Thankful Sunday--September 7, 2014

I am thankful to be home.

After a interesting, educational, wonderful, family vacation, 

I am glad to be home.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Philly Vacation--Day Five

Today was the day to slow down a little. We visited Valley Forge in the morning and when the heat started to become too much, we headed home. But before the heat became uncomfortable, we had a wonderful morning exploring the Valley Forge area. Since the summer officially ended on Labor Day (September 1), many of the scheduled talks weren't active. But that also meant that when we took the driving tour of the area, we only encountered a couple of other people. Just our speed especially after spending the few previous days in the city that was teeming with people.

Valley Forge is the site of a seven month encampment of George Washington and over 10,000 soldiers during the winter of 1777-1778. They have reconstructed much of the area from written records and archeological digs.

A few pictures from our visit to Valley Forge.

Ward entering the very nice visitor's center. He was disappointed that he didn't have time to read every display. He's the kind that reads everything. I'm more of a skimmer.

A representative of the huts the men lived in during the winter.

There was a bare minimum in these huts--12 bunks and a fire place. Here's Theo trying out one of the bunks.

National Memorial Arch dedicated in 1917 to the people of the Valley Forge encampment. For an idea of scale, you can see Ward, Wally, and Theo under it.

George Washington's headquarters during the encampment. The house was a rental property of Mr. Potts, who made his money from iron forges around the Vally Stream. (Thus the name, Valley Forge.)

George Washington statue. For those of you into symbolism, there is a lot of it in this statue such as he is holding a walking stick where there would normally be a sword. You can ponder that for a moment and come to your own conclusion as to what it means.

Philly Vacation--Day Four

Flamingo from Philly Zoo

It has been good visiting here during the first week of school. That has meant no lines and only a few kids. However, the few that we've seen have been a lot of fun to watch. Like the little boy at the zoo who called to his mother, "Look, he wants a piggyback ride!," when he saw one of the goats mount another one. That goat looked like he had something entirely different in mind than a piggyback ride. Speaking of the zoo, that was one of the places we visited today along with the Franklin Institute Science Museum.

We have been visiting the local zoo with Wally and Theo since they were born. When they were little we went at least once a month. Even though they are adults now, it's still a fun thing to do. Maybe even more fun because we don't have to pull them down from the fences before they climb into an exhibit. We enjoyed all of the animals we saw, but our favorite, of course, were the big cats. They reminded us of the four cats we left at home especially when we saw one of the younger tigers scratching at a door. That was because she wanted to get back to where two other younger male tigers were. Her persistence seemed just like our cats when they scratch on our bathroom door until we come out.

We left the zoo as it was getting hot and made our way to the Franklin Institute. Every time you mention the Franklin Institute to someone who has been there, they talk about the giant, walk through heart. So that's the first thing we saw. However, I think our favorite for the day was the Amazing Machine room with all of the gears and levers to watch and play with. We ended the day with a trip to the planetarium which depending on your perspective, was either a good place to learn about weather on other planets or a good place to take a nice nap.

Until next time...
 

Pennsylvania established the Philadelphia Zoological Society in 1859--the first of its kind.

Other tigers were behind this door and she wanted in.

Wally and Theo watching rhinos. They are about 20 years older than when we visited the zoo with them in strollers.

Besides the big cats, giraffes are always interesting to see.

The Franklin Institute was first formed in 1824, but is most famous for its Science Museum that opened in 1934.

Theo getting ready to enter the giant heart.

Theo at beginning of the Amazing Machine exhibit.

Ward in part of a very interesting exhibit they had on the brain.

Philly Vacation--Day 3

Well, I can't complain about the weather today. We had a storm last night which cooled things down as well as lowered the humidity. It was certainly a welcome change. We also had a change up in activities. Today the emphasis was on buildings instead of history although there was an interesting history involved with everything we saw.

