Abe's (and my) trip to Philadelphia

A few years ago my mom decided to take her grandkids on a trip after their senior years of high school. So far there have always been two in the same grade, which makes it fun for cousins to go together. This year, even though Abe has been at BYU all year, it was technically his senior year and his cousin Katy's too. Abe wanted to go to Alaska or Hawaii, but COVID restrictions made both of those impractical, so Katy chose Philadelphia. And Kenneth (my brother) and I got to go along too!

I've never been to Philadelphia, but we had been studying the American Revolution for homeschool this year, so it was fun to see a lot of the sites we'd learned about. (Too bad Abe wasn't studying them with us this time. But we did have a Revolutionary War Unit several years ago, and he hopefully remembered SOME of it!)

I was worried that it was going to be too hot and humid in Philadelphia, and it WAS hot for a couple of the days, but it was mostly pretty bearable. We had some clouds and sprinkling rain off and on, which helped a lot. And Abe and Katy were great travelers—easygoing and uncomplaining. We had a lot of fun being together.

Here are some of the things Abe and I liked best from the trip:

This was a cool room in the Constitution Center—it had life-sized statues of all the signers of the Constitution, standing in a hall the same size as the room they signed it in. The sculptors had done a ton of research to get heights, body shapes, facial features, and even clothing as accurate as possible for each man. It was pretty cool to walk around and see them all standing around like real people. Out of the corner of your eye, you could almost mistake them for real people!

We liked walking around Independence Hall and thinking about how we were walking where all the Founding Fathers walked! Abe and I didn't get to go inside (we left a day earlier than the others) but Kenneth and my mom and Katy said it was great. (Of course, Kenneth also said they ate a fine meal of Roast Rabbit there, so I don't know how much we should trust him…)

We did get to go into Congress Hall, next door, where the Bill of Rights was drafted and George Washington was sworn in for his second term. That was great too.

We went to the Philadelphia Temple grounds and walked around. It is cool to see the temple right in the middle of the city like that, and feel so peaceful within that little space. We learned that the huge apartment building behind the temple (that tall thin tan-colored one in this picture) was built by the Church too, to help revitalize the downtown area when they built the temple.

My cousin had told my mom that, oddly, a Macy's department store in Philadelphia was home to the largest pipe organ in the world. Of all things. So we made a stop to see it, and it was so cool! It is called the Wanamaker Organ (after the guy that had it built there, I guess). They've been restoring it and they have concerts every day…just right amidst the shopping and everything.

We walked upstairs to see the console, which is pretty amazing in itself. Six manuals! Even more than the Conference Center organ, which has five. And sooooo many stops. While we were looking at it we were so lucky to encounter one of the guys who is restoring the organ, and he seemed happy to talk about it to us. He let us come up and look closer at the console, and he even played a few things for us and showed us the range of instruments it can play. He said it is not built for a huge sound, like an organ in a cathedral might be, but more for variety. There are a TON of different sounds this organ can produce, including bells and chimes along with all the flute and woodwind and string stops.

Then, after he showed us some of the organ sounds, he took us back actually into the pipes of the organ itself and showed us how the restoration is proceeding, and how they are converting pneumatic action to digital, etc. It was amazing!! I have been back behind the pipes of the Conference Center organ and it was one of my favorite things ever, so I was super happy to get to see this one too! We felt really lucky that we happened along right at the right time and ran into the right person!

We came back another day to hear one of the organ recitals, and that was also cool, but nothing could beat getting right up close to this beautiful instrument.

On the Sunday we drove out to Valley Forge, maybe 40 minutes away from Philadelphia. All the insides of the buildings were still closed for the pandemic, but we walked around the outsides and looked at the log cabin replicas, etc. Most of the stuff there does not date back to the Revolutionary Era (they have planted it and cultivated it more like a park than a preservation site, to "evoke an emotional response," as the signs said) but some of the old stone buildings are original, like the one in this pictures—General Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge. That was cool to see.

It is a lovely, peaceful place.

I loved this covered bridge.

And Kenneth made a rock skip nine times in this river.

Back in Philadelphia now—this is a historic street called Elfreth's Alley. Lots of the houses date back to 1720 or so—and people still live in them! It is a cool street to walk down, and reminded me of some of the places I've seen in Italy and Germany. Just a charming place to imagine living in.

We also visited the Old Pennsylvania State Penitentiary, which was a strange and crumbling old place. I thought the most interesting thing about it was that Charles Dickens once visited there (and was not impressed). It had a unique design with one central hub and then a bunch of wings that went out like spiders' legs. Each prisoner was kept separate from the other prisoners—you might be held there for seven years and never see another person during that time. Each cell had its own little exercise yard and the guards just put food through a hole in door. Sounds pretty awful to me! Hopefully it was a good and instructive moral lesson for Abe and Katy…

On to happier things now: bunnies! I saw lots of them, mostly in the mornings when I was running. (You will be generous and allow me to call it running, won't you? We all know it is really no such thing—not compared to what Sebastian does on his cross-country team, say. I am not fast at the best of times, and this stage of pregnancy is…not the best of times. Ha ha. But we won't call it waddling! We are too polite.) At any rate, I saw two bunnies the first day, three the second day, four the third day, none the fourth day (sad), and six on the fifth day! They were all so cute. I'm sure people don't like them eating their gardens, but I don't care. I don't have a garden for them to ruin!

That six-bunny day was the day I went running at Bellevue State Park, which was a beautiful park on an old estate just down the street from where we were staying. The rental house we stayed at was in Wilmington, Delaware, just across the border from Philadelphia, about 40 minutes from downtown.

I love running in huge parks with lots of trails and ponds and woods. Hyde Park in London is like that, and so is the Tiergarten in Berlin.

It was already quite humid at this time of day, and warm…but not unbearable.

Most of the park was more open, and they had a horse track and community gardens and a little amphitheater, but my favorite part was the wooded part with winding trails through it.

And the bunnies, of course. There were also frogs in that pond, and you know I always like a good frog.

My other favorite place (maybe favorite of the whole trip) was the Morris Arboretum. It's part of the University of Pennsylvania, I think, and it's on another old estate, like Bellevue State Park. Lydia Morris and her brother John developed the land into this beautiful garden paradise and planned for it to someday be a public garden. The very best kind of philanthropy. And I just love places like this! They are always my favorite, wherever we go. 

My cute mom in the "fernery" (what a great name)

Tiny delicate leaves on a huge Japanese Maple tree (we are looking down on it from above)

Such a beautiful place!

And lastly, the rental house we stayed in was so great. It was built (or started being built) in 1905 and it was a beautiful, stately Craftsman-style home. We each had our own room (so luxurious, and also each room had its own Air Conditioning unit, so I could make it as cold as I wanted at night!) and everything just had such character—the wood floors that creaked so loudly and never felt quite even under your feet, the two staircases (one wide and welcoming, one tiny…for servants, I assume?), and best of all the huge screened porch. Screened porches seemed to be popular in the area—we saw them all over—but the one at our house was the best. We ate all our meals out there and played Bananagrams and Boggle there at night. It was perfect.

The screens were so fine, you hardly noticed they were there.

Beautiful dark-paneled dining room. I loved how dark the house was—the lights just didn't seem to ever quite reach the corners. Usually I hate being in dim light (and if I lived here I would probably get tired of it) but it just made it feel so old-fashioned and foreign. I liked it.

Even the light switches were weird. Little buttons to push. When the top one got pushed in to turn the light on, the bottom one popped out, and vice versa.

Note the bunny wallpaper motif. A good sign.

View from my bedroom window

The little back lawn. Oh, and to top it all off we saw fireflies!! For only the second time in my life (this was the first). They were so beautiful! We sat out on this lawn in the dark and watched them flickering on and off and floating around like tiny stars. That was one of the best parts of the trip for me.

So, that was our Philadelphia adventure, and we felt so blessed and grateful for my mom's generosity in taking us there. What a fun way for Abe and Katy to celebrate their Senior years!