upper library in a comfy little theater. There is a diorama with lights and sound effects that is entertainingly informative. I loved the stereoscopes to view the aftermath, the wall of debris and the Oklahoma house that was preserved from the recovery homes built for the survivors. Cole is shown above looking at the wall of debris. It is an example of what you'd see coming toward you at 40 miles an hour...only 40 feet high.

We then walked on the World's Steepest Incline Plane a few blocks away. The kids were genuinely freaked out! Yay! The incline saved lives in 1936 when the people of Johnstown had to escape another flood. I think the picture of the incline speaks for itself. It's a whole lot of freaky. At the top of the incline we got a ice cream cone and sat looking at the view on a tall platform. A very rotund show-offy 11 year oldish boy was standing on a telescope stool and leaning deep over the bars to spit down the mountain. I almost fainted watching him! His 20-something siblings were in "charge" of him.

He was destined to live I guess because, by all the laws of physics, his fat little head should have weighted him over the edge like a ship's anchor. He was so obnoxious that I wasn't sure if perhaps this was the plan of his older siblings all along! I was only grateful that he wasn't on the descending trip to make my mommy-nerves more edgy.

Johnstown was such a great little town as I remembered it. Larry and I had been here about 10 years ago. Since then however, it has really been hit hard economically. The center of town, once pristine and colorful, is now empty and overgrown. The weeds, the loiterers, the drug rehabilitation center across from the park, and the deserted streets are just depressing now. There are no weekend restaurants, no interesting little shops, and certainly no places worth visiting apart from the Flood Museum and the Incline Plane. Johnstown is going through yet another unfortunate change.

Tomorrow we head for Ohio and for the first time I will see one of the Great Lakes. It's a big deal to me. I will have driven the farthest directly west I have ever been by car. It will be several days until I can post again. Enjoy!

Better get used to that seatbelt kid

In the past two weeks I cheated. Cole was away at camp and I needed to get out of the house to keep from missing him (seriously, it's the first time but I suspect it won't bug me as much next year). I took Marley on a big day trip that also counts for her US Geography and Cultures home-school high school course. I couldn't help myself. We had a week to ourselves and were only too happy to do something interesting with it. Only since we also knew that we were going to be away for so long that we did all our touring...in ONE day.

Since we had to drop off our dog in Massachusetts with my parents (he is shown here loving up my dad), we decided to come back the next day along the scenic Berkshire to Catskills to Poconos route which is super out-of-the-way but avoids the snarl of cars that is also known as the New Jersey Turnpike. Although my parents live 5 hours from here, a trip to visit them always leaves me almost completely drained from having to maneuver through the chaos of offensive drivers. I once drove from Albuquerque to White Sands, New Mexico in one day, five hours both ways, and it didn't bother me half as much as one trip to Massachusetts through New York City.

The next day, Marley and I headed to the Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Massachusetts on perhaps one of the muggiest days of the month, one of the days where all your pores feel like fountains.

The Shakers are similar the Amish, only are celibate. Interestingly, I learned that there are still communities in America. The common house reminded me of convent where I used to take piano lessons as a child. The convent was communal and lacking in personal warmth like the Shaker house. I went to the village as a young student and wanted Marley to experience it. The Hancock Village was one of the most peaceful places I remember visiting. Perhaps their consideration for orphans, caring for the land, and their vision of peace and community was so inspiring to me. I had another perspective as a middle-aged adult. Plainly, it felt like a cult.

Before going we stopped at the round barn where we talked to a historical engineer. She felt right at home...in a barn. Of course. I have included a picture of the round barn above.

Our next stop was the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshires. In recent years, Norman Rockwell, once considered "almost an artist" because he used photographs as references and was more of an illustrator than a master painter, has been praised for his sense of design and cultural significance as an American artist. Marley loved his work as did I. The museum is terrific and the basement movie about Norman Rockwell is narrated by a descendant of his. The covers of the Saturday Evening Post (the full collection) were catalogued along the wall and Marley quietly surveyed all of them which was more patience than I have. His significant work was painted in the 1960s when he no longer romanticized the idea of a perfect America during the time of the civil rights movement. I was so newly impressed. The museum sits in the clearing of the most enormous feathery pine trees I have ever seen.

Crossing into New York state, we went into the Catskill mountains. I was once in the Catskills as a young teen to visit my Grandfather's sister. I didn't remember the town of Woodstock, but I do remember her house in the dark pines and the way it smelled like a cabin with her wood-burning stove and low ceilings. It was a magical place to me. I remembered how my Grandfather cried when he saw her. Thinking back on it now, I am still confused how they just didn't see each other more often. She lived and hour and a half away!

I wanted to see Woodstock because it's Woodstock. I was depressingly let down though. It was full of pseudo hippies eating in swank restaurants, old hippies hawking rainbow t-shirts, and other culture vultures cashing in on a long-ago weekend. No one was obnoxious of course but there was a sense that this place, marketed for a concert, had become a spiritual epicenter of a whole lot of nothing. There were psychics, acupuncturists, and gurus marketing their services with cute little signs but not much else. The artistic shops were interesting though and worth the trip to look at the practical arts. We did get to see the World's Largest Kaleidoscope though in Mount Trembler. It was a kitchy little place with weird graphics of early America in the show, but oddly sweet in a way. I was just thrilled to be close to my old haunts as a young person. Marley was impressed how the Catskill Mountains play hide-and-seek when trying to find them. Suddenly, you turn a bend in the road to be greeted with an enormous peak that seems impossibly high not to have seen it from farther away.

We made our way over the Delaware Water Gap where the Delaware River makes a wide cut into the rock walls on either side. I had heard that there was a large waterfall somewhere in the park. Driving slowly through the meadows, I saw a sign for it along a hill and we decided to take an impromptu hike along a steep path to see it. It was just lovely and worth taking the time to hike to it.

This park has one of the largest concentration of black bears in the nation. I know this because I am really wary of bears and read a book about how to avoid ticking one off. I don't fear big cats, snakes, or even rabid raccoons the way I fear bears. It's funny. So when I found out there were loads of bears in these woods I was hyper aware of every crick and crack in the woods descending to the falls. We were hauntingly alone this night on the trail. Hunting the bear in this forest was outlawed in recent years and they are happily multiplying and competing for resources in a park that is 40 miles long and only one mile wide. I camp still though and don't let bears scare me from the enjoyment of sleeping outside. However, I follow every bear rule there is without question. (See more about it when I go to Yellowstone where a woman was recently mauled while sleeping in her tent).

We went home to sleep off the exhausting day then picked up Cole and headed for Margate City, New Jersey where my husband's family has a little home on the second from beach block. It was perfect in the intense heat but the ocean was freezing cold and the air was over 100F so the contrast was enough to make you sick to your stomach. No relief from the extremes either way. It was like sitting on the desert next to an iceberg.

We did get a chance to see Cape May, New Jersey though and I was so appreciative to see something other than Atlantic City / Ocean City over

again. Cape May has the most amazing homes in one location that I have ever seen. The Victorian period homes all were meticulously kept. The shops, the preservation, and the colors were mesmerizing. I was simply enchanted. It was only an hour from Margate and I kept wondering why I had never gone there before!

It was time to come home. I had only one week to get ready for the big 44 day trip around the country. I leave tomorrow, July 30 for the trip to the rest of the country but it was good to get a snippet of the world to come and the pace of the traveling life.

You'd better get used to that seatbelt, kid.

The grand experience or a really bad plan...

I wish I could say for certain that this is a good idea...to go around the country from Pennsylvania and back by circumnavigating the northern and down to the southern parts of the United States. In fact, it could be the most agonizing road trip ever...or a trip of a lifetime.

My goal is to give my 12 year old son and 14 year old daughter a view of America that I have no firsthand knowledge about. To show them an America that is an abstract idea to me even still.

I have never driven farther west by car than Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In two weeks, passing that threshold, I will have achieved something I thought I might never get around to doing. It's not that I am not a traveling person. I have been to Canada, Israel, France, England, Belgium (even Luxembourg), Mexico, Panama, and many of the Caribbean islands.

I have been to many places in the U.S. also; Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts (born and raised), New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. So it's not that I haven't dropped in by plane to many American places.

But dropping in to an airport is different than seeing the land pass and change gradually around you. I have driven the Pennsylvania to Florida route many times along the I-95 and never stopped in a village along the way to experience the culture of the passing states. Staying at chain restaurants and hotels was the sanitary way I explored the parking lots of these states as we made a mad dash to Disney World.

But that crossover from Pennsylvania to Ohio (how exotic, right?) will be a monumental experience. I am purposely visiting states for the sake of the experience. My husband gave his nod of approval for the trip. "Go..." he said happily, "You've always wanted to take the kids and you know I don't want to be in a car for too long." So I go alone with the kids. Since we're a homeschool family, we're used to being together and learning new things as a family. My husband is happy that he's meeting us in New Orleans and not the whole of the trip.

I had to make certain parameters to the trip and to hope for good health along the way:

I will only drive 4 hours a day average. 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening. No pushing it to the point of exhaustion.

I will try to visit as many local restaurants and shops as I can. No chains if I can help it.

We will stop to "smell the roses" along the way as much as possible. No mad dashes to make it anywhere. We will appreciate the little things.

We will be away for 44 days from July 30 to September 11.

I did make reservations at the least expensive but comfortable motels along the way with the help of tripadvisor.com. This was a safety precaution to keep us from ever having to sleep in the car.

I intend this blog and my daughter's to be a memory book of sorts and to share the experience with others. Mostly for my friends who know me and how much I hated the quote "The Real America" by Sarah Palin (you know who you are). So I am off to see the "real" America. Thanks for coming along.