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The last few times we have gone past Mt. Penn near Reading, PA., I saw a pagoda way up at the top and wondered about it. I mentioned to Sean how much I’d like to see it up close and so we took a day trip there a few weeks ago. We drove through Reading, […]
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I can’t believe how behind I am in my blog! The Chanticleer walk was before I broke my toe and I have so many more photos to share. By the way, my toe is better, though feels like a peanut instead of a toe at this moment. Another time, my son drove me up to […]
I hope you are catching this series (Who Do You Think You Are?) as it is now on the TLC cable channel. Last night featured singer/actress Zooey Deschanel who has local roots near where I live now! First she went to the Philadelphia public library, then Swarthmore, PA and finally Christiana, PA where she found out her great grandmom (times 4) was an abolitionist for the underground railroad around the time of the Civil War! Christiana is about 16 or so miles from here.
And get this, we have been to the Sadsbury Friends Meetinghouse cemetery where Zooey’s relative (or relatives) are buried.
We went there as a geocache was there (back in February)! I have one placed myself around the corner near a supermarket. I thought that was pretty neat. Zooey was far right to where this photo was taken. I think they had her walk from the back there to the front. That one part of the building wasn’t too attractive.
So I decided to look up some family stuff, but my paternal side, the Knowles family. My gr-grandfather was one of the first forest rangers in Oregon. His wife, Margie wrote a book called ‘Honeymoon on Horseback’ about their early marriage and his work as a forest ranger and how they lived in a primitive way out of a tent, etc. I have a copy of the book. Sean, my son has read it too.
So I found on my search where the campground named after Archie was closed down. Then I ran across a youtube video and the man took us on a tour of the area.
This man is into geocaching too! My mouth fell open when I started to watch this video as he nabbed a geocache there.
But this is a bittersweet video for me also. I never met most of the Knowles family as I grew up in Pennsylvania and my 3 brothers and me didn’t go out to Oregon. I correspond with my cousin Ann and I’ve met her sister Shirley and her husband Dwayne when I was a little girl. Ann and Shirley’s mom, Dessa was very nice to me and wrote to me when she was alive. She is the daughter of Archie and Margie. My parents were separated and then divorced and my father lived his days out in his home state. His ashes were scattered in the Knowles creek in 2008.
If you watched the video, you can see where this campground was probably closed down for good this year. I appreciate Kenny (I have a brother and nephew Ken/Kenny also!) for showing me this place. I hope to see it someday, but we’ll see if I am able to get to the west coast.
The back cover of ‘Honeymoon on Horseback’, great grandfather Archie and
Margie, his wife and author.
Again, the internet truly amazes me!
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Visiting these gardens have been something I wanted to do for a few years, but never got around to it until a few weeks ago. They have a Facebook page and their photos were tempting me so much! So Brian and I went over to Wayne, PA and spent a few hours enjoying the property […]
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Back on July 24th (I know, I am behind all the time lately), Brian and I took drive up to Lititz, PA. It’s closer than the other chocolate town of Hershey, PA., but to me it smells very delicious right outside of the Wilbur Chocolate Factory. It smells like mom’s kitchen, or my kitchen or […]
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Back on July 20th we were looking for a day trip to go on and I saw that Elk Creek State Park had a lot of water around it and was less than 40 miles away. We had never been there before and only knew the lay-out from the internet. There is the Turkey Point […]
It’s one of those weird, weird summers. First we had rain, rain and more rain! (Gee, all these multiples means I am making a point maybe?) So now it’s been the heat which has dried up the mucky yard, but the veggies have suffered. Weeds are everywhere!
A bright spot in my yard with 3 locations of these beauties:
Star Gazer lilies look like they may be difficult to grown. I have two pots with the bulbs in them and they sit outside all winter. Actually one pot is about 6 years old and the other is new-both Star Gazers that look a bit different. The first photo are ones in the ground. Their aroma really defines July to me (other than the smell of firecrackers!).
We were down at a park in Maryland yesterday. We had wanted to go to Ocean City, NJ, but didn’t get up soon enough. Elk Creek State Park will be my next post. And it will be an interesting one, I promise!
