Random musings on Pennsylvania

We drove by this house many times as it is just south of Hopewell Furnace.  The road actually makes a little dog leg to miss the house, but that obviously does not make the owners/occupants feel safe and secure.  There are at least thirty reflectors along the edge of the road between the house and road.  In the daylight it seems unnecessary, but at night, the road is very dark, and the reflectors do their job.  I always had to wonder, what our truck sounded like in the bedrooms of the house.

                      My cousin and his wife have served as missionaries in Mozambique for the last four years.  They are currently in the US raising money for their work before they return in the Spring.  By happenstance, we found that we were staying only 5 miles from each other and were able to meet for breakfast one morning.  It was wonderful to hear about their work and experiences in Mozambique and reminesque about our families and childhoods. 

                                              The leaves out the backdoor were spectacular at first.

                       Many stores and businesses had hitching posts outside for the Amish buggies.

        I love the Amish countryside.  The farms are relatively small and dot the landscape.  Most have 2 or 3 houses with many additions to accomadate multiple generations.  You see very modern farm implements being pulled by horses and women and children riding bicycles with steel wheels.  The roads are narrow and the buggies just go along the side as best they can and the roads are lined with horse droppings.  The horses seem very well trained and do not spook at cars and trucks passing near to them.  It is somewhat funny to see a horse and buggy in a left hand turn lane with a blinker on.  I find it interesting that while they do not use cars, they do hire vehicles and drivers to take them places.  Early on, while working in the visitor center, a van parked out front and a large family got out and came into the center.  They all piled into the autitorium and I started the introductory film for them and then panicked when I looked back into the parking lot and saw a man drive off in their van.  Then, I realized they had hired the van and it would return.  Similarly, while there is not electricity in the houses, they do frequent laundry mats.  We stopped at a house that had a sign indicating that it sold quilts.  A very nice woman in traditional dress ushered us into the back door and then down into the basement which was set up to sell the quilts.  There was electricity and a phone in the basement, but not upstairs in the residence.

      Deer hunting is very popular in Pennsylvania.  Unlike what I have seen in Washington, the hunters do not hide in the brush.  Probably because the brush and trees have lost their leaves and it is hard to hide.  Instead they use tree stands.  You look into the woods and see men in bright orange, sitting in the trees waiting for deer.  The news reports have been of men falling out of the tree stands rather than shooting each other.  I was also surprised at first when I would see a deer head, hide, entralls and feet beside the road instead of a deer carcus after it had been hit by a vehicle.  Apparently, it is legal to take the meat if you hit the deer yourself, and report it as you would if you hunted it.  But do not call your neighbor or friends to retrieve the meat.  That would be illegal.

    Pennsylvania has townships, boroughs, villages, towns, cities and counties.  Some overlap the others and no one has been able to explain the functions of all these governmental entities.  However, no one remembers electing township governments either.

     Near where we stayed, was a trail around Hopewell Lake.  Where a stream runs into the lake, beavers have been very active.  

                                    Ants enjoying sap where the beavers have recently chewed.

                                                          Beaver dam on a very small stream.

                                                  Entrance into beaver lodge.

                                                     Beaver lodge.

                                                                 Chewed trees.

                                                Sunset on the lake.

    

If you are talking to more than one person and want to refer to them, you don't say you two or you three, you say "yous".  Yous is the plural of you.

It is hard to explain how in the country, other farms are close.  You can never get away from farms, it is like a town that is spread out over many acres.

We arrived in early October to a beautiful fall, days in the 60s and leaves just beginning to turn.  The weather gradually became cooler and cooler.  We had only a few days of rain.  We watched the leaves go from yellowish green to bright oranges, intense reds, and then to browns, covereing the ground.  The last night we were there, the temperature dropped to the mid-20s and we froze all night even with the electric blanket on high.  When we got up, we found ice on the driveway and an icicle hanging from the trailer.  It was time to head south.



Valley Forge

We drove to Valley Forge on a cool partly-cloudy fall day.  The leaves had mostly fallen off the trees, but a few remained.  And the wind played with the leaves, blowing them hither and yon and dropping the temperature another fifteen degrees as it blew any warmth from our skin.  Our first stop was an Episcopalian Church on the Park grounds that serves as a memorial to United States soldiers from the Revolutionary War through the World Wars.  The church was immense.  It had a list of fallen soldiers from the Revolutionary War, listed by state, a bell used in the women's suffrage movement, and several gargoyles that seemed almost anti-Christian.



                                        Across the road, in a field, stood a miniature Washington Monument.

                                              Even the cat was cold!

                    This floor has two different types of stone, one that wears more than the other.

 

Behind the church was a small gift store, that was well stocked with 18th Century cannons slowly wearing away in the weather.  They come in many shapes and sizes.

                                            The leaves were chasing us.

                                                    The last vestiges of fall leaves.

Next we stopped where some of Washington's troops had spent the winter of 1777-1778.  Washington brought close to 6000 men, and told them to build their own shelters.  The sight reminded me of the television show "Survivor" where the contestants use what is available to build a shelter.  The weather that winter was cold and snowy and the troops had a shortage of food and clothing.  Approximately 2000 men died of disease during the encampment.  When they arrived, they had lost Philadelphia to the British, and by camping here they were near enough to keep an eye on the British Army, but far enough away to avoid a surprise attack.  During the winter months, the Continental Army was trained by Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben who converted the recruited farmers into a trained army.  He believed that he couldn't use the European methods of demanding obedience from the troops, but instead had to explain why he wanted them to do something because of the American independent thinking.

                      These beds remind me of the ones we saw in  the Dachau concentration camp.

        We were able to walk through the home that George Washington stayed in during the winter, and Martha Washington stayed in part of that time.  It was eerily moving to look into the rooms where Washington sat with his officers planning the strategies to defeat the British.  Washington rented the house rather than just occupy it, believing that government should not requisition property from its citizens without compensation.

                                                George and Martha's bed.

       I do not understand this covered bed, and there was no explanation.  Maybe the cover helps keep the heat in.

                                                Dining area.

                                                      Parlor/meeting room.

                                                       The other parlor/meeting room.

                                              Servant's quarters.

                                               Walkway between the house and kitchen.

Kitchen

                                                           I love the wavy glass in the windows.

The soldiers food and equipment supplies improved in March and April, 1778 and in May they left Valley Forge.  It is interesting that many of the local farmers preferred to sell their goods to the British because the British money was more stable that the Colony money which was not uniform from state to state.  Not everyone supported the movement for independence.  We Americans probably will never all agree on politics.