150 Years Ago

The first week in July this year will mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle at Gettsyburg in Pennsylvania. The battles, and there were several of them, occurred over a three day period from July 1 to July 3, 1863. It is a very moving and emotional experience to walk through this area and recount what happened here.

We stopped at the fairly new and very beautiful visitor's center which is operated by both the National Park Service and Friends of Gettysburg. You can tour the area by car and by foot on your own and there are several ranger led walks that will give you a nice overview of the site that are free of charge. However, if you want to see the movie or the museum that's located in the Visitor's Center, there is a charge as this is run and maintained by the Friends Association. You also can take narrated bus tours or hire your own tour guide for an additional price. They even have segway tours.

We opted for a combination of the two. We did see the movie and the museum which were excellent and filled with a large amount of great information. We then went to two of the ranger led programs. The first program was a cemetery tour where we learned that this was the first National Cemetery established for soldiers. Ironically, no Confederate soldiers are allowed to be buried in a National Cemetery.

The ranger did a wonderful job of setting the stage up to the battles and the need to bury the dead, and the selection of this site for the cemetery. She also spoke of the dedication of the cemetery on November 19, 1963. President Lincoln was not the key note speaker and his presence there was really just a gesture at the time. The keynote speaker was a great orator of the time and he spoke for over two hours. When Lincoln got up to speak, his speech was so short (272 words lasting roughly 2 minutes), that the photographer didn't even have a chance to set up his camera equipment and thus there are no pictures showing the President giving his address. The story goes that when President Lincoln sat down, the keynote speaker (Edward Everett) leaned over and said, "Mr. President, you said more in 2 minutes, than I did in two hours."

It is a beautiful cemetery and a fitting tribute to future generations of American soldiers.

The second ranger program was not as good. It was about the battle on July 3rd, Pickett's Charge. After reading the park brochure, seeing the movie and the Cyclorama, I thought it was a bit repetitive. Fred listened to the program while I wandered around the battlefield.

I ran across a very interesting individual.
This union soldier, walked up to the "line", looked around, posed for a few pictures and walked away.







It is a humbling experience to look across the fields and imagine what it must have been like to be a soldier or a townsfolk back then. The Park Service has done a great job preserving this site and telling the story for future generations to continue to learn and appreciate our history.

AHHH Chocolate

What better way to spend a day than surrounded by chocolate...












You can't spend four days in Hershey Pennsylvania and not think about chocolate. It's everywhere. It's on the name of the streets Cocoa Road and Chocolate Avenue.

It's on the street lights in town.  It's in the name of so many stores in town. The one place it wasn't, was in the air. I thought that the whole town would smell of chocolate. (Those of you who have been through Burlington Wisconsin and the Nestle factory know what I'm talking about.)

Our first stop in Hershey was to the visitors center to find out what to do and how to do it. We wanted to get a tour of the factory and learn how they make all those delectable treats. We were also hoping for some free samples!

Much to our dismay, there are no actual tours of the factory. However, you can go to Hershey's Chocolate World Attraction. Here you have your choice of five different tours that you can go on...all for a price. As we were walking toward the building, we noticed these two lines of people. They WERE giving away free samples!!!

One line was to get samples of two different types of cookies (chocolate chip or cookies and cream), the other for two different types of cupcakes (chocolate or choco/peanut butter). You got to pick two for your tasting. The other line was giving away the mixes that you used to make the above samples. Each bag contained two box mixes and a can of frosting. We each got a bag, so I guess I'll be doing some baking when we are in Branson.

The first thing that we opted to see was  the Hershey's Great American Chocolate Factory Tour Ride. This is Hershey's version of Disney's It's a Small World Ride. I'm surprised the workers don't go crazy hearing the same silly song all day long. The ride lasted all of fifteen minutes. You sit in a car and are taken through the steps of making chocolate, mostly narrated by a trio of singing cows. It was during the ride that they puff the smell of chocolate to you.