Now I will share some beautiful old buildings with you from near where we live. I am pretty happy with my Samsung cellphone’s photos. We have had their tv for a number of years and love it. The only thing that the phone does is to start to flip between screens if I overdo it with the photos. I am sure I’ve taken at least 300 photos since March.
This is The Blue Church (1832) in Springfield PA.
This building, which is now the oldest standing church building in Springfield, came to be known as “The Blue Church” because Lownes had constructed it of blue Pennsylvania limestone, which turned a shade of blue in wet weather.
This is in an area where there are shopping centers on both sides of the road, so a busy very modernized area here. I know a FB pal’s pal got married here.
This is Walden School in Upper Providence township, PA. It was called Sandy Bank school (1836) for many years. I went here for kindergarten, 2nd and 3rd grade. Kindergarten was in the basement. When our day was over, it turned into the lunch room. I have many memories of using the red tablets that stained our teeth so we saw where we were missing in the brushing department. Also loved the seesaw and playground. Being able to draw Snoopy in 3rd grade and having the other kids want me to draw for them. Listening to the teacher read Pippy Longstockings. Kids making fun of my speech impediment. Having the teacher yell at me for sucking my hair (ugh). The coat closet, a room in itself and struggling with boots-the kind you had to pull up over your shoes. Awful.
St. Mary’s Chapel (1873), Exton, PA
This happen to be the little church my husband Brian was baptized in. His parents said he cried a lot as baby and having him in church didn’t make a difference. We were in the area for my MRI (I have another post about my back to do) and we stopped by a few places and this was one of them. This little chapel not only had a geocache behind it, it had an Entenmann’s outlet store next to it!
This is also off a very busy road near a mall.
Across the street:
The “King’s Highway” was originally laid out in 1690, as an east-west thoroughfare enabling people and goods to move from the Philadelphia area to Lancaster. In 1791 it became a toll road, known as “The Lancaster Turnpike.” Along this busy thoroughfare, James Bowen erected an elegant tavern known as “The Ship Inn”. Across the street from the Inn stood a fine, gray stone livery stable first built in 1793, where those lodging at the Ship Inn would house their horses.
This is said to be haunted!
And last but not least, The Kennett Inn, a few miles from where we live:
The Kennett Inn, originally founded in 1835 was renovated in 1927 as “The Green Gate Tea Room “during the era of prohibition, then in 1976 the Inn was restored with great care to present a formal dining room and colonial tavern with hard wood floors, cherry tables which preserves its history with a friendly small town hospitality.
A few days ago, Geocaching.com offered a ‘get outdoors and geocache’ souvenir if you found a cache on July 13th. It is added to your souvenir page almost like a stamp collection!
Brian was at work and I was trying to find an interesting cache to look for. I found one located near Wooddale Bridge in nearby Delaware. It was big enough to add a travel bug or swag to. I wrote down the directions which were 3 turns. So of course the GPS on the phone went out (I need to use my GPS device and upload caches to it!) so we went by my handwritten directions. Thank goodness. Brian was getting a little perturbed as he thought the bridge was closer. Opps…maybe 7 miles away. So we found it-no other cars were around, so we could take our time (mostly me) looking. It wasn’t hard to find at all! Yes!
Isn’t that a nice bridge? It was constructed in 2008.
See that big hornet’s nest on the upper left?
Look at all the raging water from all our rain.
The cache wasn’t too difficult to spot as it wasn’t hidden well. I hid it a bit better. You never know who is going to come along.
I hadn’t signed it or added the little Eagle with the travel bug attached to it.
Driving back we stopped the Mount Cuba Center and drove up their long drive. We saw this gorgeous mansion at the top. It belonged to the DuPont Copland family!
This is just used for administration and an educational facility now!
We decided to go up to Kennett to check out a new cheese steak place. The night before, the place was packed! When we got there, a bike race was going on and the middle of town was portioned off.
See the racers whiz by!
We walked down to the new market place and there was indeed a cheese steak place, a crepe place and seafood area and a wine seller. We decided not to get a sandwich as we had a burger the night before. We ended up in a Mediterranean place and ordered a cheese tray (very skimpy and no crackers) and salads that had lots of greens, but little of anything else for the price. I always wanted to try it, so now I know the dinners ‘and’ salads are pricey. Nice waiter though.
