September 14th 15th, 2008

Sunday 14~~~We arrived in Clarksboro, NJ a small town about 8 miles from Philadelphia and we don't have to fight all that traffic. It was so hot and muggy when we got here, we set up the dish and turned on the air conditioner, watched a movie and relaxed. Sharon cooked us a good chicken dinner and we enjoyed just being home. Monday 15~~~ Today we drove to a couple of National Parks in this area and both of them were very interesting. The first one was "Valley Forge" who most people are familiar with the story of General George Washington and his soldiers spending the winter at Valley Forge with little food, poor shelter and clothed in nothing but rags for the extreme winter. We learned that story is not what killed so many men that winter in 1777. It was disease, not cold or starvation, that was the true scourge of the camp. Army reports reveal that two-thirds of the nearly 2000 men who perished died during the warmer months of March, April and May, when supplies were more than abundant. The most common killers were influenza, typhus, and dysentery. They said that Morristown was actually the town who had the poor conditions and extreme cold weather, not Valley Forge. It never got cold enough in Valley Forge to kill the germs and viruses and that is why so many got sick and died. Interesting Huh???? (pictures) Martha Washington followed her husband to the many camps he was in. The officers were put up in the lovely homes of the local people who had to give them up to the army. The pictures are from the original house where the Washington's lived during the winter at "Valley Forge." The Corp. of Engineers have built reproductions of the cabins the cabins the soldiers built for themselves that 12 men shared. It was common for some of the wives to follow their men doing the chores the did for them at home, (washing, mending, cooking and molding bullets) they too stayed in the same cabin as their husbands, pretty crowded I think. We learned when we went through the Philadelphia mint, legend says Martha Washington donated family silverware to strike our nations first coins.~~~Next we drove to "Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site," a restored iron making "plantation". From 1771 to 1883 they produced every type of iron product needed ( iron kettles, cannons, many different sizes cast iron stoves) here by transforming mineral into metal by a process using the extreme heat from blast furnaces and and the chemistry of oxygen and carbon monoxide. They also made the iron into bars (pig Iron) for blacksmiths to use and make things with. The building were too far for what we felt like walking to on such a hot, humid day, so we never took any pictures here. The park had many apple trees growing around it, so they offered everyone one apple to eat. We took a picture of Kent using the long apple picker stick to pick us a couple of apples.