Road Trip to Woodstock & Beyond - Day 6

Click HERE to start reading at Day 1 entry.

On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, America came under attack when four commercial airliners were hijacked and used to strike targets on the ground. Nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives. Because of the actions of the 40 brave passengers and crew aboard one of the planes, Flight 93, the attack on the U.S. Capitol was prevented. The site where Flight 93 crashed is now a national memorial and was our next destination.

Tower of Voices

Pretty much in the middle of nowhere, outside of Stoystown, Pennsylvania, a rural town of only 428 residents, is an empty field now considered by most Americans as holy ground. The first thing you see as you near the site is the Tower of Voices, a 93-foot-tall (in recognition of Flight 93) musical instrument holding forty wind chimes, representing the forty passengers and crew members who perished. It is the only chime structure like this in the world. Surrounded by wildflowers, the structure was built on an oval concrete plaza on top of an earthen mound to create an area more prominent on the landscape. The shape and orientation of the tower are designed to optimize airflow through the tower walls to reach the interior chime chamber. The chime system is designed using music theory to create the range of frequencies needed to produce a distinct musical note associated with each chime. The intent is to create a set of forty tones (one “voice” for each of the passengers and crew members) that can represent the serenity and nobility of the site while also recalling the event that consecrated the site. It’s an interesting structure that sets the reflective and somber tone for what’s to come, but unfortunately for us, the wind must be blowing at least 5 MPH for the chimes to work and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze while we were there. Later, I spoke to one of the Park Rangers and she said the sounds were haunting and mesmerizing. Go to Youtube and search on "flight 93 tower of voices" to listen to a recording of the chimes.

After leaving the Tower of Voices, we proceeded to the visitor center, a large single-story building that houses a permanent exhibition focusing on Flight 93. This is where emotions surged as we viewed actual artifacts from the crash – pieces of the plane, personal items of the crew and passengers, a scorched and torn bible, a child’s shoe, a man’s damaged wallet, bent silverware, a burned and badly damaged seat belt, a damaged watch stopped at 10:03 – the time when the plane crashed into the ground. There is a station with headphones for you to listen to heart-wrenching voice message recordings of the last words sent by doomed passengers and crew members saying goodbye to family, spouses, and children. “Honey, I love you. I don’t think we’re going to make it out of this. Tell the children I love them!” “Hey sis, something bad is happening on the flight right now. If I don’t make it, my banking papers and stuff is in the safe and the combination is…” “Hey, Babe. This may be the last time I get to tell you how much I love you and the kids. Please don’t forget that.” Most of the people standing there listening to those messages had tears in their eyes. I did too.

Going through the rest of the very well done exhibition brought more emotions to the surface – sadness, confusion (how could someone do that to innocent men, women, and children, no matter what you believe or how strong that belief is), impotent rage at the so-called “people” who did that, and yes, a strong need for revenge, a desire to rid the world of anyone who is capable of doing that to another human being.

The boulder in the field at the end of the path
is the spot where the plane hit the ground 

At the end of the exhibition hall, there are large glass windows that look out onto the actual site where the plane hit the ground. There is a large rock that marks the exact spot. I stood there in deep thought looking at that rock for a long time. So did my buddy Chip, not saying anything, each lost in our own thoughts. Later, as we walked outside of the building along the “Flight Path Walk,” (a paved walkway that followed the final flight path) we passed beside a white wall that was inscribed with the names of all 40 innocent souls.

It was an interesting, but sad day. Even now, as I sit here writing about it, I still get emotional. I’m sure I will for a long, long time. Pulling away from the site, we didn't say much for a long while. We didn't have to. Chip simply said, "Wow." I quietly replied "Yeah." Enough said.

Next on our road trip agenda was Intercourse. Of course, two guys in a car on a road trip had to amuse ourselves for a few miles with crude jokes about the town name. What can I say? It's what guys do when the wives are not around. Getting to the little unincorporated village of Intercourse, Pennsylvania from Stoystown was a genuinely nice drive of 175 miles through rolling, wooded hills, open green pastures, and small towns. Along the way, we passed a number of old abandoned homes and barns – all left to the winds of change and the whims of history, but every one of them has a story to tell. For most, the story will remain untold. When you don’t know the facts, you can only fill in the blanks with your imagination. How old is this old house, the one with the falling in front porch? Who built that old, weathered barn, the one with that door hanging on just by the top hinge? How many families called that old farmhouse “home,” the one surrounded by shade trees and now mostly covered with honeysuckle vines? Every time I see one, I think about that, and wonder, what happened to the people?

A few miles outside of town, we started seeing Amish in their horse-drawn buggies and distinctive clothing. As soon as we entered the town’s limits, the streets were filled with buggies, Amish children riding their strange self-propelled “skateboards” and lots of tourist’s cars. Somehow, perhaps enabled by the large streets wide enough for cars and buggies to drive side-by-side, it didn’t seem overly crowded. We were to be disappointed at our first stop, the American Military Edged Weaponry Museum. Their website said they were open. Guess it had not been updated because it was closed with signs on the doors indicating it was because of Covid-19. We were disappointed, but you gotta expect stuff like that to happen and just roll with it.

Inside the Kitchen Kettle store

Next up was just a couple of blocks away – the Kitchen Kettle Village with its 42 shops and restaurants. This is where we had a really nice time, shopping for souvenirs, walking around looking at the handmade quilts, pottery, art, fine leathers, and homemade foods. We ate homemade ice cream while sitting in the shade under a large oak tree watching an exceptionally talented duo playing instruments and singing. We came away with a lot of homemade food items to bring back home to share with our wives – jams, jellies, various mixes, and bags of jerky. Everyone was very friendly and interesting to talk with. One of the ladies in the Kitchen Kettle store (where maybe I got just a tiny bit carried away and bought 4 different jams and 4 different jellies plus a cornbread mix) told us nobody is positive how the town name of Intercourse came about, but the most common story is that the community grew up around the intersection of two main roads, what the Amish refer to as an "intercourse." It was a very relaxing, calm, and fun way to spend an afternoon, something we both needed after the emotional visit to the Flight 93 Memorial.

Trying to eat it all before
 it melts!

Reluctantly leaving Intercourse, we drove a short 20 miles to Lititz, another little town in Amish country. There, we found the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest pretzel bakery in America. They had many different flavors of fresh-baked pretzels for sale as well as a bunch of tools for making your own pretzels, t-shirts, and other souvenir items. Neither of us are big pretzel eaters, so we weren’t overly thrilled with this stop, but it’s cool to say you’ve been to the oldest pretzel bakery in America. And being able to truthfully say, “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” is part of the reason for a road trip!

It was getting close to sundown, our usual “let’s find a place to stop for the night” alarm, but we were both feeling good so we decided to drive 3 hours to our next destination, – Bethel, New York, to be there early in the morning. Unfortunately, our prevailing good luck with finding a good hotel each night, even without reservations, was about to come crashing down. Big time.

Click HERE for Day 1.  Click HERE for Day 2&3. Click HERE for Day 4&5.

Road Trip to Woodstock & Beyond - Days 4 & 5

 Click HERE to read Day 1     Click HERE to read Day 2&3

After the Corvette Museum, it was a nice little 2-hour drive to Louisville, Kentucky, and the next stop on our itinerary - Momma's Mustard, Pickles & BBQ Restuarant. After our horrible experience with the barbeque at Tom’s in Memphis, we decided to try for some good “Q” at another highly-touted eatery. Fortunately, despite the weird name, this place came much closer to our expectations. It wasn’t great Texas barbeque, but it wasn’t bad. Clean, friendly service, reasonable prices, and cute girls as waitresses. OK, in today’s culture that may be considered sexist by some, but these 2 old guys raised in the old days of yore still appreciate nice female works of art and we will not apologize!

When in Louisville, of course, you must tour the Louisville Slugger Factory & Museum. Looking it up online, it was “strongly suggested” that you get your tickets before you arrive as they are often sold out. Our arrival time left only 2 tours remaining for that day and both were almost full so we checked into a really nice hotel, the Fairfield Inn & Suites Louisville East. This was one of the best hotels we stayed in the whole trip - plenty of parking, friendly staff, and clean facilities. The room was clean and very nice with very comfortable beds. Wi-Fi was fast and never dropped. In the morning there was plenty of hot water for a good shower. Quiet all night long. Can’t ask for much more than that! We bought our Louisville Slugger tickets for the next day, got some sandwiches, and brought them back to the room to eat while we watched more of the Women’s Softball Championship.

Day 5

Entrance to Louisville
Slugger Factory
 & Museum

Arriving at the Museum at the appointed time the next morning, we were amazed to find that instead of the group of 20 for the tour, we were the only 2 people! We had a great tour guide who was able to give us his undivided attention. It was a really interesting experience. We learned how the bats are made, the different kinds of wood preferred by different major-league players, and watching them actually being made was way cool. Everyone, including the workers, were very friendly. Our guide was knowledgeable and never seemed to get tired of our many questions. As a souvenir, we both got a “nub,” (the end part of a bat that is cut off before the final processing) from a bat destined to be used by a major league player. At the end of the tour, we were given another souvenir, a small Louisville Slugger bat. It was a very enjoyable experience and especially interesting to me as a former user of Louisville Slugger bats when I played youth and high school baseball. I thought the souvenirs in the gift shop were a bit expensive and I didn’t find a shirt I liked so I didn’t get anything besides the souvenirs from the tour and a refrigerator magnet for my collection. I highly recommend this stop.

Other than stopping for a fast-food lunch, gas, and road food, the rest of the day was spent driving, telling stories, remembering things we have experienced together, and generally, just enjoying each other’s company. 360 miles later, we checked into another nice hotel in Washington, Pennsylvania – The Hampton Inn & Suites, Pittsburg-Meadow Lands. After driving most of the day, we dropped off for a nice, restful sleep by 10:30. We had another interesting little side trip scheduled for the next morning.

