JOY DOESN’T ALWAYS COME THROUGH THE BIG EXPERIENCES….SOMETIMES IT’S THE SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT ENCOUNTERS THAT FILL YOUR HEART WITH DELIGHT

In July we ended our MMAP projects for this year, but we’ve continued our travels and have had some great experiences. Soon we will be heading back to Arizona for the winter. We hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures and stories we have included so far. In this update I had hoped to include our experiences in Pennsylvania while still on project as well as our continued travels to date. However somehow while working on this update, I lost almost three quarters of it prior to getting it posted. [Oh how I "love" computers!]

Therefore I will not put all of our adventures off just to recompose the lost items. This update will only contain our travels while still on project in Pennsylvania in June and July. Our last update did cover the sightseeing in Main, but the continued "Great Adventure" to New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, southwestern Pennsylvania and our current location just outside of Washington DC will have to wait for another day.

However, before showing you the things we saw while in northeast Pennsylvania, we’d like to share an interesting encounter Jim had at (believe it or not) the local laundromat in Mansfield, Massachusetts just a couple of weeks ago.

We were doing our laundry the day before we left Massachusetts – a mundane but necessary task of our nomadic life. While I was folding clothes, Jim took the laundry soap out to the truck. (That’s not too exciting you say - but let me continue.) In the parking lot a man about our age (you know…OLD) was looking at the MMAP logo on our truck.

He asked Jim what it meant (which is not that odd, since a lot of folks have an interest in the logo and ask us what it means.) Jim explained to him what we do on the MMAP projects and the types of organizations where we volunteer, thinking at best this guy might be interested in joining MMAP and we could pass on a brochure to him – or at the least, he was just being polite and really was not interested in what we do. Actually, neither was the case.

This gentleman, Chuck proceeded to share a very poignant yet heartwarming story about his life. It seems he was at one time a very successful ship’s master pilot, but because of drugs and drink he lost everything he had and ended up homeless and on the streets for five years. Somehow through a Christian organization that reached out to the homeless, his life was turned around. He is now sober and getting his life back together. He has a job, an apartment, a girl friend and the chance to start his life over again. He’s also saving his money to buy a boat so he can start his own business. Apparently during his recovery time, Chuck encountered groups like MMAP who helped the organizations that helped him. He said he realized that without folks like MMAPers helping these organizations, there would be many who would not be able to reach out to people like him. Several times during the conversation Chuck kept saying, “Thank you for the work you do in helping people like me.”

This was a seemingly minor encounter, but one that filled our hearts with such delight. We feel it was an affirmation to us that our tiny part in MMAP’s “small part of the big picture” is something we are blessed to be doing. 

So with that little “aside” aside….let us bring you up to date on our sightseeing adventures in June and July while still at Miracle Mountain Ranch on our last MMAP project. 

NORTH EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA SIGHTS IN JUNE AND JULY –

We found the area of Pennsylvania where we were to be mostly rural farmland. 

For the most part, it is clean, green and delightful, with many quaint old towns.

Although not as populated with Amish as the area around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 
many of the farms in this area are either Mennonite or Amish. This was a familiar
sight on the local roadways.

Corry was the town closest to the MMAP project - about 7 miles away. Although just a small old town now,  it was once the hub of commerce in the 1860's. (Why, you may ask.) It's situated where two railroad lines intersected and had various manufacturing businesses. One of the biggest businesses in the area was a corset manufacturer who mailed out so much merchandise they had to build one of the largest post offices of the day in the US just to keep up with the delivery of their wares!  (Just a tidbit of trivia for you!!)

This was a freshly carved piece in the Corry downtown park. It was carved during 
the annual Corry Days festival.  And of course you can see the "old bird" peeking 
out from behind the new bird.

This charming old home just outside the town limits had been turned into a popular B&B.

A day trip to the Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River

Another day trip to Erie, PA and Lake Erie (approximately 30 miles north of Corry.)

View of downtown Erie from the tower at the waterfront

More of Erie from the tower

Another day trip to the town of North East, PA. (That's its name- not its location.) 
This was the fountain in the town park where they were having a week end craft fair.

This cute little place across from the park in North East just struck me as a lovely 
well kept home one imagines seeing in this area of the country. And we did see 
many like it during our travels.

Here's a trivia question for you......Do you know when and where the first oil well in the United States was drilled?

