Pottsville, PA Area

As I said in the last post we ended up in Pottsville for an extended stay in hopes of getting the RV repaired. (I will do a post on this when we finally get the repair done correctly.) The place doing the work only had a 15 amp electric hook up, meaning we would not be able to run the AC. Since it was nearly 100 we opted to stay at the Ramada Inn for the weekend, so we had some time to explore the area. Who knew we could find so many things to do near Pottsville to keep us busy.   

We did find some good places to eat within walking distance of the hotel. The first was the Wheel, where the specialty is gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. As you can tell by the smile Nanc loved hers. Another place was the Crimson House, a very good tapas restaurant run by the same people.

Just down the road in Shartlesville is Roadside America, a miniature world of handcrafted buildings and toy trains. We saw a story about this place on Sunday Morning a couple months ago that said the attraction is having a hard time making ends meet and the family is looking to sell. A miniature town with every detail of life in the early 1900's.

 Roadside America was built by Laurance Gieringer who started building models when he was five years old. The huge circus with a small airport. Several of the displays have buttons to push to activate some of the people.

The O-gauge model railway is a big part of this little world. Some of the trains are parked in the rail yard while others are always running. I had an O-gauge Lionel as a kid so this was a real step back in time for me.

This area shows life in the 1800's with horse drawn wagons. In the 1930's the display, which was in Mr. Gieringer's home, became more and more popular. 

The coal industry was very big in this part of Pennsylvania so a tipple where the rail cars would be loaded is a big part of the exhibit. There is a cutaway look down into a deep mine.

A look at the rural life in this hilly part of the state. In 1940 he began to build a warehouse size building for his miniature villages and trains. It was opened to the public in 1953 and has continued to this day.

We walked around a couple times to see as much as possible. This is one of those places you could visit many times and find something new every time even though it has not changed since 1963 when Mr. Gieringer died.

There is even an Alpine mountain complete with a waterfalls, an ice rink, ski slopes and a tram running up the steep hill. If you have any interest in roadside oddities you need to add Roadside America to your to do list. The detail is quite amazing and who knows how much longer it will be open.

We stopped at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary located between Hamburg and Pottsville. The sanctuary is 2,600 acres of land that is part of 13,000 acres of public and private protected land. It is located on Hawk Mountain in the Appalachians on a major route for 16 different raptors migrating from Canada to the southern US and even South America.    

It was very hot so we did not hike. The visitors center has interesting displays on the different birds. The best time to see birds is in the fall and to a lesser extent the spring. The mission of the sanctuary is to conserve birds of prey worldwide. In the early 1900's the Pennsylvania Game Commission paid a $5.00 bounty for every raptor that was shot.  

To reinforce the importance of their mission they have this exhibit about the Passenger Pigeons. These birds were once the most plentiful and the most common bird in the US and were hunted into extinction by the beginning of the 1900's. The last one died in a zoo in 1914. Hawk Mountain is a neat place that we will have to return to in the fall sometime to see the migrating raptors.

When we put out the word that we were in Pottsville for the weekend we got a message from Diane and Andy. They are RVers we met at Betty's RV Park and got together with at Quartzite. Turns out they live in the area, so we got together at another good, local restaurant, Roma Pizza. After dinner they invited us to their place. It was a fun time getting caught up with all our travels since we last saw them.

Another Pennsylvania place I have always been interested in but never been to is Centralia. This was a small mining town with a population of nearly 2,500 people the first half of the 1900's. In 1962 a fire was started while burning trash at a strip mine. The fire ignited a seam of coal and has defied all efforts to extinguish it. It has burned to a depth of 300 feet and is over eight miles long. It is expected to burn for another 200 plus years. This church once overlooked the town.  

By 1980 the population was down to 1,000 as many people were affected by the fire and gasses. In 1992 the state used eminent domain and condemned all the property. Today there are seven people living there. As part of their agreement with the state, they can stay until they die. This was once a street lined with homes and businesses.   

While we did not see or smell any burning coal, we did see this new happening in Centralia, graffitied streets. There are sidewalks, driveways and even a few places were you can tell people had landscaped lots, but there are only three houses still occupied.   

This is the main street in nearby Ashland to give you an idea of what Centralia would have looked like in its hay day. Growing up in an old coal town with the pollution and environmental messes the companies left behind sure shaped my view of the need for strong environmental laws.

You can tell we were running out of things to do when I let Nanc drag me to the Hope Hill Lavender Farm. Nanc sure liked that big chair. 

They had a little bit of everything lavender, but it is not really a guy kind of place.

Since the issue we have been having with the rig has not been resolved, we changed our plans to travel to Connecticut and found a place to stay along the Delaware River in Eastern PA over the Fourth of July. We are now at the KOA north of New York City for a week as part of our excursion with the Escapees to explore the Hudson Valley and visit NYC. From here we are heading to WashPA for three months.

Yuengling Brewing

We drove over the mountain from Bloomsburg to Pottsville to tour Yuengling, America's oldest Brewery. (Little did we know that a couple days later we would be back in Pottsville for an RV repair.) The brewery was started in 1829 by David G. Yuengling and has been run by a Yuengling every since. It was originally called Eagle Brewing and an eagle is still on the bottles and cans today.  

