Day 62, Punxsutawney, PA

A great night’s sleep at Penn’s cave.  No roosters, cows or traffic.  We head to State College and park the coach at Office Depot.  I buy a printer cartridge and we take off in the car to explore Penn State U.  We go to the creamery at the food science building but alas, we find the crew cleaning the equipment not making ice cream or other items.  Virtual tour does show process from “Cow to Cone”.  Next we visit the arboretum which makes for a nice walk.  After lunch we head to Punxsutawney and check into Hotel Walmart.  Visit Gobbler’s Knob just outside of town.  Then visit Phil in downtown.  Absolutely nothing else in Punxsutawney except for 32 statutes of Phil.  Looked for the spot where the movie was filmed to find out it was shot in Illinois - shucks.  Town seems somewhat poor.  Not even a decent restaurant so we eat in after grocery shopping in Walmart.  After dinner, we spent more time in Walmart and I got my bug zapper among other things.  Glad I got to see Phil but no need to come back here.

Day 61, Centre Hall, PA

In spite of the no overnight parking signs, we had no problems at the Milford Walmart except the delivery trucks made a bit of a racket.  Hit the road on a cool morning with temps around 60.  Six miles later on the interstate the hot coolant light comes on.  I pull over onto the shoulder and turn the engine off.  Pull out the manual which says to let it idle to cool.  I turn the engine back on and the hot indicator comes on but a few seconds later the gauge steadily decreases and a few more seconds registers cool.  We start back driving and no more problem.  Still at a loss as to what caused that spike in temperature.  Possibly a false indicator.  On to Scranton, PA, and a visit to the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour.  A caged rail type car attached to a cable goes down by gravity to a depth of 300'.  Then an hour hard hat walking tour through the mine which includes how the mine worked.  The mine operated from about 1800 until about 1950's.  Veins of coal everywhere.  Some areas required miners to work in an 18 inch vertical space.  Fascinating.  Another highlight in our trip of highlights.  Next we head to Penn’s Cave outside Centre Hall, PA, in farm country about 160 miles away.  The trip runs into many construction delays and takes almost 4 hours and we arrive just before 5 pm.  Penn’s Cave is open until 7 pm so we go on the 5:10 tour.  The cave/caverns tour is done completely by boat with a small, gas outboard and connects to a lake outside the cave on which we take a spin.  Back to the coach about 6:30 and it begins to pour.  We call Penn’s Cave just before 7 pm and ask permission to stay overnight to avoid the winding mountain roads in the rain or at night.  Permission granted.  I trust this will be a very quiet night.

Day 60, Milford, PA

Newburgh Walmart is next to a construction site so we got an early start.  Left the coach and headed to Hyde Park to visit the FDR Presidential Library and Museum and the FDR Home, named Springwood.  The home, built around 1800 was purchased in 1867 by FDR’s father and expanded in 1915 by FDR.  It was fairly simple and not at all like the opulent Gilded Age Vanderbilt Mansion.  The museum was interesting and indicated that the Manhattan project was under way very early in the war.  However, it also indicated that not until the concentration camps were liberated did the US know of the extermination of the Jews.  It did mention that this “fact” was subject to debate.  Not surprising that the museum left FDR’s antisemitism for other venues.  We also visited Top Cottage which was the house FDR built in 1938 for his retirement with handicapped accessability.  The cottage was about 4 miles away from Springwood but still on contiguous Roosevelt land.  The cottage is fairly stark and only one room is furnished.  The tour was primarily an hour discussion with the ranger on the porch overlooking the Hudson River.  Rosemary sat in FDR’s rocker, I in Churchill’s.  Very neat, only thing missing were the drinks and cigars.  Next was the tour of Val-Kill, the home of Eleanor, also on Roosevelt property not far from Top Cottage.  Built in the 1920's, Eleanor used this as a business first and then as her getaway when FDR was not in Hyde Park.  After his death, she lived here exclusively and handled her many UN duties and other projects of hers from here.  She also met dignitaries there including Churchill and JFK.  Val-Kill is the only Roosevelt home that had a swimming pool which is where many films of FDR in a pool were taken.  Back to the coach at 6 pm for dinner.  Since this Walmart was noisy, we decide to hit the road to the Milford Walmart about 45 miles toward our next destination.

Day 59, Newburgh, NY

Woke up to find the campground electric and water restored.  Departed MA and drove through Connecticut on way to NY.  Checked into the Newburgh Walmart and then headed to Huguenot Street in New Paltz.  Original houses dating to the 1600's.  We walked around the outside but the inside tour guides were disappointingly nowhere to be found so we crossed the Hudson Mid-river Bridge and headed to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park which is a national park.  Great ranger lead tour of the mansion which was donated shortly after Frederick Vanderbilt’s death in 1938 so the original furnishings are intact.  Franklin Vanderbilt was the third generation of Vanderbilt wealth but grew his wealth to be the richest man at one point in his life.  The mansion reflects that as it was a symbol of showing off his wealth with portions modeled after Versailles.