West Towards Home with Roger Williams, Baron von Steuben, and Shake Shack

How cute is this parking lot bunny? One the one hand, I felt like I should scare it so that it didn't think that it was okay to just sit there in a parking lot, but on the other hand... look at its sweet little ears!!!!!!!

Also, here's the iced coffee bar I've been telling you about! I really wanted to take a better picture, but I also felt like an asshole whipping out my phone and taking a picture in the crowded bagel shop, so this sneaky pic will have to do. You can't see the lovely creamers and add-ins, but you CAN see all the nice varieties of coffees, yum...

And here's what it looks like when you've made your own delicious iced coffee just the way you like it and you've bought yourself a couple of bagels and you're ready to drive from Falmouth to Philadelphia!

I wasn't in a hurry on this day, so I thought that I would 1) avoid the toll roads, 2) avoid New York City entirely, and 3) see how many national park sites I could fit in. I'd really wanted to visit the Thomas Edison National Historical Site, but I hadn't realized how quickly the house tour tickets would sell out, and I didn't want to see it without the house tour, dang it.

Oh, well--there's always the Roger Williams National Memorial, with free parking and free admission!

Despite being super small, this national memorial site has officially radicalized me on the topic of Roger Williams. Why is he not WAY more famous?!? He was awesome!

For the rest of the day, whenever I had to stop for gas or at another national park site, I proceeded to blow up the family group chat with yet more Roger Williams factoids. 

Did you know that although he immigrated as a Puritan, he wasn't a religious extremist like most of the other Puritans? He believed in the separation of religious and civic matters, and that religious wrongs shouldn't be punished by civic action.

He named one of his children Freeborn!

He lived in Plymouth Colony for a while and even preached there, but he got pissed at them because they'd settled on Native American land without permission and also refused to pay the Native Americans any recompense for taking their land, so he left. 

He wouldn't shut up about civil rights and fair treatment of Native Americans, though, so eventually the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony exiled him, and he escaped the sheriff by fleeing on foot during a blizzard! The Wampanoags hid him in their own settlements until Spring.

Later that year, he acquired property by properly negotiating with and compensating the native peoples who it belonged to, and he founded Providence Plantations as the first European settlement on the continent in which church and state were strictly separated, and government was by majority rule. 

It was said by all that he and the native peoples of the surrounding lands respected each other and negotiated together when they wanted different things, and he also learned a bunch of their languages. 

Eventually he managed to unify all the nearby European colonies, and then the whole area became a sanctuary state for people persecuted by the Puritans. And that's how Rhode Island has the country's oldest synagogue!

I'm sorry to say that he was a little iffy about slavery, particularly when they were Native Americans captured during wars with other peoples, but he did try really hard to legislate against importing African slaves, and against slavery for life and passing down the status of slave to one's children... he was outvoted, though.

So imagine how fun it would be to be in my family group chat and get frantic texts of Roger Williams factoids All. Damn. Day. 

Oh, and Roger Williams memes!

Anyway, the park itself was actually pretty small, although it does contain a spring that used to mark the center of Providence Plantations... and this guy's grave, I guess:

So on we go to Weir Farm National Historic Site, a place that I fully admit that I knew nothing about other than that it was roughly on my route and had a passport stamp I could collect. 

I've come to realize that it's never any use to go to a place just for a passport stamp and a quick poke around, because I will then ALWAYS be like, "Ugh, I've got to come back for a proper visit!" 

Weir Farm didn't really feel like a place you could buzz through and see all the sites and move on with your life, although they do have house and studio tours, etc. Instead, it felt like a place that you needed to bring a picnic and some art supplies and a nice, long book to in order to really appreciate it:

In this instance, the visitor center and museum was the least of the experience!

I especially want to come back with my especially artsy younger kid and watch her be inspired. I don't know how you could walk around the grounds and NOT decide to set up your canvas and acrylics and start your en plein air masterpiece right away.

And while she paints, I will lounge nearby on a quilt in the grass, nibble on brie and sourdough French bread, and read a very long and very fascinating novel.

I don't know if it was specifically because I told Google Maps to keep me off the toll roads or because I told it keep me well away from New York City, but the rest of my journey after I pulled out of the Weir Farm parking lot was BONKERS. I'm not sure if I drove on a single highway? I am VERY sure that I drove on many, many, many residential streets! It was a bleak afternoon, chilly and rainy, and I spent it on the kind of slick, windy, hilly, rural roads that would have had me as carsick as a dog if I hadn't been in the driver's seat.

OMG it was charming, though. So freaking beautiful. I kept driving down into these absolutely magical valleys with little towns in them, and every single little town was smack in the middle of some kind of little fall festival, with hay bales and pumpkins and scarecrow decorations and people walking around in flannels or puffer vests. At one point, driving into the most magical valley yet, I noticed an especially large amount of flannel- and puffer vest-clad people congregating at the median, and as I drove past I saw that everyone was visiting a giant statue of the Headless Horseman chasing Ichabod Crane!

