Who Are You?

I just noticed that the counter shows 1766 views.

Who are you?

Some of you send us email responses, or complain when we haven't posted anything. If you are lurking out there, send an email some time, would 'ya?

On another note, since both of the kids have headed back to "regular school", we aren't sure what to do with the blog, in general. Maybe we'll just keep track of trips (day and longer), or other stuff, but with the demands of school, the kids have no motivation to write on it for now. We'll see how it goes.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We rounded out our trip back east by spending the final two days in Philadelphia. This is also where we splurged and spent 2 nights in a decent hotel. But, it wasn't that much more expensive, because I got a deal on Hotwire, and we chose to stay near the airport. This saved us money in many ways; free parking, and we turned in our car a day before we left. However, Philadelphia is a difficult city to park in, so having to drive to the city was a liability.

The Aloft hotel was very nice. The atmosphere in the lobby was "upscale youth hostel" with a hip, urban/european feel, pool table and other games, and a nice bar. Friendly staff, and loud techno music rounded out the theme. On TripAdvisor, many reviewers mentioned the music, and I do have to say, it was omnipresent. Even in the bathrooms! It could have been annoying, but I just adjusted my attitude. The hotel was very "Ikeaesque", right down to the luggage carts. The bedding and ammenities were nice though, and they had a nice indoor pool and exercise room. Down comfortors, AND, a 42" plasma TV in the room! We liked it.

When we first drove into Philadelphia from Lancaster, we drove through the big urban park, and past city hall, and ended up on South Street. I looked up to see a huge mosaic building, and we saw an open parking spot, and new we needed to stop. This amazing place was created, starting in the 1960s, by Isaiah Zagar. This particular site was several stories high, including a tiled indoor and outdoor basement, stairways, tunnels arches, and lots of nooks and crannies. Quite amazing, and I included a lot of photos here. The kids were miffed at the great deal of naked forms incorporated in the works, but I attributed that to their pre-teen sensibilities.

This same artist has also tiled many sites throughout the neighborhood, and you just can't miss them as you wander the street. Click here for his website

We also found a Whole Foods in the neighborhood (the world is getting smaller), and got some deli food to take to our room and relax.

The boy had lots of homework left to do, as we avoided it all week.

Sam groused that she was tired of me choosing all of the places to visit, so I assigned the kids to choose the activities for the last day.

They chose to go to the zoo. I insisted we needed to visit Independence Hall, as we were in Philadelphia, after all.

The next morning we woke up to snow, and wind, and cold. Sam insisted we still needed to go to the zoo. Even the boy didn't want to go anymore, but she is strong-willed. So we drove to the zoo, and got out of the car and walked to the gate. By then she realized that it really was cold, so we moved on to "Plan B", the Ben Franklin Science Museum. (We aborted the Independence Hall trip, as we drove by and saw it was mostly outdoors, no parking, and miserably cold-- we'll have to do another trip, and maybe prepare them more for it, so they'll appreciate it more).

We had a great day at the science museum.

Mom learned several things on this trip:
1) The kids are getting to the point where they need to be able to be more independent, and have more of a choice in where we go and what we do. The era of me being the boss of everything is over.
2) The kids need to take more responsibility for planning, and organizing, to go with number 1, above.
3) There is a lot to see and do in the mid-Atlantic states. We need to plan another trip to the area.
4) Traveling with pre-teens (and teens, I imagine) is not really much easier than traveling with toddlers, just more sophisticated. (PS-I'm sorry, mom, for being such a pain in the neck when I was a teenager!)

I think we'll still have fun traveling in the future, I'm just going to need to change my expectations of what these trips will look like! I think the next trip is the one we've been talking about for a while: A San Franciso weekend, where the kids get a budget and get to plan every aspect. I think they are familiar enough with the city, transportation, research, and map-reading to be able to pull it off.

Strasburg, Pennsylvania

Visiting Strasburg, Pennsylvania, in the Lancaster area, was an interesting study in contrasts.

We were lucky enough to get a behind the scenes tour of the Strasburg shops. This is a renoun facility--an active tourist excursion train enterprise, but they also contract with a variety of operations to do restoration work on both cars and locomotives. In their orderly workshops, we got to see several projects in progress.

Across the street is the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum, where we spent about 3 hours perusing the clean and sterile displays of a number of unique pieces of equipment.

I have to say, I enjoy the shops more. The smell of the grease, the noise, it just feels more alive and meaningful.

