Plenty of Prehistoric and Presidential Points of Interest since Pennsylvania - 7th Update from Chrisandra‘s Best of Both Worlds Roadtrip

Aloha all,

I feel a little guilty about all the fun things we‘ve done this week, while our sweet hometown Lahaina is dealing with a huge brush fire and a hurricane at the same time. Several friends had to evacuate and Sandra and I have both been busy all day assisting guests who could not make it in our out of West Maui. But there is nothing else I can do right now, so I might as well keep up with our adventures on our blog. 

After all, we‘ve been to the sweetest place on earth, learnt about several new–to–us presidents, stumbled over a new–to–us National Park, saw the site of the oldest proof of human habitation in America and met a cousin we did not know we had!

If you read the last update, you know how much we enjoyed the various estates from the Du Ponts in Delaware. One prettier than the other, but all slightly tainted by the fact that they were mostly built on the fortunes from making gun powder, thus profiting from other people killing each other. Our next stop was not tainted that way. Au contraire: Hershey is not only a most pleasant town, it is also completely built on profits from making chocolate…how sweet is that!

The town that chocolate built

Maybe somebody who actually lives in Hershey will burst my bubble some day. There might be a dark side to this town (other than dark chocolate), but our impression of this place was very much in line with their motto: ‘The sweetest place on earth’. It reminded us of Telluride or the movie ‘Pleasantville’: Just a little too good to be true. 

We first stopped at Chocolate World, which is like a Mini Chocolate Disney World, except that it’s free, including the Disney style ride that explains the process of making chocolate. Then we took a historical trolley tour through town, with a fun and informative guide passing out free chocolate throughout the tour. On that tour we learnt that the whole town is built on the chocolate fortune from the very generous Mr. Hershey, including the children’s hospital and the free school for orphans which has grown to accommodate over 2000 underprivileged kids at no cost to them. Ann should be proud, she and other chocoholics really support a good cause here in Hershey. 

After the chocolate capital of the world we went to the state capital of Pennsylvania. As you know, that’s one of our things to do, so of course we took a tour of the state capitol in Harrisburg. And you might also guess that, of course, we loved it. Running the risk of sounding like a broken record: This might have been the most impressive state capitol building we have ever seen! But you are not going to guess how much we liked our tour guide, or will you?

Yet another prettiest state capitol of them all!

Well, our tour guide was mediocre at best. Not terrible, but we found it ironic that the most impressive state capitol had the least enthusiastic guide. We did not realize how uninspired she was until we left the building. There were all these TV crews around the capitol. She had mentioned that we could not see the Supreme Court room because it was being used. She failed to mention why. As we found out from one of the reporters outside and from a CNN news alert on my phone, they had just announced the findings of the grand jury that investigated the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the very building we were in. And our tour guide either did not know or was unable to include it in the  tour, which sounded like she had given word by word a few hundred times already. 

As if sexual abuse by priests is not depressing enough, we also visited the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg und the battlefields in Gettysburg. We had been to Gettysburg before, but we had missed two very interesting sites. We did not even know about the Cyclorama, which was under renovation when we were here last. Not really sure what to expect, we bought tickets, watched a movie and then went to the Cyclorama. I was already pretty impressed by this modern looking multimedia presentation. It brings to life and explains the battles on a 360 degree painting with impressive light and sound effects. And I was totally blown away when I learnt at the end that the main attraction, the painting itself, was created 135 years ago in 1883!

Obviously, the first president anybody would associate with Gettysburg is Lincoln. What I had not heard before is that the Gettysburg Address he gave here, wasn’t an instant hit with everybody. History might rank it as one of the best speeches ever given, some contemporary reviews were less flattering, speaking of “silly, dishwatery remarks” that shall not be repeated or thought of ever again. 

But we actually went back to Gettysburg because of another president. As we found out, Dwight Eisenhower had his home pretty much right in the middle of the historic battlefield. We took a tour of his farm and home, where he retired after he was done defeating the Nazis and being president. By the way: Planning D-Day was not his only talent. Turns out, he’s also a pretty good painter. We like Ike and we liked Ike’s paintings, too:

We also went back to Ike’s farm for a sunset ranger program. It was about September 1958, when Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to America during the Cold War. It’s a fun story and includes the Soviet leader publicly throwing a temper tantrum because he did not get to visit Disneyland. We loved hearing the story told by a national park ranger around sunset at the Eisenhower farm, but it should be pretty entertaining even if you just read up on it online.

Ranger talk at the Home of President Eisenhower

We want to thank all of you who ever ate any ketchup. Because part of that profit went indirectly to the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. And what a deal that was. For one low price we got admission to three interesting sites. The museum itself had a diverse collection of Pittsburgh history from Westinghouse and other innovators to the story of the Heinz Company, steel and glass manufacturing all the way to the set of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Included with the History Center is also the Fort Pitt Museum. The museum gave us a little better understanding of the French and Indian Wars, which I was not aware, were a global affair and are by some historians described as the first world wide war. The location at the tip of the golden triangle in downtown Pittsburgh reminded me a lot of the “Deutsches Eck” in Koblenz. I wonder whether any of you been to both places and feel the same way?

