Category Archives: history

Rock n Roll baby! Cleveland, Ohio

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After we spent the day in Pittsburgh back in October, we then had a long drive to Cleveland. I need to share our ride up the Pittsburgh cable incline too! Great shots!  The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame was our next destination. I thought it was a place that Brian would enjoy and I don’t know what our future will bring (as stated in my previous blog entry), so that’s where we decided to go. We didn’t get in town until after dark and then had to go out to eat. We had the van drop us off at an Italian place downtown as I found a coupon or discount for it. They happen to be hosting some party and she said we’d have to wait. I said we could have whatever they were serving and the waitress said it had been served already. She did seat us and we got what we wanted and it was pretty good.

The next day we had the van drive us over to the museum as it was so cold and windy right there on the lake. It was even flurrying that day. The museum is truly a work of art in itself!

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Sean posing with the late Johnny Cash’s tour bus. Not sure if you could go in it or not. We were so cold, we just wanted to get inside the museum!

2015 Nominees Including Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (a local gal from the same county that I grew up in) and Ringo Starr! Any Beatle memoribilia was awesome to us!

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The displays were so nicely collaged! You know I appreciated that! I took a photo of these for one of the posters….think it’s the Atlantic City one on the far right.

Taylor Swift’s barely there costume and Lady Gaga’s meat dress that she wore to the Grammys a few years back. They said the cheap cuts of meat worked better.

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The lighting wasn’t great and I tinkered with many of my photos. Brian and one of my brothers are big Jimmy Hendrix’s fans. It was cool to see some of his psychedic costumes. He could really play the guitar!

We were really excited to see this exhibit!

 

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Across from the Beatles were the other British invasion group, The Rolling Stones!

 

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson was represented

This is one of my favorite photos of the Supremes outfits. You can even see where the sequins are loose.Falltrip15 180

Hershey Gardens daytrip

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Whirlwind past 30 days!

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I saw where I was going to update my blog at the end of March.  That didn’t happen and I want to share so much that it will take a few posts just to catch up. We were in Tampa, Florida for 4 days almost 3 weeks ago! We did our beer budget exploring there-no Busch Gardens, etc. We went along with Sean on his conference trip. We also saw St Pete’s Beach and Clearwater, Florida  on day trips. More about Florida soon.

I also found a website I have entered over 130 of my photos on. It’s called Pixoto. So far I have won 31 awards. Your photo is matched up against someone else’s in the correct category and people pick which one they like better and you get points. 500 and up are good. It’s fun! I even got a few of my photos printed on canvas.  Mine are all for sale! They look nice and are ready to stand up or hang up.

Back to March! After we saw the America on Wheels exhibit in Allentown, PA. we went back to a trout nursery to see what that was all about. There were lots of people enjoying the nice day. Some were buying food to feed the trout. It so happens that a lady I work with grew up in that area and knew all about the nursery, etc.

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The main house at the nursery past and present

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AllentownBeth14 099We drove around Allentown a little. First to look for caches. Many happened to be parks filled with basketball players, etc. Not too much fun to look, so we left. There was some construction also. We were looking for the Liberty Bell museum and didn’t see it.

I got out and took a few photos of  the Trout Historic society. Sure, that makes sense. What a grand old place. We tend to go places when buildings are closed or too late in the day. This was closed.

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Sean wanted to check out the casino in Bethlehem, so we said ‘why not’? There were was a little shopping area there too. A steel town, many factories are shut down. The casino is in a converted factory. We shopped a few stores. I love The Farmer’s Almanac store and bought a few things there such as marked down St. Patrick Day’s things, a fairy canvas that lights up and some food items like jam and mustard. After that, I was zonked. It was getting late, so we headed home. We had to find a restaurant too.

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We had a late dinner in a place near Exton like a fancy Denny’s. We got breakfast food and a lady was playing the piano to boot. We enjoyed that and our day. Glad to see new parts of PA. Even though we don’t live that far away, we hardly venture up this way. I’ve never been out to Pittsburg, PA. out in the western part of the state.  Oh, someday!

Next post Tampa and the western area of Florida!

So we traveled up to Allentown

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Snow, old architecture and caching

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Since Sean is off on weekends now, Sundays are our days to do a little investigating and caching. Last week, February 23rd, we went to the town where I was born, West Chester, PA. It’s the county seat of our area and a nice college town. I wanted to stop first in a cemetery to see where a cache was placed where a bomber plane went down in bad weather in about 1944. Never been to the cemetery, but my late uncle’s stepdaughter and husband are buried here. We went in a big circle because of the wacky GPS, and then went in the wrong entrance. The cache was down in a wooded area in about a foot of snow. We passed on that one until the spring.

We headed to a park next. We should have looked at the hint before we parked as the place we needed to look was on the other side of the park. We trudged through the snow in the park at first, but then started walking on a sidewalk and the street. I was huffing and puffing a bit, not knowing I was getting sick with a sinus issue (I missed two days of work last week). We had to walk in more snow, grabbed the one cache, but couldn’t locate another. I decided to take a few shots of the pretty Marshall Square Park area.

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I had an Independent film maker from Instagram ask me if I took this shot. Of course!