Some shots from around quaint Kennett Square, PA
Sean is good at taking me places where I show an interest in. I did a google search once on ‘shopping in Lancaster’ and Stoudtburg Village came up. He had off last Saturday and he said we could take a drive up. It was over an hour drive and we saw lovely farms and scenery.
The village itself wasn’t very busy and it was quite warm that day. The shop owners buy the building and live above the stores! I like that idea! So we started to walk around and went by a lady who was about to prop open her door. I advised her against it and then we started to talk. She let us see her ‘courtyard’ or garden which was really pretty with the purple and lime green. She wasn’t going to open until the 19th and let us to see her store. She had awesome antiques and I loved the boater hats like my great grandfather William use to wear (as seen in photos).
This was outside ‘Plum Pludding’ if you ever want to visit.
We looked in a few stores, one being a candy store and I got my mom her favorite ‘Black Jack’ gum and some Violet candies I liked.
We went to the antique mall area there and the lady said she was going close in 5 minutes. There were a few other people in the mall and I think I would have kept it open a little longer so we could enjoy looking around.
I mentioned a multi cache that was located in the village. We found the first one pretty easily. The hint lead us to a sitting area and there were people sitting on their balcony. The lady said she knew what we were poking around for and we looking in the right area. I saw a sprinkler head and it was a big sprinkler for such a small area. Sean pulled on it, but it didn’t budge. Then we looked more and were about to melt when I went over to the sprinkler and turned the top and the coordinates to inside. We just couldn’t find the third one on foot. We even drove around. I do believe we found the north coordinates. We looked a long time for this cache. So I have the numbers written down to look for it in cooler weather. The town is suppose to be an antique mecca, and I’d love to go look around there again.
This was the antique mall with nice murals….
Sean wanted to see a preserve near by and we saw the sign, but not much of the preserve, except for the residential area. We did go by the craft warehouse place that recently closed where I enjoyed shopping a few months ago.
We ended up at the Park City Mall in Lancaster and I got a Salads work and Sean a burger. By then I wasn’t feeling that great from the heat and while Sean shopped a bit, I sat down.
So we could record finding a cache, we stopped at a McDonald’s as the cache there was very popular. The cache was a bird house in a holly bush!
We also stopped for this:
I could only eat half!
We found our hotel in Brooklyn fairly easily, but the parking was limited behind the place. The receptionist said to park anywhere on the streets around it, so after a few times circling, we found a tight spot. Unfortunately there was a broken bottle we had to kick away from the rear of the car.
The room was really tiny with the double beds and bathroom within a foot or so of the one bed.
From the front desk’s recommendation, we walked over to 5th Ave. for dinner. It was a bit of a walk and I was getting fatigued and very warm. We were looking for a ‘diner’ place and did find it. We had the Nathan’s hot dog around 5 or so, but by 8:30, we all had breakfast food! Can’t beat that and the price of dinner was good. We looked in store windows after we ate and saw some interesting things.
She was in the Gremlin movie-lol
We saw high rises galore 
all around, here and there.
Personally, I need to be able to get out the door quickly, and when needed see green grass.
We wondered where Woody Allen and other famous Brooklyn natives lived too.
The next day we set out for the Brooklyn Museum. Sean read where there was a display or maybe separate building for the Dodgers. We got there and it wasn’t open until 11. We were on a time crush as Brian had to get to work in the late afternoon.
There were ‘jumping’ water fountains out front. Cool.
We started to look for a cache, but in the wrong park. We were looking in the park for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Speaking of which, I’d love to go in there sometime too!
We then got in the correct park, called Prospect Park. It was looked like a tree hide, but we just couldn’t put our finger on it. (Sean and I were looking and he drove a bit that day).
We then started for home. Get this, Sean bought two NY lottery tickets and wanted to cash in his $3 winnings. We stopped in Staten Island and he got it and we got a cache in a little park there too! That was a little walking in weeds and loaded with skeeters, but Brian and I got it in about 10 minutes or so.
We stopped for a late lunch and it was raining quite a bit on the way home. Brian was about 1.5 hours late for work, but he stayed later too.
It was a pretty neat trip and we are glad to see other parts of New York.
Collages & Creative Goodness 