Can You Go to Philadelphia Without Visiting Independence National Historical Park? I Apparently Can't!

In the past twelve months, every single time I have put a toe into Philadelphia, I have found myself, at some point, in Independence National Historical Park.

Most recently, my partner and I spent a couple of days in Philadelphia after dropping our younger kid off at college nearby. We tried to do a few non-national park things, like eating cheesesteaks (of course!) and having drinks at the Library Bar (which I didn't really like, ahem)--

I got the Chocolate River, but it ended up kind of grossing me out because there was a giant ice cube in it, and chocolate shavings ON the ice cube. Hard chocolate plus ice doesn't feel like a palatable combination, shudder. I wish now I'd gotten the Candy Man instead.

--but somehow, inevitably, on our last morning in the city, we found ourselves here:

It's the low season at Independence Hall, I guess, so they were offering first-come, first-served group tours without the $1 pre-registration.

Y'all KNOW how I feel about saving money!

Even with that incentive, the crowds were so low that it was nice to be able to walk around in the gated site and take photos without having to worry about crowds. 

And even though it was soooo cold, it was such a pretty day!

I really like how park rangers get to have their own personalities on the job. I love chatting with them, and I love attending their programs, hearing their own unique perspectives on the content. To be fair, I'm still pissed at the park ranger at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historical Site who told me that homeschoolers are "less curious" than traditionally schooled children (oh, the comebacks I've thought up for her in the intervening years!), but the time that I recently spent roasting Andrew Jackson with a park ranger at Johnstown Flood National Memorial are some of my happiest since sending the kids off to college. 

All that to say that the park ranger who conducted our tour of Independence Hall was A Character.

He led a great tour--showed us all the proper stuff and gave us all the cool information--

--but I felt like he high-key thought we were stupid, and it was hilarious. First of all, he kept calling us "folks," but in that way that your one high school history, teacher, say, who was an older dude and clearly longing for retirement but he needed to stick it out a couple more years to get his full pension, would talk to you. Like, condescending and kind of chastising? You obviously haven't studied enough and you don't remember all the nice history you were taught and what kind of person does that make you?

Honestly, we probably deserved the park ranger's tone of chastisement and condescension, because he kept asking us really hard questions and visibly having to push down his annoyance when nobody knew the answer. I helped out the group by knowing one answer--"Articles of Confederation!"--but yikes, dates are my weak spot. And everyone else's, too, apparently! 

Oh, his best question, though! He was trying to get us to name the event he was describing, and none of us in our group of probably twenty knew what the fuck he was talking about. Visibly irritated, he finally said, "Most of you probably have a picture of this event in your pockets!" I was all, huh... maybe something about George Washington? Or Alexander Hamilton? I was literally about to suggest the ten-dollar founding father without a father when the ranger finally broke and exclaimed, "The Continental Congress! It's right there on the back of every two-dollar bill!"

I lost control of myself at that point and sort of stepped to the back of the group so he wouldn't notice me silently losing my mind with laughter, and found there two other wayward souls who were also snickering. He was just clearly so mad at how stupid we were! But seriously--the two-dollar bill!?! I haven't seen one of those in... I don't even know how long! I used to save them and spray glitter on them for the Tooth Fairy to put under the kids' pillows because they're so special, but I had to stop because I couldn't find anymore. Like, ever. Who on earth still has a two-dollar bill in their pocket, much less so consistently that they remember what's on the back of the bicentennial version? 

OMG it was awesome. I haven't felt like my high school self in a billion years, and I think I really needed that.

Obviously, even though I was literally right there a month ago, I had to go back to see the Liberty Bell afterwards. For, you know, my partner's sake! Surely he wouldn't want to leave without seeing it!

Yeah, you can clearly see that I'm just gritting my teeth and enduring it solely for my partner's sake...

I'll just point out here for the umpteenth time how well-designed this spot is. The Liberty Bell is on display with Independence Hall in the background, and it's just such a cool scene.

Whenever my partner and I visit a city, he will NOT stop talking to the various solicitors and other denizens who approach him, I swear to god. He has literally taken those stupid CDs that people try to hand you in New York City, and those stupid tourist maps and tourist "newspapers," and once upon a time walking back to our hotel late at night in Nashville, a woman came up to us to ask for gas money, my partner STOPPED TO TALK TO HER, and I 100% left his ass and kept on walking. If you're not going to be reasonable you can get mugged on your own, Buddy!