We went looking for about 5 caches and only found 2 because of the snow. We kind of expected that, but it was nice to see the town with it’s covering of the white stuff. We will go back. The second one we found (we went out about 4:15 and ate a late dinner!) was also in a park.

Yesterday on the 2nd of March, we went down to around the Stanton area of Delaware. We wanted to check out not only caches but stores like Kohls (60-80% off!).

We do cache mostly from our phones and Sean doesn’t have a premium account, so he couldn’t count at least one find. A few stops we decided we’d skip or it wasn’t worth getting out of the car. It was raining also. Then I saw a FSC (First State Cache) at St. James Church in Stanton and we headed over. What a quaint place.

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We want to come back and look around the cemetery.

We found a few in easy spots, but it’s the above places that really keep us interested.

This church was built in 1714.

We had a little more snow overnight again, about 3 inches. I decided to brave it and take a few photos. Here is one of my favorites of the day.

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On a personal note, my mom was in the hospital over the weekend. She was down in her basement and all of the sudden her left arm and leg went numb and down she went. She managed to get up and crawl up the stairs! She called three of her kids first instead of 911! This was about 8:30 in the morning. When I got up to talk to her, her speech was slurred a bit.  We went down to the hospital for a few hours, but her tummy was bothering her and she was waiting on a room, so we came home. She is 83 and apparently she had a mini stroke and they needed to watch her for a few days. They also found a small blood clot in her head, but she was sent home. Whew, that was scary!

Happy 2014 and all the jazz

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Pennsylvania’s only President

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Our Christmas adventures begin!

On November 30th, we took a little trip up to Lancaster, PA to tour the Jame Buchanan house. To make the tour special, they had actors playing Clement C. Moore who penned ’twas the Night Before Christmas, his wife, a housekeeper and Mr. North/St. Nick.

We got there thinking we’d get in on the 4 pm tour, but had to wait until 5 pm. They couldn’t add us to the group. We went around the mansion and took photos of it outside to kill time.

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We would get to see it in the dark all lit up (just the back). I just love when the sun sets at 4 something these days.

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Colonial garden done for the fall

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This was the door we would go in to start the tour.

When it was our turn, Brian, Sean and me were the only ones on the tour.

It was kind of interesting! We got to talk to the actors as if they were the actual people. We tried to take photos, but the lighting was bad.

Buchananhouse13 044This was Mrs. Moore. The tree behind her was gorgeous. It has a big peacock at the top.

We played 1820 parlor games with them. We were suppose to make someone laugh and I said ‘hello handsome’ to Mr. Moore and made his wife laugh! Then we had to read cards which were aimed at the humor of that time. Like the one card would say ‘when should we drink a cordial’ and  the other card say, ‘not a quarter to midnight’. They all chuckled. Ha ha.

The mansion is really a lovely place. They did a nice job decorating it inside and out.

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There were torches lit along the back too. We didn’t go around front to see it lit up!

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The Lancaster Historic org is on the property and this is where we were waiting for our tour. We watched a short movie about Buchanan first. He was a bachelor and a lawyer.

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Buchananhouse13 036Buchanan’s carriage

We thought it was different and fun. We headed to look for a few caches in Lancaster and couldn’t put our hands on them. Pizza Hut was calling our names, so we had dinner there. We did find one lone cache in a metal bus stop on Rt. 30. Brian found it on a ledge on the top inside-in the dark with my phone’s flashlight.

I can’t wait to see what Longwood Gardens did this year!

50 years gone by

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Being a little girl of just 4, I don’t remember too much about this day. I know my mom and grandmom were quiet and the black and white Zenith was on all day long for several days showing coverage that  3 and 4 year old children aren’t very interested in.

Several years later, in 5th grade, I would write a paper about President Kennedy, travel to Washington, DC and then see the Kennedy grave.

Signs pointing to the graves of the Kennedys and Unknown soldiers

Grave of President Kennedy

There were some things about the assassination that I didn’t know and am sorry I had to see…like that lost film footage of the actual fatal shot.

I also didn’t know that they took seats out of Air Force One so the President wouldn’t have to go in the cargo area. Also didn’t know that Johnson wouldn’t have the plane take off without being swore in as President first. Mrs. Kennedy sat with the coffin the entire way back to the nation’s capital.

Eternal flame on Kennedy's grave

When Brian and I were first married, we traveled up to New England on a car trip that took us a week. We saw the Kennedy compound from a far in Hyannisport, MA.

Kennedy Family compound

We also went to Newport, RI and decided to see Jackie’s home ‘Hammersmith’ and took a tour. It was where she and the President had their wedding reception in 1953.

Hammersmith Estate fall 1984

Back of Hammersmith with me

These are from 1984, so not the best quality (and a scan)

Brian is the same age as Caroline and my brother is the same age as John, so you see we grew up with them. When John got killed in 1999, it was like losing a brother.

Life goes on, a new generation of this family may or may not take the limelight. Senator Ted Kennedy was the last of his generation. He was popular and outspoken until the end of his life.

Just recently Caroline became Ambassador to China. This is very interesting. She’s written several books of different genres.

I just heard the pink suit that the First Lady wore on that terrible day won’t be seen by the public until the year 2103 as requested by the family. I don’t blame them.

Cooperstown-a big museum in a small town

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Daytripping to Bucks County, PA

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