Another nice breakfast at a nearby Waffle House and 35 miles on down the road brought us to the small, quiet little town of Perryopolis, Pennsylvania. Why in the world would we drive so far to visit such a small, rather unremarkable town? To see the “Buffalo Bill House” of course. No, not the Buffalo Bill of Old West fame. We’re talking Buffalo Bill from the movie “Silence of the Lambs.” He of the famous chilling line, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” If you watched this movie for the first time late at night like I did, there wasn’t much sleep afterward as your eyes stayed wide open and you jumped at every little sound in the night. Here in little Perryopolis is the house used for the exterior shots as the house where Buffalo Bill had his victim pit and his little dog and his bottle of lotion. Except for the movie sign in the front yard and the "Private Property" signs, it looks like just a normal nice house in a small, quiet town. A fun thing to tell your friends about what you saw on your road trip! Maybe the best thing though is the relaxing drive getting to the house. You must drive down a well-maintained, pretty, 2-lane road with trees on either side closing in over the top, then down a side street through a tunnel dug through a mountain which is followed by a one-lane trestle bridge, and then across a set of railroad tracks. Worth the side trip if you have the time.

"Buffalo Bill's" house

Just 90 miles away was our next stop – Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I mean, who hasn’t had the desire to see Punxsutawney Phil and visit the famous Gobbler’s Knob where every February 2nd, the venerable, and supposedly immortal, groundhog holds forth each year with his weather predictions. The "Inner Circle" members – recognizable from their top hats and tuxedos – communicate with Phil to receive his prognostication. This suspension of disbelief, a central requirement for the festival, extends to the assertion that the same groundhog has been making predictions since the nineteenth century. According to legend, there is only one Phil, all other groundhogs are impostors. It is claimed that this one groundhog has lived to make weather predictions since 1886, sustained by drinks of "groundhog punch" and "elixir of life" administered at the annual Groundhog Picnic in the fall.

Unknown to most, Phil does not live at Gobbler’s Knob. His actual home is in a nice, cozy den in the Punxsutawney Library. We had that information along with the address of the library, but we drove around for 20 confusing minutes or so because we couldn’t find a building that looked like a library or had a sign indicating it was a library. The address where it was supposed to be was a police station with a parking lot full of police cars. I really needed to relieve myself of the morning’s coffee so I told Chip (who was driving) to just pull into the police station thinking surely they had a bathroom I could quickly borrow. He didn't want to do that because "we'll get a ticket." Then I noticed a line of regular civilian parked cars along one small row so I told Chip just park in there with those cars. Reluctantly, Chip pulled in and parked. Great friend he is, “OK, but if we get a ticket, you’re paying it.” 

Punxsutawney Phil relaxing at home

It was then I finally saw a little sign that just said, “Library.” Maybe one end of the building was a police station and the other end was the library? Walking around to the other side of the building, the side with no parking lot, the side facing a quiet, little park with lots of grass and trees, the side that had no indication you could see from the road that it was a library, and there we found the library’s front door and just inside the front door was, thank goodness, a men’s restroom! A few minutes later, I walked into the aisles of books and a lady told me the library was closed due to Covid restrictions. I asked if this is where Phil lives. Yep, over in the corner and yes, you can go over and see him. Sure enough, looking into an enclosure with a wall of thick glass was the legendary Phil! Unfortunately, the glass was very dirty and scratched up so bad, you could barely see into Phil’s home. I noticed there was another window on the other side that faced outward. We walked outside to the window, but that window too was heavily scratched and dirty. I took several terrible pictures of Phil (due to the condition of the glass), who seemed quite relaxed and paid us no never-mind. I must admit, it was a tad underwhelming. In fact, it was very underwhelming.

Gobbler's Knob Park

Making it back to the car (no ticket!), we then drove about 2 miles outside of town to Gobbler’s Knob. Until I researched it, I thought Gobbler’s Knob was somewhere in Punxsutawney, like in a downtown park. Not so. It is about 2 miles southeast of town, set off all by itself. We arrived to find we were the only people there, so we took our time driving around looking at the well-maintained stage and park. It too was a bit underwhelming, but still, we enjoyed seeing in person the stage and all the Groundhog Day things we’ve seen on TV for years. 

The famous stage where Phil
delivers his prediction

We made our way back to town to eat at Joe’s Drive-In, the highly-rated old-fashioned diner famous for serving up the best hamburgers in Punxsutawney. The burgers were ok. Certainly not Whataburger or even In-N-Out quality, but I guess the Punxsutawney residents are pleased as punch with them.

Putting Punxsutawney in our rearview mirror, we headed about 80 miles south to Stoystown, Pennsylvania and the Flight 93 National Memorial. Neither of us anticipated the intense feelings we would soon feel.

Phil statue at Joe's Drive-In