Road Trip: Ohio
Day 10: Sunday, April 14, 2019 - Stoystown, PA
Day's statistics:
Weather: 60s, rain, breezy
Steps: Steve 7,981; Linda 5,656
Drove: 430 miles
Time to head back home. 😢
This morning was the Mensa Select announcements, preview of next year, and the games give away. There were so many games - and they started late - that I wasn't done until about 12:30.
It was wet, but the rain had stopped. I had a big breakfast because we weren't supposed to be stopping for a late lunch until the other side of Pittsburgh, and perhaps even the other side of Stoystown. This was going to be a long driving day - all 430 miles of it. All of it, with the small exception of our late lunch, was going from Wadsworth to home.
Almost the last state line we'd be crossing this vacation.
We exited the Pennsylvania Thruway and hopped on 30 to make our way to Stoystown to go to the Flight 93 Memorial. We were considering stopping at a location on the outskirts of Pittsbugh, but because it was so early, we decided to wait and go to a location in Everett - which is on the other side of Stoystown. If only we really knew how long it was going to take.
We arrived at the Flight 93 Memorial with the intent of seeing the Tower of Voices...
but wound up also visiting more of the site. But let's start with the Tower.
Information about the tower.
Looking straight up while standing in the middle of it.
It was windy. Very windy. Not breezy, or gusty, but a continuously blowing wind. I took a clip with my camera and the
chimes were nearly inaudible. Linda took a video too, but it was ever so slightly better, so we went with her's.
The tower isn't complete yet. There are only 8 prototype chimes in place at the moment. When the entire tower is done, there are supposed to be 40 chimes in place, one chime for each life lost.
The park is 1,000 acres. There are some nice views from the park.
There is an overlook a fair distance from crash site that is attached to the visitor's center.
Beyond the white wall in the distance is where the flight went down.
Here is a diagram of the site.
We went inside the center and there was a lot of reading, and a couple videos. There were also phone handsets to pick up and listen to the voice mail messages the passengers left their loved ones before the crash. Some of the debris from the crash was there - with a note that the largest piece was merely six feet long. Think about that for a moment. Of an entire large passenger jet, the largest surviving piece was only six feet long. Between that, the pictures, the stories, the videos, the stories... it was all a little sad.
We drove down to the area where the wall with the names was, but decided not to get out.
In the lot of the Visitor's Center, was this "genius".
We finished up at the Memorial and got back on the road. We stayed on 30 because the restaurant we wanted to go to was just off of 30. But we were going to be getting back on the thruway long before we got back to Gettysburg. We finally arrived at Kelly's Scenic View Restaurant. And... it was closed. Not sure if it was closed for the day (there were no hours on the door), or permanently, but it looked too well kept to be permanent. We continued into Everett, and happened upon a small pizzeria. We sat, reviewed the menu, and ordered. Linda had Veal Parmigna and Spaghetti, I had a Cheese Steak Stromboli. Linda took half her's home, while I finished mine. (We thought there were pictures, but we either didn't take them, deleted them, or can't locate them.)
Back on the road. Again. After a stop to stretch our legs somewhere in PA, a stop to get some gas - we didn't fill up because the gas was $3.09 per gallon - a stop at the market to replensish perishables, we were home. But the fun didn't stop there. We put the mail - 10 days worth - on the kitchen island, to find that it was covered with ants. So we spent the next half hour killing the little effers. Each piece of mail had more ants under it. Lift, spray, wipe, repeat. (They must have ALL been in the mail because the next day the mail box was sans ants.) We emptied our luggage, washed up, and got into our own bed for the first time in 10 days. Ah, it's good to be home.