Valley Forge & Ephrata Cloister

The folks visited Valley Forge on Saturday.  It was a beautiful day.  It was sunny and breezy, but not hot or humid.  Unfortunately, all the photos from that day and actually the entire weekend are gone.  They are not on Mom's phone or the computer.  She must have accidentally deleted them.  She is not sure how she did that, but they are gone.  :::sigh:::  Since photos make a blog more fun, we are going to add some that we recently took around camp.

Our site

George Washington and the Continental Army stayed at Valley Forge from December 1777 to June 1778.  When we think of Valley Forge, we think of soldiers freezing.  None actually froze to death there.  Morristown was actually quite a bit colder and soldiers did freeze to death there.  In fact, if it had been colder at Valley Forge, disease wouldn't have been as strong as it was.  Disease killed 2,500 soldiers.  There were about 400 women in camp.  They were wives of soldiers.  Martha Washington spent the winter there.  She and George had a nice house.  The house still looks good.  Mom had pictures of it.  No battles actually took place there.  It is just where they spent the winter.  If you want to read more about it, here is the website:  Valley Forge

The folks took a 90 minute trolley tour of the grounds.  They made two stops.  One was at a re-created settlement and the other was at Washington's headquarters.  The tour guide was really good.

On Sunday, the folks visited Ephrata Cloister,  It is one of America's earliest religious communities.  It was founded in 1732 and the buildings are original.  It was made up of German settlers and Mom's family name is listed as being there.  They felt they needed to be as God like as possible. They slept about four hours a night and that was interrupted for prayer in the middle of the night.  They slept on a narrow board and their pillow was basically a brick.  They rarely ate meat. They ate roots and bread.  They worked hard and prayed a lot.

Mom thought Ephrata Cloister was very interesting.  You can see photos of it on the website.

The chickens were running around last week.  They belong to an Amish farmer.

Another view from our site.

On Monday, we went to the park.  I enjoyed all the new smells.  We walked along the river.

Our campground was sold out over Labor Day. There was a Great Dane across from us. She was huge!  She was twice as big as me.  She was hard to handle with her flexi leash.  Her people were different. There was a grandfather, grandmother, two sons (who stilled lived at home even though one has five kids) and a daughter-in-law. The grandfather came over and told us all about the family. We thought it was odd that he pointed out that the grown sons still lived at home.  The five kids all piled into my bed without even asking me if I minded.  I was in it at the time. It's a good thing that I am a mellow guy.  Mom still got me out of that situation quickly and we avoided them as much as we could after that.  They let their Great Dane run free part of the time and she scared some of the small dogs.

We are told that the campground will be full again this weekend.

Sunset as seen from our site.

Mom is still loving her air fryer.  She made a roasted chicken and also some great sweet potato fries.

This was a good chicken!

It is a hot and humid day here today.  It was too hot to even sit out this morning.  We normally sit in the shade in the morning, but Mom said no this morning and I agreed.  We are going to relax in the AC for the rest of the day.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Hopes The Campers This Weekend Are Better Behaved