In 1831 a fire destroyed the original brewery and a new one that is still brewing today was built. Their first beers were Lord Chesterfield Ale and Porter. These are still brewed today.  

The beer bottle chandelier welcomes you to the gift shop where the free tour begins. There is now a new, modern second brewery just down the road in Mill Creek that was built to meet growing demand.  

A unique feature of the brewery is the caves that coal miners dug into the hill under the brewery using only pick axes. They stay at 54 degrees year round and were used to store the kegs before there was refrigeration. 

The water for the original brewery came from a spring above the building. A bit of water still flows from the spring. As production increased more water was needed so they now use Pottsville water.

An old storage tank in the cave where the beer was kept until it was put in kegs. They sure have come a long way from a small local brewery. Not only are they the oldest in America, they are also the largest American owned brewery. That's right, the big three Bud, Miller and Coors are no longer American owned.

This old machine enabled them to fill only four kegs. When one was done the bung would be pounded in by hand and the barrel rolled off. This machine was used into the 1980's when they reintroduced Yeungling Traditional Amber Lager, the beer that is now their flagship brand. 

How the kegs have changed from 1829, when they were wooden barrels, to today's modern kegs. The new barrel filling operation was not part of the tour.

The Rathskeller was built in 1936. Employees were allowed to drink beer here during their shift. That practice was stopped by OSHA in the 1990's. Guests were served here before the tours became so popular that a larger area was needed.

The maintenance shop looks much the same as it would have looked 150 years ago. The head man has worked for the company for over 30 years.

These ladies had the job of washing the bottles and kegs for the beer. On the right the man is drinking a Winner Beer, the one that celebrated the end of Prohibition. Bottom is a batch of beer in the cooker. During Prohibition they produced near-beer (0.5% alcohol) and their Porter, which they claimed had "medicinal" qualities, even for nursing mothers. The local word is that a few barrels also escaped through a hole in the basement into the church next door. 

Today the original brewery has been modernized with increased production. 90% of the beer here is put in cans, while at Mill Creek 90% goes in bottles. To meet growing demand and expansion they purchased an old Stroh's brewery in Tampa in 1999. With this new production Yeungling is now available in more and more states. They don't move into a state until they can supply the whole state. 

Here we are with our free samples. I usually drink the Traditional Lager, but I really liked the Lord Chesterfield Ale. It is only available in Pennsylvania. That is Dick Yeungling in the background. He has four daughters who all work for the company. If the tradition that a family member always runs the company holds, the girls are going to have to follow another tradition and buy the company from their father. 

The sampling room is in the old dairy that they opened during Prohibition to make ends meet. The ice-cream is still on the market. 

Look who else drank Yeungling, The Three Stooges. While some people have boycotted Yeungling because of the owners political beliefs, I always ask what the political beliefs are of the brewers of their favorite beer. Most don't know. At least Yeungling is American owned.

Just up the street from the brewery is the Yeungling Family Homestead. The family lived in the house from 1913 to 1978. The home was donated to the Schuylkill County Arts and Ethnic Center and is now used by the center for many local cultural events.

We are now in Eastern Pennsylvania until the weekend and will then be heading to New York for the Escapee's HOP to the Hudson River Valley and NYC. The issue with the RV has still not been corrected. It seems that every place checks something off the list of possibilities but does not get it fixed. Hopefully, we will make it back to WashPA where we will have three months to find a solution to the problem.

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

We have had a couple of trying weeks with the passing of two friends and ongoing issues with Opus. We had hoped to have one of those resolved at Spartan while we were in WashPA for Tom's memorial service, but it did not happen. We had an appointment in Elkhart, IN this week and had a slide that would not open repaired. We are now in Bloomsburg, PA and have an appointment on Tuesday for a reoccurring acceleration problem that two other places did not get fixed. I will be writing more about these repairs when they are all completed. 

While in Michigan we toured the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids. Ford was our 38th president and came to the office via a path that no other person has followed to become president.  

The Ford Library is in Ann Arbor the home of the University of Michigan, his alma mater. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was so abusive that his mother left him 16 days after he was born. They ended up in Grand Rapids where his mother married Gerald Rudolff Ford. His new family called him Gerald Jr. He was never formally adopted and did not legally change his name until 1935 after graduating from Michigan. He did not learn who his biological father was until he was 17. He had limited contact with him after that and he always said his stepfather was a wonderful man.

Ford was an outstanding student and athlete in high school. He was captain of the football team and won all-city honors as a senior. This statue is Jerry as an Eagle Scout, the only president to achieve scouting's highest rank. 

The statues are of a wolverine and a Michigan lineman. Ford played in two all-star games as a senior. His number "48" was retired in 1994, but has since been put back in use. The number 61 belonged to Willis Ward, Jerry's friend and roommate for away games. When Ford was a senior Georgia Tech refused to play the game if Ward, who was Black, played. Ford threatened not to play the game until Willis asked him to play without him. 

