Cheesesteak, Trains and Crayons!

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Philly! First stop: Franklion Institute to check out the King Tut exhibit on loan from Egypt. The artifacts were pretty fascinating but some of the things we had hoped to see, such as the headmasks and any of the coffins, weren't there. However, they did have amazingly preserved artifacts on display that were found in Tut's tomb, as well as artifacts discovered in his family members' tombs. Pretty neat! Then we explored the rest of the museum for a quick minute, and off to lunch!

We went down to the two competing cheesesteak places in Philly: Gino's and Pat's. We were going to buy one cheesesteak from each place and compare, but our hunger got the better of us and we just ordered from Gino's. It was pretty good, but you really can't help thinking that the grass might have been greener on the other cheesesteak...or something along those lines. 😊 But, no matter, they were great sandwiches!

We then went to the historic district and went to check out the famously cracked liberty bell. We also stood outside the old city hall, which saw the signing of the declaration of independence among other famous events (like the first meeting hall of congress, etc). We couldn't go in because we didn't get tickets in time, but we did get a lot of great history when we were in DC, and a lot of the pamphlets and monuments explained a lot about Philadelphia's history. Awesome!

The only bad part about our Philly experience was the camping...Pennsylvania shut down all of the state's state parks for a couple of days, which pushed those campers into private campgrounds. So, there were no campgrounds available nearby, and the one we found ended up being ridiculously expensive and quite disgusting. Danielle passive aggressively vowed to "write a letter"...as soon as she found a clean shower to use somewhere else. oh well!

Next stop: Roadside America, a couple of hours away in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania. It's the largest model train display in America...and it's got a lot going for it. Not only is it a supercool working model trainyard, but it has running lakes, rivers, waterfalls and canals, recycling 5000 gallons of water every 8 hours. Also, each of the buildings and areas in the model were built to show something important from the 1940s and before. There was a coal mine, Luray Caverns (which we had just been to! remember!?), famous churches, "historic" log cabins, old gas stations, Ben Franklin's workshop, blacksmiths, trolleys, a airport, a ski resort, and all kinds of things like that based on real structures famous at that time in America. You also got the walk around the exhibit and push different buttons to make cows move, lumberjacks saw, city trolley go, and gondolas climb the mountain while the regular trains ran continuously. Also, about every 30 minutes, the whole thing goes to night and God Bless America plays...and all of the streetlights, passengar train cars, and buildings are lit from the inside. This stop was a lot of hoaky yet genuine fun.

Last stop in PA: Easton. The home of the Crayola Crayon museum. It's not the actual factory, but you can be a kid again and go play with crayons, markers, clay, and even participate in making the crayons and markers when they show you how it's done. Danielle was quite proud of her crayon-wrapping abilities. Also connected to the museum was the "canal museum"...where we got to play with boats and find out how locks work. Yes, with these three stop combined, our lives may now finally be complete 😊.

Or are they? Guess we'll have to keep moving on to find out...

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Comments

[Ellen]

I guess you can guess that I LOVED this! I was never taken to see the Liberty Bell as a tyke. When I visited as an adult, the guide encouraged the children to come up and touch the crack in the bell. I raised my hand and asked it I could come forward also since I hadn't visited as a child. He said yes, and almost all the other adults walked up with me.

[Linda]

Yummy!
Looks like u guys are having lots of fun! Love, Linda