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!

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We Took the Dog to Pullman National Historical Site

I didn't actually know that this national park site existed? 

I don't know how I missed it, considering that once upon a time I literally put it on my very own map of national park sites that host Junior Ranger badges, AND it's right there in my national parks passport book as one of only two national park sites in Illinois, but still. That just meant that it was a fun surprise to notice it as I was planning our itinerary from Indiana Dunes to Chicago.

And once I've noticed it, of course we're going to go!

Alas that Luna couldn't actually go inside the Pullman National Historical Site's Visitor's Center, so thank goodness for nearby coffee shops with outdoor seating. My partner and one of the kids went off with Luna for lattes, while the other kid and I took our passport books inside for some learning!

This is probably one of the most educational national park sites that I've been to, as before we walked in I knew pretty much nothing about Pullman other than their train cars existed, and now?

I have OPINIONS.

So, the Pullman cars were cute and fancy, which is the one thing that I already knew:

But the Pullman GUY?!?

Just, whoah. 

So, okay. Pullman did his thing and got lots of money. And then he was all, "Hey, it sucks how when I pay these people money I no longer have that money. And it also sucks that for some reason I'm not in charge of every aspect of their daily lives, from what their houses look like to what they watch at the movie theatre. If only there was a way to fix both of those problems simultaneously..."

To solve all his problems of not having all the money and not being a megalomaniac, Pullman built himself a company town/utopia and got a bunch of his workers to live there. For the low, low price of rent that was vastly more expensive than rent in the surrounding neighborhoods, the Pullman townspeople got to have their living spaces legislated to fit Pullman's ideals. Rather than a utopian town, he basically invented the world's first HOA with him as its benign dictator?

Which sucked enough, but then when economic hardship hit and there weren't enough train riders to keep up Pullman's preferred level of profit, he instead made up the difference by reducing his employees' wages but NOT their overpriced rent. Things then proceeded as you might well have expected:

Who knows what might have happened if there hadn't been so much internal racism within the movement, and if Grover Cleveland hadn't trumped up a reason to force the strike to end and punish the leaders, but here were the good news/bad news results:

Look for the union label, Friends!

It also appears that I'm not the only person who came away from this history with the determination that I wouldn't spit on Pullman if he were on fire:

Concrete and steel rails and lead coffins, indeed!

But then there's also the thing where he hired formerly enslaved people as porters and waiters and valets, and that was actually really great because it paid decent wages (if you weren't also paying rent in his company town...), it utilized skillsets that translated pretty well from what many of the employees had been required to do while enslaved, so it lessened the learning curve while helping them transition into a better economic position, and most importantly in my eyes, it let the employees travel, giving them access to more cultural diversity and geographic options. 

So I dunno. It's complicated.

The kid and I did all the cool stuff in the museum-- 

That's a Polish-English dictionary on the left, and an employee's logbook on the right. It was interesting to see in several exhibits how the employees negotiated cultural and language differences. 

Then we went outside to check out the historical buildings, many of which are still in the process of being restored:

Along the way, we spotted some celebrities!

As everything did on this trip, our walkabout quickly turned into a Luna photoshoot:

She's just too photogenic not to!

It was a little weird that the Pullman National Historical Site doesn't own any actual, you know, Pullman cars, but it was cool how they had the old train tracks marked off and some of them turned into green spaces:

As far as the gift shop, I dragged myself away for the low, low price of just two passport stamp sets (the 2022 set features Pullman!) and a postcard with a Eugene V. Debs quote on it for the younger kid to put up in her dorm room. You're never safe from the insidious spread of socialism!

Now, onto our next destination!

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I'm Too Old for Junior Rangers, So Now I Collect Passport Stamps

Disclaimer: you're actually never too old for Junior Rangers; I'm pretty sure every national park will let you complete the workbook, take the oath, and pin the badge onto your T-shirt at any age!

HOWEVER, for my teenager's nineteenth birthday, I wanted to give her something that might recreate, for her, that enthusiasm that she always seemed to feel as a child for earning Junior Ranger badges. She has a huge collection of them, and I think took a lot of pleasure in earning new ones. Exploring new national park sites was something we've always loved doing together, and we have taken MANY a detour or special trip just to hit a new park so she could earn a new Junior Ranger badge.

So what might incorporate the same kind of fun?

The National Park Passport Book, I hope!

And, because sending this kid away to college has made me realize how precious (and how ever more preciously few) are the activities that she and I love to do together... I bought myself the National Park Passport Book, too. Now we can collect passport stamps for every single national park site TOGETHER!!!

First up: a day trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, sneaked in just a couple of weeks before she went back to college for the semester.

It's been several years since our last trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I was able to tell my partner and the teenager all the same Lincoln gossip that I'd told them the last time, and they were able to pretend like I haven't also been telling this same gossip continually even when we're not visiting the memorial.

Fun fact: this area used to be a major breeding ground for the passenger pigeon. Sigh...

My favorite thing here, though, is always the living history farm!

The teenager was HORRIFIED to see me pull a couple of weeds in this garden. But hello, I would love it if some stranger would wander by *my* garden and pull a few weeds!

Here's the well where the family drew their water, now at the very edge of the national park site and bordering a residential street:

It was SO muggy when we hiked this trail that all we talked about was how on earth people managed without air conditioning back then. Did you know that until his dying day, William Faulkner refused to have air conditioning in his Mississippi home? Putting a window air conditioning unit in their bedroom was just about the first thing his widow did after his funeral...

Because I bought us the bougiest passport books, they also have spaces for national park stickers, which is apparently also a thing. Every year they publish a new set of ten stickers, each featuring a different national park site from a different region. Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial had several sticker sets in their gift shop, including the 2009 set that includes a sticker for the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I bought us both that one and then spent part of the car ride home busily sticking my new stickers in their correct spots.

I dunno if I'm sold on the stickers, though... They'd be objectively awesome if the images were good, but they weren't always. If I had to guess, I'd say that every national park site has to submit its own photo, and the small sites with limited staff maybe don't always have someone on staff to take a beautiful photo? 

Stay tuned to see if I end up buying more of the stickers, and DEFINITELY stay tuned for the teenager's next big college break, when she and I are going to knock some passport stamps off our to-do list!

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!