World United States Pennsylvania Hershey

Mike and Roxanne travel east

Car Museum Aug 28, 2007

Aug 28 47926 8:30

I felt like I cheated you on the last of yesterday journal so I have added some more to it. Go back and check.

Gas prices are dropping, it is now down to under $2.70 a gallon and diesel is below $2.90

We have had construction every day somewhere and the past week or so it has been on every highway we have been on. Doesn't matter if it is interstate, state, county or forest road they are all being worked on, our tax dollars at work.

This morning we have fog. Of course we have been following the Susquehanna River also and the fog is mainly on the river. The Susquehanna is wide and shallow with islands in the middle.

Unplanned stop. I was reading the AAA book and found an American Antique Car Association museum in Hershey. So we headed off to find it. It is in a huge building and has awesome displays of cars from the early 1900's to the 1970's. There is a special display on Indy cars.

Needless to say, Mike drooled all the way through it. We got back on the road and headed straight thru Hershey to go to Strasburg. You really can smell in the chocolate all the way through town. There is a huge amusement park here and we drove by 6-7 roller coasters. We turned off Chocolate Ave to Cocoa Ave and headed out of town.

Next stop Strasburg and the Choo Choo Barn, WOW!!! What a place. George Groff started the trains in his basement for his son and each year added to the collection. Friends would continually ask to see the trains and in 1961 he opened it to the public. The trains and displays are still be added to yearly by the Groff family, the son Tom now that George has passed.

The layouts are of Lancaster County in miniature and many are animated. There is an Amish barn raising with little figures on the roof sawing and nailing. You watch the aerial tram go to the mountaintop and the skiers ski down the hill.

Bulldozers, cranes, graders, front end loaders are all moving, digging and dumping. There is an entire circuit with animals, elephants, tigers and monkeys. The trapeze artists are swinging and the tight ropewalker is walking across the wire.

In the town there is a parade marching around several blocks and at one house a fire starts, the fire engine comes out f the station rushes to the house where the fireman gets off the truck, anther climbs a ladder to the roof and chops a hole while even another is pouring a stream of water on the fire. When the fire is out the firemen return to the truck and the truck returns to the station.

Policemen have stopped speeders and emergency personnel are attending an accident victim. Cars and truck move on the roads, trolleys run along the tracks in the city and throughout it all are 22 operating trains in three different gauges.

There are rock climbers, skaters, a blacksmith, even a fox hunt with the hunters on their horses, the hounds and one lone fox running across the railway bridge.

The Amtrak comes into the station and people ride a people mover takes the passengers up the stairs to the train platform. There is an amusement park with a working Ferris wheel, octopus and carrousel with horses that go up and down. A zoo is complete with moving animals, the elephant, rhinoceros, water buffalo, giraffe, leopard and tiger.

You could spend hours and not see everything or come several times and each time see something new. The museum is shut down in Jan-Mar for new exhibits and renovation each year so it is always new and fresh.

We finally pull into our campground around 4:30. It has been a long day but we have made two great stops on the way.

We get set up and decide to go check out the visitor center, unfortunately it is closed but we decide to start the audio tour.

We walk across the street to the National Cemetery and see the grave markers, cannon emplacements and the Memorial to Lincoln, as it was here that he gave his historic Gettysburg Address just a few short months after the battle.

We head out of town and hit the first three stops and the in between audios up to Stop 4. I climb the observation towers and take pictures of everything. I am sure I will weed most of them out.

There are monuments for each of the battalions, brigades, on both the North and South side. Many of them were only a few hundred people so the monuments are close together. Each cannon placement is also marked with a synopsis of the battle on each day they took part in.

We finally return to the RV around 8:00. Time to call it a night.