Many of you probably guessed Oklahoma or Texas. WRONG - The first oil well in the United States was the Drake well at Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Another interesting day trip - Pithole City. Built in 1865, it grew to a population over 
15,000 in less than 1 year

Today, this is all that is left of the city. Rather amazing!

Pithole City is now a ghost town – or more accurately a non-existent town. This is its story:


It boomed because of its proximity to the first commercial oil well in the United States. Pithole's sudden growth made it one of the most famous of oil boom towns. Oil strikes at nearby wells in January 1865 prompted a large influx of people to the area (most of whom were land speculators.) The town was laid out in May 1865, and by December was incorporated with an approximate population of 20,000. At its peak, Pithole had at least 54 hotels, 3 churches, the third largest post office in Pennsylvania, a newspaper, a theater, a railroad, the world's first pipeline and a red-light district "the likes of Dodge City's." By 1866, economic growth and oil production in Pithole had slowed. Oil strikes around other nearby communities and numerous fires drove residents away from Pithole. In the early morning of February 24, 1866 a house caught fire and the flames were spread to other buildings by the wind. In two hours, many of the buildings on three of the major streets were reduced to smoldering ashes.In March 1866 (less than one year after the town's incorporation) a chain of banks owned by Charles Vernon Culver, a financier and member of United States House of Representatives collapsed. This triggered a financial panic throughout the oil region, bursting the oil bubble. Speculators and potential investors stopped coming to Pithole. The worst of multiple fires occurred on August 2, burning down several city blocks and destroying 27 wells.When many oil strikes occurred elsewhere, people left Pithole, often taking their houses and places of business with them or abandoning their property. By December 1866, the population had dropped to 2,000. The newspaper was relocated to Petroleum Center in July 1868. The theater was sold in August 1868 and moved to Pleasantville. The 1870 census recorded the population as only 237. The borough charter was officially annulled in August 1877. The remains of the city were sold in 1879 back to Venango County for $4.37. The Catholic church was dismantled and moved to Tionesta in 1886; the Methodist church was kept in "usable condition" through private donations before being taken down in the 1930s. 

The same day that we drove to Pithole, we also stopped in Tidioute

Pronounced “tiddy out”, the name is an Iroquoian word meaning "protrusion of land", referring to a sharp bend in the Allegheny River. It is a quaint small village with a population of approximately 792 people.

The view overlooking the village

Our third stop that day was in Warren, the county seat of Warren County and also the home to the headquarters of the Allegheny National Forest. It is also the headquarters for the Chief Cornplanter Council, the oldest continuously chartered Boy Scouts of America Council.

This is a view of  the town fountain.

We saw these guys cooking up a whole lot of chicken on several spits. 
So we stopped to ask what they were doing.

They told us they were preparing approximately 225 chickens 
for a local Boy Scout fund raising function.

We offered to buy a couple of the birds - but they said they were all spoken for. 

Darn! Sure smelled good!!

Our final day trip while at the Miracle Mountain Ranch project was to another small Pennsylvania town - Waterford, a few miles south of Erie. The town was having some festivities - a parade, a gathering in the park of war reenactments from the Revolutionary War, French and Indian War, Civil War and World Wars I and II and some local entertainment and craft booths.

As you can see from the preceding pictures, even though we spent six weeks of June and July on the MMAP project, working four days a week, we still had plenty of time to explore the sights of the area on our three-day weekends. Most of what we did was free except for the gasoline expense of driving around the countryside. 

In between the June three-weeks and the July three-weeks at Miracle Mountain we also took a 5 day jaunt up to Rochester, New York to visit with Jim's sister, Joanne and her husband, Steve. While there we caught up on our lives, checked out their RV that they keep parked at a nearby family campground and took some drives around Jim's hometown. The four of us also took a drive to Lake Seneca and stopped at a local winery. And Jim and I took another day trip to Litchfield State Park.

 Helen lands "the big one" at Steve and Jo's RV campground in the catch and release pond behind their site

 Steve working on the deck for the RV.

Steve, Jim and Jo hamming it up outside

the winery near Seneca Lake.

 Litchfield State Park

Hoping to catch you up to the rest of our travels as soon as I can get my computer to behave itself!

Until next update.....keep your eyes open for your own simple little joys to delight your life.

In closing, one LAST bit of advice:

A sign on one of the washers in the laundromat in Corry. REALLY? I'd considered stuffing Jim in one of the washers....but ok...guess I won't!