Trip Recap (Carnage Everywhere!)
Steve's out with the IT department seeing G.I. Joe, and it's raining out, so without much else to do, I figured I might as well try to do a good trip recap entry. Pictures are up on FB, but I'm having trouble seeing them at the moment. Stupid FB.
So anyway, as said last entry this became a kind of Death and Carnage Labor Day Weekend Mini Road Trip that any horror film could be proud of. First we drove out to Johnstown to see the flood museum on Saturday, which is in another beautiful library built by Andrew Carnegie, except this one has the added level of robber baron jerk-itude, since it basically went down with Carnegie saying, "Oooh, sorry about your town being leveled by a pleasure lake built for me and my cronies...here's a new library, though!" Despite, no doubt, wanting to give Carnegie the finger, Johnstown did need a new library so they sucked it up and took it. The museum itself isn't super big, but there's fake wreckage, a couple of glass cases filled with stuff found after the flood, and dioramas showing a 50ft wall of water can take out four or five major towns. And how bad it is to have that 50ft wall of water be full of flammable debris and locomotives full of fuel. And how messy things get when one of your iron works produces barbed wire. But we got to see a short movie about the flood!
After we'd seen everything the flood museum had to offer (including a surprising tasteful gift shop), we figured we might as well trek out to the national park memorial run by the feds. The national memorial was actually at the site of the old South Forks dam (the crappy one that failed and caused the whole thing). The dam was never rebuilt and since it was little more than an earthenworks dam to begin with, it was easily reclaimed by nature and now is just two little grassy hills separated by a small stream. We started out at the visitor center's museum, where we looked at more fake wreckage, more dioramas, and saw a second short film. Afterwords, we walked out to the one side of the dam, realized there was another observational deck on the other side, and drove over there to get the same view in reverse. The second side though had the added bonus of a small trail down to creek-level.
Leaving the memorial, we drove down to Hagerstown for the night, where we had a perfectly good hotel room with the world's tiniest coffee table. Sunday morning we got up and drove over to Sharpsburg to see Antietam. I like the combined tromping about/driving around involved in battlefield tours, and this was no exception. Even Steve liked it, though he complained about the bugs. Eventually we'll have to drag ourselves further south to get to Manassas, Fredricksburg, and the like. But it's a beautiful area in the valley, nestled under the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the fields still full of corn and similar. And yes, there was yet another short film, but this was probably the least impressive of the bunch. And we almost bought a fake Lincoln beard at the gift shop. They had little stovepipe hats to go with it, which I originally assumed were bad copies of the Union First Corp's black hats. Since Lincoln's visit to Antietam came after the battle, I don't immediately associate him with the site, whereas I know the Iron Brigade was at the battle. It's all perspective. We left the battlefield late in the afternoon and proceeded to start heading towards home.
It was interesting that Clara Barton provided an unexpected link to tie our trip together in a nice, neat little package. She was at Antietam and one of the first people to get to Johnstown after the flood. Weird. Eerie. Though, as I admitted to Steve on the drive home, I had a neutral to good opinion of Barton going into the weekend, and by the end, I was a bit tired of hearing about her. Call it Clara Barton Overload.
All and all, a good trip, though by Sunday afternoon, we were glad we were coming home.
So anyway, as said last entry this became a kind of Death and Carnage Labor Day Weekend Mini Road Trip that any horror film could be proud of. First we drove out to Johnstown to see the flood museum on Saturday, which is in another beautiful library built by Andrew Carnegie, except this one has the added level of robber baron jerk-itude, since it basically went down with Carnegie saying, "Oooh, sorry about your town being leveled by a pleasure lake built for me and my cronies...here's a new library, though!" Despite, no doubt, wanting to give Carnegie the finger, Johnstown did need a new library so they sucked it up and took it. The museum itself isn't super big, but there's fake wreckage, a couple of glass cases filled with stuff found after the flood, and dioramas showing a 50ft wall of water can take out four or five major towns. And how bad it is to have that 50ft wall of water be full of flammable debris and locomotives full of fuel. And how messy things get when one of your iron works produces barbed wire. But we got to see a short movie about the flood!
After we'd seen everything the flood museum had to offer (including a surprising tasteful gift shop), we figured we might as well trek out to the national park memorial run by the feds. The national memorial was actually at the site of the old South Forks dam (the crappy one that failed and caused the whole thing). The dam was never rebuilt and since it was little more than an earthenworks dam to begin with, it was easily reclaimed by nature and now is just two little grassy hills separated by a small stream. We started out at the visitor center's museum, where we looked at more fake wreckage, more dioramas, and saw a second short film. Afterwords, we walked out to the one side of the dam, realized there was another observational deck on the other side, and drove over there to get the same view in reverse. The second side though had the added bonus of a small trail down to creek-level.
Leaving the memorial, we drove down to Hagerstown for the night, where we had a perfectly good hotel room with the world's tiniest coffee table. Sunday morning we got up and drove over to Sharpsburg to see Antietam. I like the combined tromping about/driving around involved in battlefield tours, and this was no exception. Even Steve liked it, though he complained about the bugs. Eventually we'll have to drag ourselves further south to get to Manassas, Fredricksburg, and the like. But it's a beautiful area in the valley, nestled under the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the fields still full of corn and similar. And yes, there was yet another short film, but this was probably the least impressive of the bunch. And we almost bought a fake Lincoln beard at the gift shop. They had little stovepipe hats to go with it, which I originally assumed were bad copies of the Union First Corp's black hats. Since Lincoln's visit to Antietam came after the battle, I don't immediately associate him with the site, whereas I know the Iron Brigade was at the battle. It's all perspective. We left the battlefield late in the afternoon and proceeded to start heading towards home.
It was interesting that Clara Barton provided an unexpected link to tie our trip together in a nice, neat little package. She was at Antietam and one of the first people to get to Johnstown after the flood. Weird. Eerie. Though, as I admitted to Steve on the drive home, I had a neutral to good opinion of Barton going into the weekend, and by the end, I was a bit tired of hearing about her. Call it Clara Barton Overload.
All and all, a good trip, though by Sunday afternoon, we were glad we were coming home.