Carving from City Hall

We started in Center City where we toured the Philadelphia Masonic Temple and City Hall. The temple was a large building, built in the late 1800's, and very ornately decorated. Among other things, they had five main meeting rooms that had been painstakingly copied from five different temples or museums from around the world. Each room was filled with elaborate, beautiful details.

Next we moved across the street to take a tour of Philadelphia City Hall. This city hall is the largest operating municipal building in the US (it has over 700 rooms) and its building style is referred to as French Second Empire, I'm not sure what that means except detailed and fancy. It was built in the late 1800's, but has a long history of funding difficulties and the city wanting to tear it down. However, luckily it has been mostly restored and is still a busy city office building. The highlight for Ward, Wally, and Theodore may have been riding the elevator to the observation deck (548' above ground) at the base of a 37' high statue of William Penn (Philly's founder). That wasn't the highlight for me, however, because I'm afraid of heights.

After tours of these beautiful buildings, we moved onto something quite different. Next we toured Eastern State Penitentiary which was in operation from 1829 to 1971. It was quite radical when it was first built because it considered that wrong-doers could be rehabilitated instead of just punished. I'm not so sure that their ideas of total solitary confinement for the prisoners to contemplate their wrong doings worked out so well in the end, but their systems was copied in many other places in the world.

After another interesting, but tiring day, we changed hotels to one outside of town. It's a little cheaper and calmer here than where we were in the city, but that location served us well as we were able to walk to may attractions.

Until next time...

Pictures from the Masonic Temple

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Pictures from City Hall

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Pictures from Eastern State Penitentiary

Escape tunnel from one of the cells

Philly Vacation--Day Two

Well, today wasn't any cooler than yesterday, in fact it was hotter. This brought out the crankiness in us then and again, but it was amazing how much better our moods were when we found a nice spot of shade. We did other things to withstand the heat better than yesterday by planning more indoor activities, drinking plenty of water, and taking a break during the hottest part of the afternoon.

Independence Hall

We started the morning with a visit to Independence Hall where both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and signed. A couple of years ago, we saw one of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, so it was nice now to see where it actually all began. (And speaking of original copies of the Declaration of Independence, we learned in the printing shop mentioned below that the first official ones were printed on sheepskin with ink made from iron and vinegar. The acidity from both the tanning of the skin and the ink has caused them to deteriorate a lot over the years which is something we observed.)

After that we visited the Benjamin Franklin Museum. The museum was recently redone and done very well, I might add. There were a lot of fun hands-on exhibits in the cool dark basement of the building. Another plus on a day like today. Also associated with the museum was a print shop set up like Ben Franklin had. Franklin became a very rich man from his printing business by his forties (he lived another 40 years)  which then allowed him more time to experiment with his inventions and enter politics.

Now we were onto the United States Mint. This was a self-guided tour similar to one found in many factories. There was a viewing deck above the work floor along with explanations of what was happening below. Most of the coins in the US are made at this mint and today we saw pennies being made. A few years ago we saw dollar bills being made at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC. No doubt about. I like to watch them make money.

By this time we were getting hot, tired, and hungry so we decided it was time to hike back the eight blocks to the hotel for a little food and a lot of air conditioning. After snacks and a rest, we ventured out with the car for dinner. We went to Devil's Den, a place recommended by one of Wally's friends. There we had good food and good conversation, and it was a good end to a good day.

Until next time...

Here are a few pictures of things we saw today.

The Assembly Room in Independence Hall where both the Declaration and Independence and Constitution were signed.

Trying to escape the heat, we ducked into the Bourse Center. Today it houses a food court and shops, but originally it housed the first commodities exchange in the US in 1891.

One of the fun exhibits in the Ben Franklin Museum. This one was telling Franklin's humorous, moral story about the gout.

Wally and Theo on one of the welcome, shady pathways on the way to Franklin's Print Shop.

Demonstration of a printing press like Ben Franklin used.

No pictures were allowed in the US Mint building.

Another place we went into to get out of the heat--Reading Terminal Market. The market sells about every food you can think of with over 100 vendors, and has been in operation since the early 1890's.