If you are at all interested in exploring a cemetery, then Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, is the one you should start out with — especially if you think it’ll be the ONLY one you decide to tour. Laurel Hill’s creators and organizers intended the cemetery to serve as a civic institution designed for public […]
Pennsylvania
Working in the Coal Mine!
Coal fired America’s Industrial Revolution, and helped shaped the country we live in today. Anthracite coal was the heating and iron-making fuel of choice, and Pennsylvania’s coal mines, which produced anthracite coal, thrived in the late 19th and early decades of the 20th century. To fill all the jobs necessary to mine coal, companies employed […]
Exploring Two Historic Estates in the Brandywine Valley
Guest blogger Julie grew up an Army brat, living in Germany and other interesting places. She recounts her memories of her childhood: My parents would take the family castle hunting on weekends and when we came back to the States it was with some trepidation that we would no longer have that immediate connection to history. Just a […]
Hiking in Ricketts Glen State Park: 3.2 Miles, 18 Spectacular Waterfalls
Ricketts Glen State Park is a Pennsylvania state park on more than 13,000 acres in Columbia, Luzerne, and Sullivan counties. The park also is a National Natural Landmark, known for its old-growth forest and the more than 20 named waterfalls along Kitchen Creek. I was enticed by the number of waterfalls in such close proximity. […]
If Only We Could Dance with Wolves
I have to say, I think this is one of my favorite day trips so far this year! Since its founding 30 plus years ago, the Wolf Sanctuary of PA has provided wolves and wolf hybrids a way out of institutionalized lives and deaths. Today, Wolf Sanctuary of PA has renovated infrastructure, beautifully expanded living […]
NCR Trail in PA: Exploring Heritage Rail Trail Park
Wonderful summer weather lures all of us outside. Always on the lookout for new destinations, we decided to bike the path that continues on from Maryland’s NCR Trail (read about our exploration of that here). Established in 1992 and covering 176 acres, the Heritage Rail Trail County Park is 21 miles long and runs north […]
Brandywine Valley Wine Trail: Three Very Different Wineries
Just over an hour north of Baltimore and maybe 45 minutes from Philadelphia lies the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail, a string of six wineries along the trail that ranges some 50 miles. The last weekend of April found us veering out of Maryland to check out three of the wineries that were closest to the […]
Exploring Two Castles of Whimsy and Treasures
There once lived a man who, in the early part of the 20th century, built two castles. He was a visionary, for he recognized the importance of preserving items of a fading way of life for future generations. He was a artist, creating tiles that were reknown for their beauty. And he was a bit […]
Eastern State Penitentiary
How do you describe a place that is intentionally ugly, intentionally horrible, intentionally built that way? How do I describe a place that having visited a couple of years ago, still haunts me? The Eastern State Penitentiary Museum and Historic Site initially captured my interest in the early 1990s, when I worked at the American […]
New Year’s Resolutions: Daytrips for 2014
I always make New Year’s resolutions. Some I keep, some I don’t, some I try diligently to keep but peter out about June or July… This year I’m making some day trip-related New Year’s resolutions — and I’m betting I’ll keep all these! Here are some day trips and places I haven’t been to yet, […]
How ’bout dem apples?! The National Apple Harvest Festival
Pennsylvania has a long history of growing apples — and is the fourth largest producer in the U.S. Adams County, in south Pennsylvania, where the National Apple Harvest Festival takes place two weekends each year, apples are taken seriously!Apples are everywhere. In fact more than five million bushels of apples are harvested in this one […]
A Happy Visit: Longwood Gardens
He who plants a garden plants happiness, according to an old Chinese proverb. Both Pierre S. du Pont and his wife Lilian planted a lot of happiness, as they planned and developed their estate, Longwood Gardens. I felt so very spoiled walking through the gardens. From the visitors center we turned right, into the formal Idea […]
Segway into a Battlefield Tour: Gettysburg National Battlefield
I have been visiting Gettysburg periodically for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Frederick and drove through the battlefields (on route 34) to visit my aunts and uncles and cousins who lived just north of Gettysburg my entire childhood. Even as an adult, I found myself returning there every few years, […]
A Necessary Stop: Fort Necessity
We trusted 22-year-olds a lot more back in the 1700s than we do now. It’s not because life is more complicated now, because that’s arguable. Back then we (and by we I mean not us but our British colonial overlords) told a young man to take a bunch of men and forge a road where […]
Falling for Water Falls: Ohiopyle State Park (PA)
The waters of the Youghiogheny River are the center of the Ohiopyle State Park, in the Laurel Highlands area of Pennsylvania. The Ohiopyle Falls are gorgeous, and I knew from a previous visit that I wanted my sons to see Cucumber Falls, which feed into the Yough itself. I decided to drag the kids and […]