He gave her twenty bucks, and I was absolutely gleeful in pointing her out to him the next night, in the exact same place doing the exact same thing. 

So on this morning, I had lectured him before we left the hotel about not talking to strangers, no matter what they said to you. I hadn't had any issues when I'd come to the city with the younger kid, but when I took the older kid we'd had to steer around a couple of people trying to accost us on the Metro and then another person on the sidewalk, so I was not up for any nonsense on this trip.

As we were walking away from the national park site, though, a person who presented as an international tourist stopped us on the street corner and asked, "Is this where Liberty Hall is?" We were right in between both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell building, so I pointed both out to him and told him where to go if he wanted to see either of them up close, he thanked me and walked off, and the second he was out of earshot my partner was all, "AND WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW?!?"

Dude, I'm allowed to talk to strangers because I can tell the difference between a lost tourist and a career mugger!

And then I cooled his irritation with another cheesesteak, because nobody can be mad while eating cheesesteaks!

So far every time I've visited Independence Hall it's been with a different member of my family, each of whom I insist must be "shown" the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, etc. But now that they've all individually seen it, along with me three entire times, what on earth excuse am I going to make to visit again?

Stay tuned, I guess, because I'll think of something!

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

Back and Forth Through Pennsylvania: Fort Necessity

I tell you what, when your kid attends college in Pennsylvania, it really gives you a chance to knock out those Pennsylvania national park sites!

I've done more USA roadtripping in the past 10 months than I usually do, and Pennsylvania is currently my favorite state to visit national park sites in. One, they're all free, and two, they're (mostly) all open 7 days a week! On this recent trip home from Philadelphia, my partner and I dared to drive home on a Wednesday, and were punished for our audacity by having First State National Historical Park, Hampton National Historical Site, and Monocacy National Battlefield all closed. 

But our good buddy Fort Necessity was open! On a Wednesday, even! 

A place that I had a blast visiting with the kids back when they were little and we were on yet another magical homeschool adventure probably isn't the best place for me to visit directly after dropping them off for their Spring semesters, because for some reason I always feel so much more bereft after this drop-off than I do after the Fall semester drop-off--which is why I *wanted* to visit First State National Historical Park, Hampton National Historical Site, or Monocacy National Battlefield instead, humph. But obviously the only thing worse than visiting a national park site and feeling sad that I miss my kids would be NOT visiting a national park site at all. 

A twelve-hour drive with NO learning?!? And NO passport stamps?!? Heaven forfend!

So bravely (and nostalgically) I marched onward to the fort.

And hallelujah, the fort's bathroom! My partner and I were currently in a fight because that morning he'd randomly called down to have the valet bring the car around while I was literally in the bathroom still getting ready for the day(?!?), and THEN when I met him in the lobby after freaking out to finish getting dressed and packed as fast as I could (I am positive I left something behind in that hotel room...), he told me he was going to go start the car and then come back inside to check out, so I walked ten feet away to the coffee carafes, but apparently while I had my back turned fiddling around with the coffee he indeed came back inside and checked out, but then he went back outside to the car and just sat there at the curb without saying so much as a peep to me, so I stood in the hotel lobby like an asshole for several minutes, sipping coffee and thinking, "Gee, it's taking him a long time to start the car..." 

Just between us, I feel like I have grown discernibly stupider in the past five years. And also, SO HAS HE.

ANYWAY, I would have happily wet my pants that morning before I asked to stop for a bathroom break, so thank goodness for a heated, comfy visitor center bathroom... with limited edition Halloween Bath and Body Works foaming hand soaps?

I love how hard some national park site's museums go. I blew the below photo up extra-large for you so you can admire the realistic expression of anguish on that poor guy's face as he supports his dead comrade: 

Below is one of my all-time favorite history facts:

When I die, bury me like Braddock!

I thought this was a really interesting way to preserve a cultural artifact:

It's a modern recreation of a war belt that could have circulated in the mid-1700s, but the beads that make it up are authentic glass trade beads from the early- to mid-1700s. It's so much more interesting than a modern plastic recreation war belt plus a display pile of these authentic glass beads would have been. It's also powerfully subversive, in that it reminds you that the beads that Europeans traded to the Native peoples were then used by the Native peoples to communicate intentions of war against the Europeans.

The French burned Fort Necessity immediately upon their victory, and afterwards much of the knowledge of the fort passed from living memory, so much so that the below model shows what the Fort Necessity National Battlefield first erected in 1932. That's what they thought Fort Necessity looked like!

This dinky little stack of sticks is what it actually looked like:

I think it's fun to see it in the snow, because the original Fort Necessity wasn't around long enough to experience a single snowfall:

I thought about the kids and missed them a lot on this visit. 2016, when they were 10 and 12, was a particularly great homeschool year for us, and this October road trip that we took to see several sites of the American Revolution was just about perfect. The kids were enthusiastic about everything we did and saw, soaked up every piece of information, skipped rocks across the Delaware at Washington's Crossing and sang "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" at the Minuteman battle site, walked the National Road and recited "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" in front of his statue, earned every Junior Ranger badge we came across and listened to Dear America diaries and The Matchlock Gun in the car between stops. Currently sitting, as I am, with the discomfort of not knowing what I should do next with my life, it's easy to sink into the nostalgia of the good old days and wish I could just do that again.

Also, I accidentally took several similar photos:

2025

2016

2025

2016

2016

2025

Last of all before getting back in the car for another eight hours, you've got to get your passport stamp, because learning is its own reward, but passport stamps are even better:

There's also a Junior Ranger badge program that's only available on-site, and if you've got more time (and the place isn't packed with snow) you should also visit Jumonville Glen, to see another spot where Washington acted like a dumbass.

So... is travelling around to collect national park passport stamps a suitable fulfilling purpose in life? Asking for a friend, so let me know!

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!

I Read Death, Daring, and Disaster, Because People Keep Dying in National Parks and I Want to Know about it

Death, Daring, & Disaster - Search and Rescue in the National Parks by Charles R. "Butch" Farabee Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is probably more of a deep-dive than most readers would want, especially if you were mostly interested in deaths and extreme rescues in a specific park. For the best deep-dive into deaths in specific national parks, I’d recommend the Death in series. Out of all the volumes, I’ve only read Death in Yellowstone, but that one is SO good and I still quote it all the time. I even once made a small detour to visit a couple of bear cubs mentioned in that book--they’re now residents of a very nice zoo, and I’m sure they don’t even remember that time when they were babies and they ate literal humans.

However, if you’re also very interested in specific types of misadventures across the national parks, then this book is perfect as a round-up of all of them (and could really use an Index for that!). For instance, I enjoy reading about misadventures while caving, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me that one of the first recorded misadventures would be in Sequoia National Park, the story of a soldier discovering Lost Soldiers Cave in 1909 or 1910 and then promptly disappearing into it. The cave itself was apparently then lost for nearly 40 years before being rediscovered. I think this is the cave that is now referred to just as Soldiers Cave on the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park site, and that site also doesn’t say anything about this origin story… or if the remains of that original lost soldier were ever discovered!

It was also easy to get drawn into dramatic stories I’ve never before heard about, like the time in 1941 that part of a squadron of P-40 Warhawks crashed in Kings Canyon National Park. Four pilots died and four bailed out over the High Sierras--and then two bombers also crashed while searching for survivors! The wrecked plane of one of the survivors was eventually found, and there are anecdotes online about casual hikers perhaps finding other pieces of wreckage, but some planes are still officially missing. THIS is the kind of stuff that I find so interesting--imagine not even just actual humans, but actual AIRPLANES, we know exactly when they crashed, we know approximately where they crashed, and we still can’t find them! Blows my mind.

Okay, this story made me cry: in 1959, a park ranger in Glacier National Park got word that a grizzly bear was literally currently in the act of eating a hiker. So he ran over there, found that indeed, a 250-pound grizzly bear was eating a guy, tried to scare the bear away, couldn’t, and so instead he risked his own life to shoot the bear, even though this was super risky because what if the bear turned on him instead, or what if he shot the hiker? He did shoot the bear without shooting the hiker, though, rendered first aid, directed the rescue operation, and the hiker lived. I was curious about this story, so after reading it I Googled to see if there was more info, and y’all, here is where I started crying: fifty years after this event, Ranger Dayton and the bear attack survivor had a reunion! This post tells even more about that day and what followed. 

Okay, but then after all that I had to double-check that afterwards, Ranger Dayton had continued on in peace and happiness with no further crazy events. HOWEVER, he was actually the superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns during that time in the 1970s when terrorists tried to take it over, so yeah, he’s had himself more than his fair share of adventures.             

Here’s a photo of Ranger Dayton. I’m a big fan.

There are also some really awful stories, like the dentist who got caught in a blizzard on Mount Rainier with his two children and died saving their lives by blocking the entrance to the snow shelter they’d dug. Three mountain climbers, including a nine-year-old, died after falling into a snow cavern in Grand Teton National Park, causing an avalanche that buried them up to their necks in snow, and then drowning when that avalanche dammed the stream that was running through the cavern. Another mountaineer actually jumped into the cavern right after them but couldn’t save them because they were buried so deeply, and reading his report of how he kept trying to pull the nine-year-old out of the snow by his helmet and his little jacket while having to witness him drown was so awful. There are some photos here. 

One more interesting through-line is how every now and then the families of someone who has died because of their own carelessness in a national park have sued the national park service… and won?!? In 1993, two of the chaperones of a Mormon Church Explorer Scout group died when they led their kids through an extremely risky route that nobody had the training to do. Their families sued and got 1.49 million dollars. I was also an Explorer Scout that year, and Sergeant Martin would NEVER have put us in danger like that.

A lot of the stories are actually reprints of news articles of the time, which made the book a little more challenging to read, as the tone and style often changed, but I really liked seeing how each event was reported within its own particular cultural context. There were several block quotes that were harder to figure out the provenance of, which would be more problematic for citation, but didn’t bother me as a casual reader. To add to the confusion, sometimes the included photos related to the specific event being described, sometimes they depicted a similar event, and sometimes they didn’t seem to be chronologically or thematically relevant at all. I loved the photos, but I definitely wanted a clear, concrete association between each photo and the event it recorded. 

Honestly, what I think this book wanted to be was an encyclopedia. It has all the great stories, but it’s not the most pleasant experience to read cover-to-cover. But if it had a keyword index and more graphics and citations, it would be a stellar reference for one of my favorite Special Interests.

P.S. View all my reviews

P.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!

Exploring the Coast with My Sailor

Because when you visit your sailor at the edge of the ocean, of course you have to do ocean things!

Seeing one of my kids after missing them for a month is the best feeling ever, but weirdly, they get creeped out if I just want to sit and stare at them and pet their hair all day. So we had to plan some activities to see if we could space out my creepy mom moments to a sustainable level.

At this point, I just need to go on a tangent about the DIY Iced Coffee Bar at Cape Cod Bagels. We discovered it back in August and managed to visit it every day we were there, and on this trip I also visited it every day! It's essentially just a bank of chilled coffees in different flavors, with a separate area where you can add your cream and sugar. It is the most genius concept I have ever encountered, and I had a marvelous time mixing up different coffee flavors for myself, then perfectly sweetening everything to my exact likeness. 

I miss you, Cape Cod Bagels!

And why yes, I DID bring my kid's national parks passport book on this trip with me, just so she and I could do my favorite things for us to do together--collect passport stamps and visit museums! Because obviously you cannot collect your New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park passport stamp without also visiting the New Bedford Whaling Museum!

Please look at a picture of this animal that definitely really exists:

What, you've never seen a hyena whale before? Guess you're not as much of a sailor as you thought you were!

How about a bearded whale? Look at its little paws!

These are from Historiae Animalium by Conrad Gesner, who's definitely seen a real, live narwhal for his very own self:

I don't remember if this definitely real siren is from the same book, but it's certainly got the same look about it!

Y'all know how excited I get whenever I see a Marshall Islands stick map! It's the first map that ever blew my mind, and now I'm sort of low-key obsessed with the different ways that humans visualize their local geography:

Here's another interesting conflation of two of my Special Interests:

I present to you a map of the United States, embroidered by a young Miss Silvia Grinnell. Her father was a ship captain, and she was named after her mother. The map looks like it was pre-printed with the lines to embroider, although it's also very possible that Silvia drew those lines herself as part of the project. I love how the larger borders are pipe cleaners that she stitched to the fabric:

It wasn't uncommon for children of all sexes to be given this type of academic handwork--I mean, think of the beloved salt dough map of today!--but it IS uncommon for it to have survived, especially in such good condition. Alas that I no longer have any of my children's carefully crafted salt dough maps... much less their cookie cake maps, ahem. 

New Bedford is in a miniscule nook completely covered by two pipe cleaner pieces. I wonder if the conservators peeped between those pieces to see if she'd sneaked a special embroidered marker there for her hometown?

Here's my own hometown, below. I think it's interesting that she embroidered the names of the indigenous nations there, as she knew them:

My love for Moana is a running family joke, as is the fact that whenever we buy a month of Disney+ so we can watch the latest Star Wars or Marvel or Percy Jackson series, I also basically end up watching Moana every single day of that month. And sometimes in conversations or via text, I will randomly exhort my child or partner to "consider the coconut. Consider its tree," then continue to extol how we can "make our nets from the fibers," and "use the leaves to build fires," etc. I promise that I'm very fun to be around!

Anyway, does the below informational signage not sound EXACTLY like that song? I cackled when I saw it, lol:

There actually wasn't a ton about whaling itself at the museum, which I appreciated because whaling is pretty disturbing. Instead, it was information about whales--

--the culture of the appreciation, observation, and study of whales--

--and the culture of the whalers and those who worked on the whaling ships.

Included in this, I was delighted to see museum evidence of one of my Special Interests, historical boyfriends! It's still an open question among scholars how subversive queer expression would have even been on whaling ships during this time and place--perhaps not very!--but some of the very few first-person narratives known today include some intriguing ambiguity.

Just a few days after this, she'd be setting sail on her own tall ship not completely unlike this one!

After seeing the rest of the sites--and getting our passport stamps, of course!--I'd had a couple of other spots in mind to visit--

--but considering that I'd also spent the entire day bragging about how I'd been to the Cape Cod National Seashore twice in a matter of weeks and had seen copious sea lions both times, the kid decided that what she'd really like to do with our evening is go see some sea lions.

So we did!

You can tell I'm with one of my kids when I start taking photos of rocks and shells and weird stuff on the ground. If you're not obsessed with examining things that would be just perfect for your nature table, were you even a homeschooler?

This kid is definitely the beachiest one in the family after me, and she'd probably be even beachier than me if she wasn't so fair-skinned. So it was nice to hang out with someone who accidentally ended up getting just as wet as I accidentally ended up getting!

And this time I didn't have to dread driving back down the peninsula in the dark, because I had a confident and capable fellow adult to do it for me!

Afterwards, we picked up more pizza from the place next door to my hotel, and had settled in for our own little Family Movie Night, when the kid got a text from one of her fellow sea friends that it was going to be a good night for seeing bioluminescence. By this time, she'd seen the phenomenon several times herself, but I had never, so we hopped back in the car and went on another adventure!

The trouble with the bougie little town where the kid's program is located is that it's a bougie little town. Most of the waterfront is private, with little non-resident access or parking. She and her classmates mostly walked or biked to the beaches, and they all have stories to tell about security guards trying to kick them off of beaches they even had the owner's permission to be at. But the kid knew a couple of places where we could more or less park legally for a bit, assuming we could get in and out before the cops arrived. She directed me to one such place, where I parked, we got out of the car, and a male voice from the darkness immediately called out, "Can I help you?"

I cheerfully replied, "Nope!", and then we cheerfully (but quickly, ahem) ignored Random Man/Cat Burglar/Security Guard/Mob Boss/Serial Killer while we poked around the dark harborside, picking up little sticks and rocks and tossing them into the water to annoy the  phytoplankton to make them bioluminesce at us. It was VERY cool, but as soon as I'd watched it for about five seconds I whispered, "Let's go," the kid replied, "Yep," and we were off. 

We'll see each other again in Auckland!

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!