The worst part of a solo road trip is that when you're hours behind schedule and the road and the weather are poor and you're worried about driving windy, hilly roads after dark, you have to be your own bad guy and not let yourself take an hours-long detour to find a pay parking lot in a crowded autumn tourist town and fight the crowds to pay your respects to all the finest literary spots that Sleepy Hollow has to offer. 

I'll visit properly when I come back to picnic at Weir Farm and take my tour of Thomas Edison's house!

As it was, I didn't find my hotel outside of Philadelphia until well into the night, and I fell asleep pretty much immediately after barricading the door to my room and wolfing down a peanut butter sandwich and some kettle chips.

Even though the kid's college was just a few minutes away, she was busy the next day learning until lunchtime, so I went back on my own to Valley Forge, because even though I'd been there twice already within the last few weeks, I had not yet paid homage to my own favorite hero of the American Revolution:

Baron von Steuben was a wonder, you guys. He was more or less openly gay, which they were not at all cool with back in Europe, but in the military and political world of brand-new America, everyone was seemingly cool with it, alluding to his relationships calmly and cheerfully in letters and such. I imagine this is entirely because he was an absolute beast of a war machine, and simultaneously a teacher so skilled that he could teach advanced drills and maneuvers without a shared language between him and his students. 

Although the scholarship is clear, some scholars still currently speculate about von Steuben's sexuality, but I think that's only because in our contemporary society, we still don't have a clear understanding of how the queer experience was expressed and acknowledged and understood by historical societies. There was clearly some capacity for non-heterosexual expression--remember that exhibit in the New Bedford Whaling Museum:

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But he certainly had male partners in life, and that was pretty well acknowledged and accepted by his social and career circles, as it should have been. And I just think it's low of places like Valley Forge to use some scholars' dithering as their excuse to completely erase a part of von Steuben's complete life, a part that was clearly very important to him, just to avoid having to deal with some visitors being pissed about it. Von Steuben was a hero and we would have lost the Revolutionary War without him, and if you're going to pitch a fit about him being queer then you're not as patriotic as you think you are.

Anyway, this is my mental note to bring him a Pride flag when I'm back at Valley Forge again later this year.

I love that his statue overlooks the place where he turned a bunch of guys into a functional army:

It's been naturalized back into an authentic prairie, but you can walk around and visualize what it might have looked like 248 years ago:

Tangent, but my younger kid will graduate in the year of the 250th anniversary of the Valley Forge overwintering. I wonder if the site will do any cool anniversary stuff that I'll get to come back and see?

Time will tell, but for now, it's time to go meet my kid for lunch!

My older kid thinks she's too grown now to have me look over her rough drafts, but I've gotta tell you that nothing makes me happier than when someone hands me a hard copy of their essay and asks me to give them some constructive criticism.

As you can see, I'm always happy to comply!

I don't know if it's a natural knack, the fact that they're both avid readers and have always been, or my painstaking, astute, and thorough instruction, but both of my kids are excellent writers. One prefers, and seems naturally better at, non-fiction, and the other prefers, and seems naturally better at, fiction, but I tell you what, there is nothing so able to give you a boost in life (other than money and influence, sigh) as the ability to clearly and effectively communicate, and I am thankful beyond my ability to write it that both of my kids have that ability.

This particular excellent writer and I only had time for a flying visit, as the responsibilities of a college freshman are many and varied, but after her last afternoon class we were able to spend a few hours together just catching up and gossiping. I bought her some sorely needed clothes (somehow both of my kids are underpackers), we poked around a bookstore and a record store, and then she kindly took the lead when I got overstimulated in the Shake Shack:

I don't think I can do Shake Shack. My food had too many sauces, and my mushroom patty fell apart, and I used a shocking number of napkins. 

The next morning's self-assembled hotel breakfast was MUCH better:

Even though it was too short, this was the best visit, because I got to see that my daughters? Friends, I am thrilled to report to you that they thrive. There are ups and downs, of course, stressful encounters and new situations, a Greek class and an ocean weather class that are each harder than they seem, but all in all this seems like it's turning out to be a special, perfect semester in which each kid is in exactly the best place for her to be, doing fulfilling activities and having meaningful experiences, building relationships, having adventures, and otherwise just enjoying their lives. 

It's kind of funny, because ever since I've come home from that trip I feel almost like the opposite for myself, and I'm pretty sure I'm starting my long-anticipated mid-life crisis. And I wonder if my mind was just waiting to make sure that my daughters didn't need me for any of their crises before I could start my own?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

P.P.S. I just learned that there's a graphic novel biography of Baron von Steuben entitled Washington's Gay General! I just requested it from my public library!

Valley Forge to Hopewell Furnace

I used to drag my kids out to every national park site that had a Junior Ranger program, and now I drag myself out to every national park site that has a passport stamp for my book!

Okay, but iron making is randomly really interesting, though?

I honestly did just want to hit up the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site only so I could collect its passport stamp, but also, one cannot simply collect one's passport stamp and leave--instead, one must do and see ALL THE THINGS. 