After playing for Michigan Ford was offered the chance to play for the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. Instead, he decided to attend Yale Law School and graduated in 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor Ford enlisted in the Navy. He was commissioned an ensign and assigned to duty in Maryland and North Carolina. He then asked for sea duty and was assigned to the USS Monterey. The ship saw action in several battles in the Pacific Theater. While the ship was not damaged in combat, it was caught in a typhoon that sank three other ships with over 800 men lost at sea. Ford was lucky not to be washed overboard when his ship listed to 25 degrees, only surviving by grabbing a small steel ledge on the ship. 

On October 15, 1948 he married Elizabeth (Betty) Bloomer in Grand Rapids. Then, in November, he won his first election to represent the Grand Rapids area in the US House of Representatives. He held that office for 25 years, the longest by any house member who became president. 

In the House President Johnson appointed him to the Warren Commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination. In 1965 he became the House minority leader, a position he held until he became vice-president. He said his only political goal was to become the Speaker of the House.

In December, 1973 he was tapped by Nixon to became vice-president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew because of corruption. This is the proclamation sent to the House by President Nixon nominating Ford to be vice-president. He received 387 votes, showing he had the support for the position from both parties.  

At that time the entire Nixon administration was under investigation for the Watergate affair where the democratic party's office was broken into to steal campaign information. Ten months after becoming vice-president Ford became president on August 9, 1974 when Nixon resigned rather than be impeached. He became the only person to be president who had not run for the office as president or vice-president.   

These words from his inaugural address capture the times very well as he made it about the rule of law and the Constitution, not about himself.

The replica of the Oval Office during the Ford presidency. The ship's wheel is from the SS Mayaguez, an American merchant ship that had been seized in international water off Cambodia in 1975. Ford sent Marines to retake the ship and the captain presented him with the wheel.

Ford's first month in office was a whirlwind, starting with his inauguration on August 9, 1974. The next day he asked the Nixon cabinet to stay and on the 12th he addressed Congress. On the 14th he dealt with a crisis in Cyprus and the 16th he held his first state dinner with the king and queen of Jordan. On August 19th he started the process that lead to clemency for draft dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War. On August 20th he nominated Nelson Rockefeller over George H.W. Bush, as vice-president and on September 8th he pardoned Nixon. Many of these actions were unpopular, but he felt they were important for putting the years of unrest caused by Watergate and Vietnam behind us so we could move forward as a nation.  

Replica of the Cabinet Room during Ford's time in office. Each president selects the portraits for the room. Ford chose Republican presidents Eisenhower (not pictured) and Lincoln. He also chose Truman as a show of bipartisanship, something we sure don't find in the White House today.  

The Ford presidency was only 895 days long, the shortest of any president who did not die in office. During that time the economy was going through the worst recession since the Great Depression along with growing inflation. He did sign the Helsinki Accords that began a move to detente in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In 1975 the Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon. The helicopter and staircase show how the last people left the country being rescued from the roof of the US embassy.

Many of those who escaped Vietnam had helped the Americans during the war and Ford made every effort to ensure those people where welcomed to the United States.

This exhibit shows some of Ford's diplomatic accomplishments, including going to China to continue the process put in place by Nixon. He also went to Vladivostok to meet with Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev to sign the SALT Treaty.  He was also the first president to visit Japan. The case holds gifts he received and the dishes used at state dinners.   

Ford was president in 1976 when the nation celebrated its 200th birthday. It was a period of unity for the country after the years of division caused by Nixon and Watergate.   

1976 was also a presidential election year and Ford ran or the office. The Republican Party was still divided because of Watergate so he had a hard fought battle with Ronald Reagan for the nomination. Ford won by only 100 votes at the convention.

In the general election Ford started very far behind Jimmy Carter but closed the gap. On election day Carter won the popular vote with 50.1% to Ford's 48.0%. The electoral votes were 297 to 240. With the loss he remains the only person to hold the office of president who had never won an election for the office of president or vice-president.

First Lady Betty Ford was an outspoken supporter of many causes. Soon after Jerry became president she announced she had breast cancer and had a mastectomy, bringing this important issue into the spotlight. She was an ardent backer of the Equal Rights Amendment, that failed to pass, and supported a woman's right to abortion. 

In 1978 Betty Ford admitted to being an alcoholic and addicted to opioid analgesics that she had been prescribed for a pinched nerve in the 1960's. Her candor about her addictions lead her to opening the Betty Ford Clinic in 1982 for the treatment of chemical dependency. Her belief in being an advocate for what she believed was best stated by her, "Being ladylike does not require silence." 

The Fords received many accolades after he left the presidency. Among the most important are the Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal (awarded to both of them), the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and the naming of the USS Gerald R. Ford honor his character and accomplishments.

The Fords are buried in the garden of the museum in Grand Rapids. They both died in Rancho Mirage, California where they had settled after the presidency. They were born five years apart and died five years apart, both at age 93. The Ford Museum is an interesting look at the life of the only person, who even though he become president without being elected, helped the nation heal the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam.