A Little League of Their Own

We’re watched the Little League World Series on TV for a number of years and enjoyed it; so, we said, why not attend some year?  And this was the year!  We spent time in Northeast Ohio visiting friends and relatives (more on that later), and then headed east along I-80 to Williamsport, PA to attend the games.  It’s a beautiful area of rolling hills (although they call them mountains back here), green forests, and pretty farmland.  Williamsport is a medium-sized town along the Susquehanna River and has been the home of the Little League World Series since 1947.  Here, 11-13 year olds come from all over the world to play in the double-elimination tournament deciding the champion.  But it’s more than that.  The 16 teams (eight U.S., eight international) that have made it this far are housed in a special complex where they learn about each other’s cultures, work with their coaches, but mostly just have fun.  All transportation, housing, and food costs are free to the teams thanks to private and corporate donations. 
As you walk through the stadium complex, you get the feeling that this is more a festival than a baseball playoff.  Carnival-like games, food vendors, and souvenir stands abound, and everywhere are smiling kids in their team shirts. There’s no admission charge to see the games, although getting a spot in the 3000-seat stadium involves an intricate lottery system that we didn’t bother with.  But no problem, as you’ve seen if you watched the games on TV, there’s room for 30,000 or so fans on the grass beyond the outfield, and even more room above. 
What impressed us most was the sound – even in the farthest reaches you could hear the team parents cheering and the sounds of the game.  The biggest difference in being there was how fast the pitchers were throwing –  the “pop” of the ball in the catcher’s mitt was loud and clear!  We learned later in the museum that because of the shorter distance, the ball gets to the plate faster than a major leaguer’s 90-mph fastball .   The kids have picked up all of the major leaguer’s mannerisms  while batting – the adjusting of the helmet, tightening of the batting gloves, hand outstretched behind to signal time, digging a hole in the batter’s box……all that’s missing is the cheek full of “chew”. 
It was a great afternoon, but after watching Japan defeat Mexico, we had to call it a day.  A long uphill walk from distant parking, temperatures in the mid-80s, and bright sun made the car’s air conditioning and a cold drink a must.  We realized that we weren’t up to an early morning trip back to the stadium to claim space for the championship game, but we agreed that our trip was well worth the lifetime memories.
On our walk back to the car, we stopped at the museum, a modern facility that had an interesting mix of history and interactive exhibits.  Here, kids could run an indoor track simulating home plate to first base and get their time and the best time of the day; look through a catcher’s mask at a 3-D pitcher fling fast balls at them, and search for teams around the world using a high-tech touch screen console.  We also laughed at the “helmet gun”, a cannon built to shoot baseballs at batting helmets to see how they’d perform.  I think I‘ve known a couple of people who were used as test subjects…..
And so another bucket list items has been scratched off the list.  Truly a memorable experience and one we recommend for everyone – the joy of the kids is contagious!
Our RV park for this visit was located well out into the farmland, and as we traveled back each day, we were greeted by this beautiful sunflower field:


One of the great joys of traveling the country is to be able to reunite with friends.  In Ohio, I met with a high-school buddy, Lorrie,  that I hadn’t seen for 48 years – you can imagine how old that made us feel.  But within minutes the time slipped away and we were reminiscing about our time together as if it were yesterday.  We had a great afternoon together – another connection made possible by Facebook!
In Pennsylvania, we visited with an old Air Force friend that we hadn’t seen for eight years.  Now a retired Colonel, Sandy has an incredible home in the mountains.  We had a great visit and managed to avoid spending the day telling “war stories” from our military lives.  And, managed to leave with Sandy’s hand-crafted kielbasa and pierogi!  What a deal- good friendship and free food!  We’ll plan on returning as soon as Sandy finishes building the RV pad for our extended stays….
We’ve left Pennsylvania and are wandering around with a final destination of Texas for the winter.  We’ll be stopping at some interesting places, so c’mon back and see where we’ve been!

Movin’ On

We’ve finally left the Cleveland area, our home for the last three months, with Brenda’s mom comfortably relocated into a beautiful facility.  We’ll be moving around for a while in and around the Dayton area while we complete some medical appointments, and then slowly migrate South for the winter.  But first; BIG NEWS!  Brenda, who bless her heart is always doing her best to win us a new Allegro Bus, now has her own Casino Review Blog!  We’ve added a link on the left side that will take you to her site.  If you’d like, you’re free to send her money that she’ll happily invest in slot machines for you (she promises to send you any winnings).  Enjoy!
We decided to make a brief trip to Erie to relax for a few days before heading for Dayton.  Although a little out of the way, we wanted to visit Presque Isle State Park and see what else Erie had to offer.  Presque Isle is a wonderful park, a wooded sand spit with over 300 acres and a 13-mile auto loop that passes beaches, picnic areas, and boat launches.  It’s a busy place; there are always people on the bike paths, the walking trails, and the beaches – but there are no campgrounds.  We stayed at Sara’s Campground,  near the entrance to Presque Isle, a sprawling, crowded park that must be chaotic during the summer weekends.  We almost had one of those ruin-your-day experiences when the GPS and web site said the campground was on the left, without any indication that a left turn puts you at the office and beach camping.  Turning there would have put us on a dead-end street and forced us to unhook the Tribute and execute a 64-point turn to get out.  Fortunately, I noticed the “RVs enter here” on the right side of the road and was able to get across the other lane of traffic to enter.  After setting up, we headed to the park to enjoy the evening and as you can see, a beautiful sunset.


The next day we headed to the downtown area and the Maritime Museum.  The museum is nice, but the real attraction is the Niagara, a recreation of Oliver Hazard Perry’s flagship during the Battle of Lake Erie.  The price of admission included a guided tour of the ship, which is really a “brig” (two square-sailed masts).  The Niagara is an active ship, sailing around the Great Lakes for festivals, and on the day of our visit was getting ready for a day sail, so there were volunteer sailors crawling around in the rigging – with a topmast of 119’, a real challenge.  Our tour guide was especially knowledgeable and entertaining and we learned that a “rope” is just a length of material, but a “line” is a rope that has a function.  And there are lots of “lines” everywhere; coiled, strung, piled, and looped.  There was more hemp on display than in a Berkley college dorm.  We took a tour down into the living quarters, and quickly discovered that living in a dark, 5-foot tall space and sleeping on a bunk the size of a pantry drawer was an experience that we think we’ll pass on for now.  But it was an interesting tour, and we came away with a greater appreciation for those who manned these ships.
Tomorrow’s a travel day, and we both look forward to moving on to a new location.  C’mon back and visit!

Johnstown - Flood City

We've resumed traveling and headed East to Johnstown, PA to visit friends and reacquaint ourselves with Bruster's Ice Cream (new favorite flavor - "Jamaican Me Crazy" and Gobs, a desert cake-sorta-thingy. We lived in the Johnstown area for a little over three years until I transfered to the Dayton, Ohio area, and made some good friends who we've kept in touch with over the years. Fittingly, it was dreary and drizzly day when we decided to revisit the sites involved in the great Johnstown flood of 1889, when over 2200 people lost their lives. Our first stop was the National Park Service monument at site of what was South Fork Lake, about 14 miles upstream from the town. There's a great visitor center with an award-winning movie, exhibits, and many pictures of what the lake looked like before the flood. It's interesting to stand in front of a photo of the lake taken in 1889 before the flood, and then look out the window at the lake as it is today, tree-covered with a railroad track running through the middle of the cut in the dam. In 1889, this lake was the resort property of Pittsburgh's elite; Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and others spent time here. The dam, originally built by the state to provide water for a canal system, was built above the deepest river gorge in the country East of the rocky Mountains. The disaster was set up by the decision to lower the damn to make it wide enough for carriages to pass over. In late May unusually heavy rains saturated the ground, and on May 30 an estimated 6 to 10 inches of rain fell, raising creeks and rivers to unprecidented levels. At 3:10 in the afternoon, the dam broke and the lake quickly emptied into the gorge and began roaring toward Johnstown. The story of the wall of water and it's destruction as it roared toward Johnstown is amazing; you can read more about the flood here. When it reached Johnstown, the wall was 60 feet high and traveling at 40 MPH. If that wasn't bad enough, it had roared through a barbed wire factory and picked up tons of wire on its way. If a wall of water filled with barbed wire wasn't bad enough, it had also picked up a few train locomotives for good measure. You can see the river entering the town at the top of the picture; the water spread as it entered the city, then smashed into the mountain directly under where I took the picture, then swirled around and tried to resume its path down the river to the left. Unfortunately, a stone railroad bridge (still standing) blocked its path, and over 30 acres of debris, including people, became trapped against the bridge. Then it caught on fire and burned for three days. Pictures of the aftermath of the flood portray the devastation, but a visit to Grandview Cemetery, where most of the victims are buried, brings home the heartbreak. 99 families were completely wiped out; driving through the cemetery, it's not unusual to see a group of gravestones, all with the same date of death, May 31, 1889. One section of the cemetery is particularly sad - the unmarked gravestones of 777 victims who were never identified.
Johnstown has a history of bad luck; more floods, the most recent in 1977, and the demise of the mining and steel industry have left this town which had a population of over 75,000 in the early 1900s has a population today of slightly over 20,000 and it continues to dwindle. In 2003, US Census data indicated that Johnstown was the least likely city in the US to attract newcomers. After visiting again, we can see why.
Hey, come back, next time we'll have a happier story!