So we watched the intro film, looked at all the museum exhibits--

--and then walked the grounds and learned about iron making!

Hopewell Furnace is centrally located for all of your iron distribution needs.

Okay, so first you've got to make your own charcoal to fuel the forge, and just like in Stardew Valley, you make it by burning wood:

Then you cart it over to the storeroom--

--which is another short distance away from the top of the furnace where you dump it in:

It's super clever that the forge was built on a hillside, so that you could feed the fire at the top of the hill and collect the molten iron from the hearth at the bottom of the hill:

A giant water wheel powers pistons that force air into the furnace:

Obviously, I would have come to see this place solely for the water wheel!

Because of its rural location and the 12-hour shift length, the furnace site was essentially a company town, although the park information painted it as pretty idyllic, with competitive prices in the company store and a desegregated school. 

My partner poked around all the tenant buildings, but I only wanted to poke around the garden:

There wasn't a ranger around to ask if the residents had a particular need for dye and fiber plants, or if this was just a fun themed garden:

What do we think these orange flowers are? I want some!

This site was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be! I'm still surprised that they managed to walk me through iron making in a way that I could understand, and I can't believe that all their marketing materials don't just have photos of that giant water wheel.

AND their passport sticker sets were nearly a buck cheaper than the ones at Valley Forge just 25 miles away, grr. Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site is in the 1987 set!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Falmouth to Philadelphia to Valley Forge

Oh, my gosh, you guys. This was the day that I had been actively looking forward to and dreading for years, the day that I settled my second and final kid into college and headed back home without her.

It was a long, tiring day, made purposefully so with an afternoon of presentations and receptions and family activities on top of the morning's work of actually moving kids in and all that entailed--it was kind of like the first day of sleepaway camp, when you want everyone too exhausted to feel homesick.

This was actually my partner's first time seeing the kid's college campus in person, so we also found time in between the emergency Target run and the presentation about the campus career center to walk him around a bit so he could see for himself how pretty it is:

These days, the kid often complains that "there are no interesting clouds" there, and it's true that, although the place is beautiful, in these photos there are no interesting clouds!

At the afternoon family reception, just before the parents were summarily kicked off campus, the president asked all the kids to say a loud "thank you" to everyone who had helped them get to that moment in their lives. I wasn't standing near my kid at that moment, as she was standing with her new roommates(!!!), but I saw her in profile, laughingly saying the words with all the other freshmen, and you guys. She's too young to really appreciate it, but at that moment I could feel all those people, the NICU nurse who helped me hold her for the first time, her great-grandfather who took her fishing, her favorite ballet instructor, the math teacher who taught her multiplication tricks and the best properties to land on in Monopoly, the college students who ran the drama day camp and cast her as a Star-Bellied Sneetch in a brown paper bag costume, the mom friends and parents of her kid friends who treat her like one of their own children, the summer camp counselor who told the kids they were pirates and had them do a night-time raid on the camp director's cabin, the instructor of her community college baking class who she said was mean but nevertheless taught her how to laminate dough, the boss of her very first part-time job... she is the legacy of everyone who has ever dealt with her caringly, or taught her an academic or life lesson, or healed her body, or loved her for exactly who she is.

Why on earth the college president would do this to me after everyone else at that college had worked so hard to keep me calm all day I do not know.

Meanwhile, my man was sitting over there in the shade just vibing. Nobody's moving that guy to tears--he's not even looking in the speaker's direction! Nor at his child! THAT direction is where the refreshments will soon be served!

When just the two of us finally got back in the car and drove off campus, my man, who is happy to vibe anywhere, asked where I wanted to go now, and I was all, "Sob and wail, can we go to Valley Forge?"

Reader, we could!

We'd have to wait until the next morning to go back for the visitor's center, because obviously I'm not leaving another passport stamp behind, but that evening were able to drive what I'd later learn was the outer line of defensive entrenchments:

There were places to step out and explore mock-ups of the cabins that the soldiers built for themselves--

--and, of course, a place to park and walk down the hill to wander around the farmhouse that once served as Washington's headquarters:

I'm trying to take a selfie in front of the room where I think Alexander Hamilton stayed, but there is definitely a ghost in that second-story window...

The next morning at the visitor center, I tried not to be jealous of the family with two bored little kids running around holding their Junior Ranger badge books, even though once upon a time eight years ago I got to be the one at the visitor center with two bored little kids running around holding their Junior Ranger badge books, and there was probably some empty nester there at the same time who was jealous of *me*. 

I remembered from last time that this is supposed to be an extremely accurate model of George Washington:

I did not buy this book about search and rescue in national parks (I asked my public library to buy it instead), but I did buy a set of national park stickers for my passport book--Valley Forge is 1991!

The morning at Valley Forge, since it was so close, let me put off the moment where I felt like I really and truly left the kids and started home, but eventually the time came when I was going to have to either buy a tram ticket to tour the park again or get in the car, and the tram looked hot and crowded, so off we went...

...for a total of about 25 miles, because I found another national park site I figured we might as well stop at. You know, since we were in the area!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!