Golden Triangel in Pittsburgh

The third part of the History Center is actually outside of town at the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. There is a small living history village and an Indian village where you can try your luck at hunting an Elk with a spear. 

No elk were hurt in the making of this photo...

They also had a historical baseball game played by 1890 rules going on. But the main attraction is the rockshelter archeological site. When this site was excavated in the 70’s, it literally rewrote the history of human habitation in North America. Up until then it was believed that the first humans came here about 10,000 years ago. This site has evidence of human habitation from 16,000 years ago, which still makes it the oldest known site in North America today. Not bad for just an extra freebie to museum admission.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter, the oldest evidence of human existence in North America!

Ohio has a bunch of presidents, but don’t worry, I realize not everybody finds presidential history as fascinating as we do, so I will not bore you with all the details. But I have to briefly mention them. We saw the memorial and gravesite for James Buchanan, who gets most of the blame of not avoiding the civil war, but neither did any other president and he seemed to have been a decent person, just caught in an impossible position. Then we visited the home of James Garfield and the memorial and museum for William McKinley presidents 20 and 25. Both of them fought in the civil war and survived, but for both of them the presidency proved to be far more dangerous. Both of them were assassinated while in office. 

If you know nothing about President Garfield besides that he loved lasagna, don’t feel bad. Neither did we. But he did have a lasting effect on future presidential elections. Until then, candidates did not campaign for themselves. Apparently Garfield was such a good orator, that he decided to break with that tradition. Since rallies around the country would have been frowned upon, he started the short lived tradition of ‘front porch campaigns’. Trainloads of people from all across the country came to his home to hear him speak. Can you imagine if we still had the old tradition? Can you imagine the Clinton/Trump election without ever hearing from either of them? Not sure Garfield considered all the consequences...

President Garfield's home, or the birthplace of presidential campaigning 

The fact that surprised me the most to learn at the home of President Garfield had nothing to do with him, but with his wife. Even though she seems to have been a very emancipated woman, running the estate by herself for many years after her husbands untimely death, she was against women’s suffrage. That is really hard to comprehend for me. If it had not been a subject at all, I could see that she didn’t fight for it. But since there already was a growing suffrage movement at the time, I can’t understand how a lady of her statue could not be supportive of it. I wonder whether we do anything today that will look as weird to future generations. 

Usually we plan visits to national parks way in advance. Not so this week. We literally had not heard of Cuyahoga Valley National Park outside of Cleveland until we saw the exit signs on the highway. This is no Grand Canyon, but it still had enough history and natural beauty to keep us busy for a day and a half. We got a private ranger walk around Kendall Lake. It might not look like much, but it’s pretty impressive that this is all man made. The lake, the pier, even the trees are products of the CCC. So thanks to FDR giving young men something to do during the depression 80 years ago, we got to go on this walk and many bats, birds and beavers got a new home. 

Artificial pier on a manmade lake surrounded by trees planted just 80 years ago.

The visitor center of the park will get a new home soon, too. We had heard of this being done, even of extra floors being inserted, but never saw it ourselves: This historic house got lifted off the ground and gets a new foundation before they 'drop' it back down:

The floating house at Cuyahoga Valley National Park

We also learnt about the importance of the canals in the early days of Ohio. Still considered wilderness when the country was founded, it became the 3rd most populous state by the 1850’s, mostly because of the network of man made canals. It tells you something about how inaccessible the land still was if these narrow canals were considered such an improvement. Boats had to be pulled by mules, no faster than 4mph! And to go from Lake Erie to the Ohio river, there were way over a hundred locks that each took half an hour to several hours to pass through. No wonder the canals quickly disappeared after the railroads came. 

In the domed observation car on the scenic railroad

We also took the scenic train ride through the park, riding in a domed observation car with a very nice Canadian couple and went on another ranger walk along “The Ledges” with fun Ohioan family. 

Our ranger guide trying to explain how much a million years is...

Even million year old "Ledges" were improved by the CCC boys

Since it happens so often that we spend a whole day in just one museum, we planed only on the Thomas Edison birthplace in Milan, Ohio for the next day. This time it was the other way round. The tour through the very modest house was interesting, but not very long. Even with listening to several of his phonographs and reading all the historical markers, we were done in about an hour. So we had time for just one more quick museum to visit in the afternoon...or so we thought....

Genius grown here! Thomas Edison Birthplace

The ‘quick visit’ turned into a two day event and included one of the most serendipitous experiences we have ever had on any of our road trips. So serendipitous and interesting in fact, that it will fill a whole update by itself...so I hope you’ll come back to our blog soon to read all about it!

Aloha from Ohio,

Chris, Sandra and Christie