Day 7 - May 17th, 2009

Ok, actually we'll start with the previous night. After Friendship Hill NHP, we had a decision to make. We had 1 more stop that we really wanted to make - Fort Necessity National Historic Park, but it was storming and going to be for much of the night, so camping was out. I didn't really want to spend the money on a motel, so we had to decide between that and just calling the trip over and heading back home. As much as I didn't want to spend the money, we also didn't want to go home yet, so we just drove around trying to find the cheapest motel once we got near the next park. We had several choices, but most were expensive so we ended up back at a fairly nice one near the park. It had a nice back porch overlooking a grassy hill leading down to a pond. The porch was convenient because I could use the camp stove to cook our dinner. We could also sneak Lincoln into this place, which was another benefit. It stormed like crazy that night.

In keeping with the tradition of dedicating a single post to each National Park that we visit, I'll save Friendship Hill National Historic Site for tomorrow's post. I'll just take this time to sum up the trip. I think I speak for all 4 of us when I say we had a wonderful time. Everything was great - the weather was beautiful and nearly everywhere we went was as well. I'd love to go back to just about everywhere we went, but there were so many places we couldn't fit in. It was a perfect time of the year to go as well, though I'd like to do a similar trip in the fall. Pennsylvania is a beautiful state with fantastic state parks and a very varied landscape. I certainly hope we'll be able to make another similar trip sometime soon. I think we could do one more trip like this in PA and then I'll feel like we've pretty thoroughly explored the state. We've decided to take a couple of days off in the fall (when it is nice and cool and there are few tourists) to visit all of the National Historic sites in Philly. We've seen a few, but there are so many we haven't made it to even half of them. Once we see those, we only have to complete our tour of Gettysburg and Eisenhower National Historic Site, and we'll be done with all of PA's National Park sites - that will be the 1st state we've officially completed. Then where - Maryland? New York? We'll see I guess.

We traveled about 1,275 miles on this trip.

I just love this flannel shirt. I have one just like it.