Road Trip, Day Nineteen: Philadelphia Freedom...and Food!

Well, right now I'm in the middle of a visit to Disney World, but...Hold on!

I never told you about my visit to Philadelphia, did I?

No problem...we have the technology to fix that.

Set your clocks for 4:16, October 6, 2016 and...

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS!!!

After four days in Cape Cod,we left for Philadelphia. The trip was an easy five-hour drive...

that actually took about eight hours.  East Coast traffic, emergency potty breaks 

and some "creative navigation" made for a stressful trip, especially for my Dad!

I thought it was funny when we finally got to the Philly parking garage

and the ticket machine jammed, trapping us at the garage entrance during rush-hour traffic!

We couldn't get through the gate to park, and we couldn't back up to find another spot!

I though it was funny, but Dad wasn't laughing.  More "special words".  LOL!

After about fifteen minutes, a guy came and fixed the machine, and we were able to park.

We finally arrived at the hotel.  It was a cool place!

We were staying right downtown, in the middle of Philly's tallest skyscrapers.

Through the hotel's glass roof you could see my Dad's favorite parking garage!

After four days of Cape Cod seafood I was ready for something different to eat.

We shared some delicious ribs and the best mac & cheese in the world!

 

After dinner, there was time for a little sightseeing.  We saw some cool art...

...street performers...

...and a cool indoor market. The place was huge! 

My Dad said it reminded him of Seattle's Pike Place Market.

Look at all that fish!

The fish stand had just about everything.  All fresh from the sea!

The crabs I'm looking at were still alive!

This place had amazing hand-made chocolates!

And the pastries here were incredible.

Seeing all this was making me hungry again...

Dessert time!

In just a few hours I'd seen so much cool stuff.

I couldn't imagine what tomorrow's historical tour of  Philly would be like...

The Constitution Center was where my guided tour started the next day.

One Country, One Constitution, One Destiny.

After the tour I understood what that meant a lot better...

We walked from the Constitution Center toward Independence Hall.

On the way, we passed by...

...the Liberty Bell!

Around the world, this is seen as a symbol of freedom for all...

...so it was strange to see a monument to the anti-slavery movement

as a part of the Liberty Bell exhibit.  It really made me think.

I learned that Philadelphia was our first capital, and that George Washington

had lived here as president, not in Washington, D.C.

These are the names of the slaves that George Washington brought with him to Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania was a free state at the time, but Washington found

a loop hole in the law by taking his slaves out of Pennsylvania every six months.

Some of these slaves escaped to freedom during Washington's presidency.

It was very confusing to think that the men who fought for the freedom of their country

would not allow their servants to live as free men.

This is the Second Bank of Philadelphia.

It's an art gallery today.

This is the part of Philly where Ben Franklin lived.  See that alley way?

Pretty cool, huh?  I got to walk in the footsteps of Ben Franklin!

This plaque lists Ben Franklin's accomplishments.

Our country's first public library, first fire department, first magazine.

First to use electricity for a battery (jars of charged water).

Signed the Declaration of Independence and attended the Constitutional Convention.

And here is where he was buried, in Christ Church Cemetery.

 

Lots of other Founding Fathers were buried here, including four signers of the Declaration:

Francis Hopkinson, Joseph Hewes, George Ross, Benjamin Rush (also the Father of Psychology).

Ben Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned". Ever wonder where pennies are made?

I got to see how pennies (and nickles, dimes & quarters) are made.

The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia is the first of six mints where U.S. money is made.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the mint, but trust me, it's a cool place!

Speaking of cool places...

All this learning made me hungry.  You can;t visit Philadelphia without eating...

A Philly Cheese Steak!  Time to pig out!

Later that night, I took another tour.  It was a ghost tour of Philadelphia.

As we wandered the streets of Old Philadelphia, I learned about Edgar Allen Poe, 

the Yellow Fever outbreak, weird surgery methods, and some scary stories about 

the ghosts of people that had died terrible deaths.

It was lots of fun and a perfect end to my visit to Philadelphia.

Well, thanks for being patient with me catching up on my blog posts.  

I'll share some of my Disney World pictures soon.  Until then...

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

Day Twenty, part two: The Amazing Amish Village!

Our plans to travel to South Carolina from Philadelphia were changed by Hurricane Matthew.

My Dad always says, "Everything that happens to you is an opportunity".

In this case, it was an opportunity to spend more time in Pennsylvania

learning about some very interesting people:  The Amish

(This blog post has lots of cool links!)

This place is called the Amish Village.

It's located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Lancaster is home to 36,000 Amish people.

The Amish Village is an attraction that allows you to tour 

a complete village in a small amount of time.

The tour includes a house.  This girl is not Amish.  

She is actually from Africa and works at the Amish Village giving tours.

We were told that the Amish would think it prideful to give a tour, 

so that work is done by non-Amish people, like Jon here.

Here, she is showing us Amish clothing.  This is what a single female would wear.

This is an Amish kitchen.  Most Amish don't use electricity.

The appliances here run on propane gas.

This is called a "summer kitchen".  

It's a cellar, and keeps everything cool when the weather is hot.

The bedrooms were simple, but the bed quilts were beautiful!

Notice the prices?  The quilts are expensive because of all the work that goes into them.

Outside the house was the Village, which had lots of buggies in the common area.

Some were covered, others were open like this one.  

That white building is the blacksmith shop...

...where Dad tried his hand out using an Old World plow!

Next to the blacksmith is the schoolhouse.

The Amish are hard workers, and that white sign encourages kids to do their best.

On the chalkboard is a lesson in "Pennsylvania Dutch". 

It's not actually Dutch, but a form of German.  The Amish learn High German, too.

The Amish raise lots of animals.  Dad's not too sure about these goats...

...but they were very friendly!

So were the horses...

...and the chickens!

I really am glad we took time to stop at Lancaster.

I loved the village, and was very interested in how the Amish live. So interested that...

I bought this book!

This isn't all I did in Pennsylvania.

I also visited Philadelphia and Hershey, but more on that later.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

Day 21: Matthew Aftermath

Sorry I haven't been keeping up on the blog.  You can take that as a sign that I've been busy and having a great time!  You may remember that I was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was supposed to visit South Carolina on my way to Florida.  Well, Saturday, our travel day, was the day that Hurricane Matthew was supposed to hit the Southeast hard.  

Driving into that didn't make much sense...

We decided to stay in Pennsylvania and visit Hershey...you know the chocolate place!  

We did that, and it was great.  I'll blog about it later, but right now, I want to share what I saw on Sunday, Oct. 11, driving through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia

the day after Matthew ripped through the South...

We left early in the morning...4:00 AM, from Hershey.

I was wondering what I'd see once the sun rose.

I was surprised to see a perfect blue bird sky!

I expected the day after a hurricane to at least be rainy, but no.

There was no sign of a hurricane at all...in Maryland, at least.

But then we got to North Carolina...

This is how close some of the fallen trees were to the road!

Crews had worked through the night to clear them from the road, at least,

but the rest of the trunks were still there.

In North Carolina, our route took off the freeway into some small towns.

That's where we could really see the damage.

See those power lines?  You know what's hanging on them?

The tin roof from the Exxon station!

 These trees had just missed the houses.

These owners had cleared their land of most of their trees.

We saw other houses that got direct hits from uprooted trees.

The towns were without power, because of the trees crashing on power lines.

Most gas stations were closed.  

But we managed to find one using a generator to power its pumps.

As we went south, we could see the water level rising.

Our phone got flash flood warnings, but because we had gotten an early start

we were ahead of the high water.

At some parts, the water was starting to cover the road!

Keep driving, Dad!  We have to stay ahead of the rising rivers!

There were lots of homes like this and worse.

People had huge challenges ahead of them!

Stopping at a rest stop made me think of all the little things 

that people would have to clean up.

Check the background of this picture, to the left of my Dad.

Yechhh!

Seeing this changed my understanding of hurricanes and the damage they do.

Coming soon, pics from Hershey, PA, the Amish Country, and...

Disney World!

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!