The kids were bored for most of the day. Sam said she like the smell of "ink and oil- it makes it seem cozy--like the smell of warmness". (I did not prompt her in any way, she apparently came up with that on her own).

Baltimore

The boy inexplicably woke up on Tuesday vomiting, which made our cruddy Red Roof Inn-Baltimore Airport hotel room all that much more appealing. When we went to the B & O Museum, all he wanted to do was sleep, so we let him stay in the car.

Sam was mortified that I was taking so many photos (she's getting to that age where she is clearly embarased by me). We participated in a tour, and took the speed-touring version of the museum.

The best parts were the beautiful roundhouse and turn-table (all interior), and the remains of the Sturbridge Lion, the boiler of the first steam engine imported from England in 1830 (or so), for use by a rail service. Lap seam construction (I know what that means now) and other quirky differences in construction.

They also had several early steam engines showing a vertical boiler configuration. Made it really obvious that all steam engines are just glorified boilers on wheels.

East Broad Top Railroad

Apparently, East Broad Top is analagous to Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, in that it is an operating steam locomotive maintenance shop and roundhouse, over 100 years old, and there just aren't any of these things left anymore. Much like in Jamestown, they have an operating machine shop with central power and a leather belt system.

On the day we visited, it was closed for the season, and there was no one around. I thought this added to its stark appeal, although it would have been nice to see inside.

This railroad is privately owned, and is narrow gauge. Like Railtown, it was a short line. It is in the town of Orbisonia, next to Rock Hill Springs (south of State College, and a very small town).

Sayre Shops

Many family members this weekend shared their steam memories. One of my uncles was generous to make copies of some of the old shop photos he has hanging on the wall in his barbershop. Another uncle shared a memory of seeing a long row of steam engines with "scrap" painted on their sides.

Its sad to see so little remaining of the old facilities, considering that they were responsible for so much of the area's development.

Sayre, Pennsylvania

I was born in Florida (parents in the military) and then lived in Sayre, Pennsylvania (where my father grew up) until I was 7, when my parents divorced and moved with my mother to California (where my mother grew up). We then spent summers in Pennsylvania, and the school year in California for many of my childhood years.

This past year, I got interested in family genealogy and spent some time doing research. It appears that for several generations on my father's side, the family actually lived in Towanda, PA. It wasn't until this trip that I understood why.

Apparently, Sayre didn't exist as a town until the mid 1870s. It appears that my great-grandfather moved from Towanda for a job at the railroad shops. These were some of the largest shop facilities on the east coast, and included 76 acres of facilities, including a large roundhouse, car shops, a blacksmith shop, and more. The town grew around the facilities, and many people moved here from the surrounding areas for jobs, including my great-grandfather. Then, my grandfather and grandfather moved to Sayre to join them.


My great-grandfather lived on S. Lehigh Avenue, directly across the street from the switch yards. My parents bought the house next door, and that is where I lived until I was 7. I remember when friends came over to play, they were always excited when the trains went by, but I was used to it. I also remember playing trains with a long line of cardboard boxes, seems to have been a favorite, but maybe that is with all kids.

Heading East

The kids and Mom (that's me), headed back east to Pennsylvania, for my maternal Grandmother's funeral. Started the trip early last Friday morning, flying out of Modesto on a tiny Brasilia EMB120.

Promises of junk food, cable TV, and a brand-new Gameboy game for each, softened them up for several side trips to Pennsylvania train sites, which mom is interested in, but the kids-- not so much.

Sam is very excited about the prospect of meeting new relatives. The boy is just zoned out on his game.

Back to School

Wow, its been over a month since last post. Dad got a job, he starts tomorrow.

The Boy started back at "regular school" on Monday. Here's what he said about it: "I got there, there was no sign of Dylan anywhere, this year so far, the people I have hung out with are Cameron, Peter, Donovan, Jack and Ronnie, and his friend, who I have not really met before, and I do not know his name".

"New classrooms, new books, new teacher, new desks, new building. (But its the same school, they just rebuilt). I sit right next to my friend Cyrus, and right in front of him is my friend CJ. I think I did really well at social studies, because me and Dad had already done a lot of Middle East studies, and our discussion in Social Studies was about the ancient Israelites."

The Girl bought a "American Girl Julie" game for her nintendo DS. Right now her Dad is doing an algebra problem to help her complete an assignment in the game. Hmmm.

The kids and I head to Pennsylvania at the end of the week for a family funeral. Its been a while since we've visited that side of the family, so we are looking forward to it. We plan to post about it.