On the Road Again

Well, it's been 30 days and over 3000 miles since we left Montana, and what a great trip we've had. I tried to create a map showing our route but the length and number of places we visited made it too busy to display. To recap our journey so far, we started in Missoula, spent the first night a Billings, then continued on to Wall, SD, where we visited the one and only Wall Drug; a city-block sized building of every piece of tourist junk you can imagine. We counted 47 signs for Wall Drug between Rapid City and Wall, and although how it got there is an interesting story, it didn't live up to the hype. From there, it was off to Sioux City, Davenport, Iowa, Richmond, Indiana, and Spring Valley, outside of Dayton, Ohio. There we visited with our good friends Kirk and Sue Birmeister, other friends in the area, and attended the retirement of Joe and Susan Berube, who were given a great sendoff by friends and family from all over the country. Then it was off to Brunswick, outside of Cleveland, for a visit with Brenda's mom Gladys, sister Joan, brother Ron; my cousin Jayne Kracker, and our friends Sue and Keith Winn. We enjoyed our visit, but it was time to travel again, this time to Johnstown, PA, my first civil service job. We visited with our good friends Pat and Sue Kiniry and drove around looking at all of the changes (mostly good) that have taken place in the area. We stayed at the campground of a dear friend, Grace Shofstall, a lovely place where we kept our RV during our Johnstown days. She's a remarkable woman of indeterminate age who does almost all of the maintenance and upkeep herself, while managing to find the time to create incredible works of art. A real joy to be around, she had us in tears with her story about being addicted to almonds and telling her doctor that she needed to be admitted to a drug and alcohol rehab center. Her park is lovely, and the trees provided a beautiful setting for our stay. Our timing was great for the fall foliage; the leaves were in their peak colors and the weather cooperated for most of our stay. While there, we visited the Flight 93 memorial, a nicely done temporary location in a rural area outside of Somerset. An amazing number of people find their way on the back roads to reach the spot where the aircraft impacted. There are plans for a suitable memorial that will be built once funding is available; hopefully in the next year or two. If you double click on the picture, you can see an American flag at the crash site in the field behind the monument. Also in the area is the Quecreek Mine memorial, the site where nine miners were rescued from a flooded underground mine after being trapped for three days. It's amazing to stand on the spot where a shaft was dug to the trapped miner's location 248 feet below; how they were able to locate the miners and drill a 30 inch shaft to pull them out one by one was a truly heroic feat. An interesting web site about the rescue can be found at www.quecreekrescue.org. Leaving western Pennsylvania and land of the hated Steelers, we headed south through West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and into Red Bay, Alabama, the home of Tiffin Industries and where our Allegro Bay was manufactured. We had hoped to stay at the factory campground and have some minor service done, but all 193 campsites plus 50 overflow sites were taken, so we decided to continue on south and have the work done at a dealer some time in the future. We spent a few days in Natchez, Mississippi, and are currently in Marksville, Louisiana, parked at the Paragon Casino RV park, where Brenda is working on winning us enough money for a new Marathon Coach (they start at $1.2M). We plan on returning to Natchez this weekend to see the annual Hot-Air Balloon Festival and will let you know how our visit went in the next blog. Until then, thanks for checking in on us, and for all of you that we visited in the last month, thanks so much for the great hospitality and for being such great friends!