Thursday Kathleen and I got up early and had breakfast in the hotel cafe. I had an English muffin, coffee and orange juice and Kat had bacon, toast, coffee and cranberry juice and the bill came to $18 with tip. Yikes! And I complain about the cafeteria at work!
After breakfast Kat went to work and Wayne and I hung out in the hotel lobby. We were in the lobby because that was the only place with free wireless and I can't live without my internet connection. Wayne just read the newspaper.
Later in the morning we left for the NCC and, while we over in that vicinity, we stopped in the little churchyard cemetery across the street. Benjamin Franklin and his wife are buried there along with 3 other signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Since we still had time before lunch we spent it upstairs at the NCC looking at the exhibits. Since you always leave through Signers' Hall, I just had to take a picture. It's only about my 100th.
Then it was off to lunch. We went to Race Street Cafe. The food is good but the service is extremely slow. It was so slow that by the time we got our food it was almost time for Kat to go back to work. She had to rush to eat her lunch. She finished quickly and then left to go back and Wayne and I finished up at a more leisurely pace. I don't remember what I had except it came with french fries which were perfectly cooked.
Wayne had decided that we should do something different this trip so we drove to Swamp Valley PA (about 50 miles from Philadelphia) to visit Hopewell Furnace.
Hopewell Furnace is an old abandoned iron furnace plantation that is now maintained by the National Park Service. It was active from around 1771 to around 1883. During peace times they made decorative iron works and during both the revolutionary war and, to a lesser extent, the civil war, they made canons and canon balls. Their most successful iron item, however, was pig iron, which is basically just iron logs that are then shipped elsewhere to be processed into other items. The picture above is a demonstration of what a mold maker would do to make the decorative molds that the molten iron would then be poured into. And below is the finished mold.
This is the wheel that provided power to the place.
The plantation is in a lovely area of Pennsylvania, nice rolling hills and lush greens. And it was a beautiful day to be out in the country.
Below is the anthracite furnace "which was a failed attempt at hot-blast technology."
After spending a couple hours at the plantation we headed back home. The dogs were not too crazy. Since no one wanted to cook that night we ended up getting pizza for dinner, although, with all the food we ate today and yesterday, we could have done without dinner.
It was a nice little mid-week get-away, but Friday it was back to reality and work.
I was at Hopewell Furnace a couple of days ago and really enjoyed the visit. I also saw the demonstration of the moulding process. It was the first demonstration given that day and I was an audience of one, so it was more of a discussion than a lecture. Moral: Get there early!
Posted by: Historical Travels | 08/15/2009 at 09:31 PM