see a paddle-wheel turning and hear the mill wheels grinding the grain.
Unfortunately, they only run the wheel a few times a year and we were a week
early. Even so, it was a very informative tour. The picture is of the
gears used to turn the huge mill wheels. All the gears are made from wood,
so I was very keen on seeing them. Each cog is set in a clamp system that
is fascinating by itself. The paddle wheel was actually housed within the
building, and I couldn't get back far enough for a good picture, so we have
to be happy with the memory.
The rain moved into the Philadelphia area about the time we did. Since they
are having a drought the locals were happy to see us and what we brought
(rain). The whole Continental Congress and Ben Franklin thing was lost on
Rose and Chris. The Philly-steak sandwich was lost on me, as for
interesting things this place was it. The best fun was the time before a
movie in the visitor center when Rose and Chris had a friend to make faces
with. They had a great time. After the movie we "met" the friend and he
was probably in his 60's and very fun. He fished around in his huge
overcoat because he knew he had something in there begging to get out.
Finally he found two little piggy banks to give to them. Silly me, I didn't
think of a group picture until he was lost in the crowd. So, we have
another time to be happy with the memory.
Taking a break from all of our history lessons, we took another train ride.
This was a wish Rose has had since the beginning of our "big field trip"--to
go on a steam train. This one traveled about two hours (round-trip) through
the Pennyslvania countryside. Without realizing our good planning, we got
the first run of the day. There were less than a dozen passengers traveling
with us. When we returned to the station it was packed! On a nice day this
train would be a good one for a picnic as they have an area where the train
will stop to allow you to disembark and pick-up on one of the other return
trips. It was a delightful day. We at least have pictures to trigger this
good memory.
Back to more history meant a tour of Washington DC. There is so much to see
there it is almost overwhelming. The natural history museum was our first
stop (we needed a pit stop and that was the closest building). Then it was
the long walk up the mall to the capital. The safety restrictions won't
allow us to carry bags or packages inside, so Jerry opted to sit-out this
time and the rest of us went in. The guides do a lot of talking which isn't
at all interesting when you are five and six, so we did our own tour
(unofficially of course). While we were wandering around in the hall of
statues the minority whip came out of his office and did part of our
mini-tour with us. Uhm....again, another memory as I didn't think to turn
the camera on him. We are still happy.
Our map doesn't have the cat (what we call the fifth-wheel) traveling into
Delaware, so we took a one-day excursion to find the beach. The coast line
here is much different from what we have on the left-side of the country.
Here, there are a lot of spits and rivers, which means there are few ocean
beaches. Although Delaware is the smallest state, when you are driving the
length of it without beach success you quickly tire of the effort. We did
go into a wildlife viewing area...the rule sign informed us that we were to
stay inside our car and not make any noise. We did. No wildlife ever came
into view. Take all of this to mean that it wasn't worth a picture and we
don't need a memory.
Next stop: Virginia.
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