During the second week of October, 2007, we took a car trip through eastern and central Pennsylvania in search of fall color and old friends. The colors were a little scarce but scenery was lovely and the old friends were welcoming.
This is the rough draft of a short slide show of that trip.
This version is for fast broadband connections. A smaller, lower-speed version can be found here.
We were a little early for the fall colors, or more likely, they're going to be sparse this year in the East. We were greeted with temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s for the first couple of days which then dropped about 20-30 degrees, but it was never uncomfortable at either extreme. And, as is always the case in May Clark organized travels, our accommodations and itinerary were flawless. We started with the Brandywine museum (Wyeth, père et fils) and Longwood Gardens (all 1,000+ acres of it) and then motored through Amish country (watch out for that buggy) and Gettysburg (watch out for that monument) to State College, where we genuflected in front of the bust of Mike's grandfather in the Patee library (the only other bust being that of Patee himself, whoever he might have been...) The Penn State campus at State College is handsome, but very large (over 40,000 students). In an indication of priorities, the football stadium has a seating capacity of over 100,000.
From State College, which sits near the center of the state, we went north seeking fall colors in the forests of the Endless Mountains. Not much in the way of color, but pretty, nonetheless--while Westerners would hardly call those hills mountains, they would appreciate the views of endless tree-covered hills. The weather had cooled substantially by then and we had some heavy rain but nothing to dampen the spirit of the trip. We spent the last couple of days with old friends near Philadelphia under clear skies and pleasant temps. And--thanks again to travel-coordinator Clark--we flew back the way we came: First class all the way. (It's scary how quickly one assumes that one deserves all the attention and adequate seating: Come on, you people, let's move along to the back of the plane and clear the aisle so the flight attendant can give us our pre-flight orange juice!)
We got home in on time to feed the cats, who had been under the able care of house-sitters, and we retrieved our revved-up puppy the following morning from amidst a flock of kids and cats at her former owners' house in Hollister.
There you go, far more than anyone could care about our week in Pennsylvania.