After our tour we had a 45 minute break before we could see the 4D movie. As we were exiting the tour, a person approached us and wanted to know if we would like to participate in a market survey. I was the only one that could do it. It appears that Hershey doesn't care what the over 64 year old's think of their product. Though they were nice enough to let Fred join me while I did the survey.

It was such a hard job, but someone had to do it. I had to test three, count them three different types of chocolate syrup over ice cream. That means I HAD to eat three scopes of ice cream with chocolate sauce. The first thing I had to do was to determine which of the three samples poured onto my ice cream differently. Then I had to determine if the one that poured differently tasted different from the other two samples. Once I  answered the questions from the survey, I could eat all three dishes of ice cream. Now, the whole time that I was doing this Fred was watching me. I could not stand the sad puppy dog look that he kept giving me because he was to old to participate in the survey, so I actually let him finish one bowl of my ice cream.  See, I am a nice person!!!

We both received a full size Hershey Milk Chocolate Candy bar as a thank you for doing the survey.

Our next adventure in chocolate was to see the 4D movie. (normal 3D but with smellavision!!!). It was really a movie for children, but since we are all kids at heart (and it was part of our package) we went to see it. The movie was cute, the special effects good and the smell of chocolate was    w o n d e r f u l.

The last thing that we did was "Create Your Own Candy Bar". Fred made a candy bar for the Wang grandkids and I made a bar for the Knapp grandchildren. Because this was a working factory, we did have to wear the appropriate clothing. Once properly attired we proceeded into the factory area to begin production. The first step was to select the base for the candy bar. The choices were milk chocolate, dark chocolate or white chocolate. Then we selected a filling: nuts, chocolate chips, pretzel pieces, and a few other choices I can't remember. All bars get a chocolate glazed topping and finally, the biggest decision with or without sprinkles. Once selected you watched the computerized machinery make your candy.

While the candy bar is in the quick chiller, you go to the computer and design the packaging. It was fun, except when we bought the ticket, they misspelled the Knapp's name, and there was no way to correct it on the computer, so I couldn't use their name in the packaging. But it was still a lot of fun, and I really don't think the grandchildren minded. The chocolate was/is the most important part!!

It was lots of fun.








A tour of any place is not complete without a trip to the Gift Shop, and Hershey has a BIG gift shop. We could have bought t shirts, sweatshirts, caps, nightgowns and every type and size of Hershey candy that you could imagine, but we did use some self control and did not leave our life savings to the Hershey Company.

What do you do when it's hot??

The days that we spent in Lancaster County PA were the hottest days of the summer thus far. We were suppose to go and visit Gettysburg today, but neither Fred nor I wanted to spend the day outside walking in the sun on a 90 degree day. So instead we went on a little road trip. As I mentioned earlier, we are on a quest to geocache in all 50 states. For those of you who don't know what geocaching is, I will give you a short explanation.

Geocaching started in 2000 when then President Clinton de-militarized the GPS satellites, allowing us to utilize this technology in our cars and in hand held devices. When this happened some nerdy guys decided to see if they could find a box that one of their other nerdy friends had hidden in the woods. And thus geocaching was born: treasure hunting in the twenty-first century. The object of the game is to find containers (caches) that other people have hidden using the posted GPS coordinates. These containers can be as small as the eraser from a pencil to as large as a jumbo plastic tub. Inside the container is a log that you must sign when you find the container and if it's a big enough container there might be treasures to trade for (things like prizes kids might get in a happy meal, to coins, books or other interesting stuff).

We have found that this is a great way to see parts of the country that we might not normally see. In addition, we have learned some very interesting facts and history.

So on this hot Saturday afternoon, we traveled into West Virginia to cache in our 48th state. We drove to Harper's Ferry WV and saw some beautiful scenery along the way.

We've all heard of the Potomac River that flows past Washington DC, but did you know that it starts in the mountains somewhere around Harper's Ferry??
We didn't either, but this is one of the interesting things that we discovered while going to our geocache.

We found two caches in West Virginia. One was in a small park in a residential area of town off the beaten path. The other cache was a bit unusual. It was hidden in an old dilapidated building with an unusual creature inside!







As of today we have found 998 caches, we are planning on finding our 1000th cache once we get back to Homewood Illinois. We thought it would be nice to find a cache by the same person who's cache was our first one back in April of 2006.

The Simple Life

When we told family and friends that when we retired we wanted to be full time Rvers, we got a lot of shocked looks and I'm sure a few comments wondering if we were crazy. (Some of them may still think we are crazy!!) Most people couldn't believe that we were going to sell our house, get rid of most of our personal belongings and hit the road. For us this represents a simpler life. For over two years now, we have made our 40 foot fifth wheel home. Of course, we still have air conditioning, a microwave oven, two flat screen tv's and a king size bed.

This week we spent a day in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. This area has one of the largest Amish populations in the country. It is these people that really have a simpler life. They live their lives with no electricity, no automobiles and without many of the modern conveniences that most of us couldn't imagine living without.

We started our tour taking a buggy ride through the area and visited a working dairy farm.

Yes Jen, we saw lots of cows!!

As we arrived at the barn, several of the children ran in and started climbing the haystacks. They were of course dressed in the simple manner of the Amish. I was surprised that they didn't mind having their pictures taken. I was under the impression that this was forbidden, but no one told us not to, so we took some pictures of them.




Our Amish guide explained how the farm worked and showed us the tools they use to milk the cows. It was here that I started to become a skeptic about the Amish life style. They don't believe in using electricity or drive automobiles, however, they have no problem using a milking machine that is run by a diesel generator... They also store the milk in a large cooling tank again run with the diesel generator.

We saw the plow that is being pulled by four to six horses to plow their fields. But then we saw the rolled bales of hay wrapped in plastic. It seems that they hire someone outside of their community to do this for them in the fall....





Not being timid, I did question our guide about this. It seems that while they do try to keep with the simpler way of life, they are not opposed to embracing some things that will make their lives easier. Basically it comes down to how quickly will they embrace changes. Where most of us in mainstream America are excited about trying out the newest gadgets as soon as they hit the market, the Amish are slow to make changes in their lifestyle. Something that may have been considered taboo to do twenty five years ago, may start to be accepted by the Amish people today. They will ride in cars, just not drive them. They have indoor plumbing. They heat their houses and have hot water by using propane. They'll use a phone if it's for business or an emergency. They just take life in the slow, slow, slow lane.

There is a peace and serenity when you see the Amish living their lives.  Watching the farmers leading their team of horses while plowing the fields.  Seeing two young Amish boys race their horse and buggy around a track. The memories of childhood when everyone hung their wash on the line to dry.





The smell of fresh air while gazing across the well kept farms and rolling hills. I'm sure we all can remember a time in our lives when the clock ticked a little bit slower. Maybe that's really not such a bad thing.

Next stop Florida...

We have finally reached the point in our travels that we have to turn west and head back to Chicago. Of course, we have made a few stops along the way. From Massachusetts, we headed to Florida....Florida New York that is. Its a very nice area about 50 miles northeast of New York City. It is nestled in the Hudson River Valley. Again, we were surprised to see how many trees and open fields there were in this area. I can understand why people who work in the city would want to leave out here. The hills and trees are beautiful.

Probably one of the most important places in the Hudson River Valley is West Point Military Academy. We were lucky that we arrived there on Tuesday. Graduation was on the Saturday before and I'm sure the place was extremely busy then.

We did see groups of student/soldiers waiting on the parade grounds to board buses for either home or to their next training location. It was weird seeing them with guns on their shoulders.

We took a two hour narrated bus trip around the campus. Security here is very strict. You have to show a picture ID at two different security points prior to gaining access to the campus. One which has armed military police!. Our tour guide was very informative.

During the American Revolutionary war, George Washington had defended this area from the British. It's location on the Hudson River was an ideal place for a fort. As you can see the weather was still gray and raining. Luckily during the tour the rain stayed away for the most part.







The buildings are all constructed in the Greek Military fashion. It was hard to tell which buildings were over a hundred years old and which ones were fairly new. They are all maintained so nicely. This is a picture of some of the dormitories.

Behind the buildings are the courtyards where the cadets who receive demerits most walk the square in full combat attire (pack and gun) as punishment for an indiscretions.

This is a statue of Sylvanus Thayer who is considered the Father of West Point. Legend has it that if a cadet spins his spurs at midnight the night before final exams, he will pass his tests. Fred is trying his hand at spinning the spurs.







Probably the most interesting thing we saw at West Point was the cemetery. (Are you seeing a common thread here!!) It is a military cemetery and for the most part, in order to be buried here, you have had to either gone to school here, taught or worked here or been a very prominent citizens of the town of West Point. The gravestones were very interesting.

There were the standard government issued stone that you see at a National Cemetery and  like the ones surrounding the monument shown above and then there are some very elaborate ones like these. However, after these were built, they realized that they take up so much space that they'd run out of room in the cemetery, so now you can't have giant monuments any more.





It still amazes me that I am so lucky to be able to travel throughout the United States and see all of these wonderful places. It also makes me stop and think..  There are many times when we gripe and complain about our government, but in the end, there is no other place that I'd rather be than the United States of America.

History Lessons in New England

Some people think that this life style is easy and stress free. Well, for the most part it is. That is until you take a 40 foot fifth wheel around New York City!!! Of course it was a Monday morning too! For the most part the drive up the New Jersey coast went well. We planned our trip so that morning rush hour would be over. But I guess that around a city the size of New York, it's always rush hour. As we made our way past Newark, this is what we had imagined that all of New Jersey looked like. Lots of commercial activities and highways crisscrossing back and forth like a bowl of spaghetti.

We crossed the New Jersey/New York border over the Hudson River by way of the George Washington Bridge. Like all of the roads in and around New York/New Jersey, it is a toll bridge. I know cars cost $13, I imagine that the RV and truck cost more, but we used our IPass so I won't know the exact cost until I check my account.  Since our rig is so big, we had to use the upper level of the bridge. We weren't surprised to see a back up into the toll booth, however, once we were on the bridge, we expected traffic to move along. But it didn't... When you hear about bridges collapsing in Washington, and you are sitting with hundreds of cars, tractor trailers and trucks, in makes you a bit nervous when you are sitting there stuck in traffic!!! Despite the traffic jam, the bridge held and we slowly made our way on the Cross Bronx Expressway.  Looking at the endless high rise apartment buildings, I can't imagine having to live there. City life is not for me.

Like so many people that work in New York, they live in Connecticut...we also opted to stay in Connecticut. We stayed at a really pretty campground called Riverdale Farms Campground. It was in a beautiful rural setting and the staff was so friendly.

We started our history lesson with a geocache in Old Saybrooke along the Connecticut River. We learned about the Dutch who first lived in the area and the British who forced them out. There were also wonderful views of Long Island Sound. We could see some of the big houses and imaging what life must be like for the rich and not so famous. We took a walk along the newly repaired marina.

They had sustained some significant damage last October during Hurricane Sandy. Another geocache lead us to a marsh area where we saw a family of ospreys taking care of there new babies.

Our second history lesson was at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex. This area was a busy port in the early 1800's. During the war of 1812, the British came into the harbor and burned and sunk fifteen ships that were in the harbor.







From Connecticut we traveled a bit further north into Rhode Island. We are currently working on completing two bucket list quests. Rving in all fifty states and geocaching in all 50 states. So we spent a night in Rhode Island and checked that state off our lists. It was a short easy drive, so once we were set up in the campground we headed out for our geocaches.

We have found some of the most interesting caches in cemeteries, and this was no different. This cemetery was so old that you couldn't even read the names or dates on most of the tombstones.

The neatest part though, was the crypt that was open. Luckily, I didn't see any bones in there!

Something that we noticed as we were driving throughout the area was how green and lush everything was. We were both surprised to see so many areas thick with trees.

They other thing was the stone walls that you could see winding through the woods and along the sides of the roads. Oh if only they could talk, what they must have seen and experienced over the centuries.

We had a very interesting dinner at a haunted tavern. The tavern has been in use since before the American Revolution. Fred had a very weird experience while we were there. He got up to use the bathroom and as he approached it, he saw the door closing ahead of him. He went in, and did his business and hearing someone else doing their business in the next stall...However, when he looked around, he realized that he was alone....

The next state on our list was Massachusetts. We again took advantage of our Thousand Trails membership and stayed at the preserve in Sturbridge. We planned our stay so that we arrived on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend so that we could get a decent site. The campground is ok. We've noticed with most of the TT campgrounds that they all need some TLC. This one was no different. The sites are usually back-ins and at times just fit our big rig. We were glad we got there early, because I think we got one of the last sites. The calendar may have said that summer was starting, the weather however did not get the memo. It was cold (45-50) and raining (record rains for that time of year) the whole weekend while we were here. Thank goodness for heated seats in the truck ("heat seaters") and fleece blankets in the RV!.

Since the weather was so unfavorable, we didn't want to do much outdoors activities. While driving we saw a brown sign for Blackstone River Valley National Corridor. I grabbed my iPhone and googled it. It's a National Park with four Visitors Centers...  We headed for the nearest one which happened to be the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonstocket MA. We found out that it was along the Blackstone River that the Industrial Revolution in America was born. It was here that the United States moved from a farming country to an industrial country. We learned all about the textile industries throughout this region. I wish I had taken a picture of the homes in the area. Many of the older homes, were built by "the company" to house the workers. They were three story houses all of similar design with porches on each floor. One family would occupy each floor, with three families per building.

The next day we took a ride back into Rhode Island so that Fred could go to the Quonset Air Museum. They are only open on weekends, so it didn't fit into our schedule while we were there earlier in the week. They advertised that they had Nike equipment, so Fred wanted to see what they had and if he could get a lead on some more equipment for the Nike site at Everglades National Park. Unfortunately, all they had was one Ajax missile and no information as to where that came from. But since we were there, we did look at some of the air planes that they have or are restoring.

We then continued our education on the history of manufacturing in the Blackstone River Valley. This time we went to the Slater Mill in Pawtucket Rhode Island

Samuel Slater was the gentleman credited with being the father of the Industrialization of America. Back in the late 1700's, England had already developed machines for the textile industry, but they wanted to have a monopoly on this technology. So they made it unlawful for anyone working in the mills to leave the country. Samuel Slater had worked his way up through the ranks in a mill until he had learned the trade and was one of the chief engineers there. He told his boss that he was taking a few days off, dressing as a member of the lower class, he booked passage on a ship to the US. When he arrived in New York, he was talking to a ships captain from Pawtucket and told him what he did. The captain knew of a man back home who was trying to build a machine that would spin cotton into threads.

This is exactly what Slater knew how to do. So he went to Pawtucket and within a year he had successfully built the machine. He would become a very successful business man. They say that when he died he was worth over $10 million!

The museum had several different pieces of machinery that were used in this process. The cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney, which separated out the seeds from the cotton. The machine that combed the cotton into soft threads and finally the machine that Slater built that spun the cotton into threads. It was so interesting to see how the process works.

Here is Fred beside the water wheel that powered the equipment in the mill.

As part of the museum, they also had a homestead that showed how some of the more affluent workers lived. I never knew where linen came from... Its actually from a plant! The workers would grow flax in their gardens.  We saw how by hand they would break the outer layer of the plant to get the soft flax threads from inside. They then combed the flax until it was nice and soft and then they would spin it into treads on their spinning wheel. Most people back then would wait for the weaver to come into town with his portable loom where he would weave the threads into cloth. I'm not sure if we learned this stuff in school, but I can tell you that if we did, it sure wasn't as interesting as seeing it done in person.