Several questions have come up on this PA trip. What better way to remember the questions and (as I find them) the answers than to … blog them:
How do Evening Primroses work?
What puts the fire in a firefly / lightening bug?
What is a Township?
What is a Pike?
Why is the bizarre Trojan War art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art considered a significant contribution to contemporary art rather than just “silly”.
We are winding up our trip to Pennsyvania and the New Jersey Shore here in Lancaster, the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Sunday is kind of a “slow” day here because the tourism is very much geared to Amish themes and real Amish folks go to church and take a day of rest, doing only essential chores on Sunday. We did pass a lot of buggies today on their way to and from Churches in the area.
Tomorrow we’ll drive to Intercourse and Paradise and there will be folks tilling their fields with horse drawn plows, vegetable stands tended by kids in bonnets and hats, and hopefully some time to chat with folks for whom time has largely stood still, in a technological sense, for over a century.
[where: lancaster, PA]
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
Gettysburg PA.
Now this town really knows how to do tourism. Sure there are a lot of silly tours and silly shops (Battleground Fries?) but the town is clean, pretty, historically fascinating.
We had a great lunch at Dobbin House Tavern. Built in 1776. Underground Railroad slave hideaway in 1800’s. Candlelit tavern feel with waiters in period dress. Good Sandwiches and a great little history primer menu – I love those! Prices about the same as Dennys.
Our spotless $49 per night (coupon book rate) Days Inn with hot waffles for breakfast remains a trip highlight. One more night in New Jersey and I think the kids would have run away for good.
The National Historic Park has an excellent self guided auto tour (free) and had a superb introduction to the battleground and strategies of the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg on a very large map with little lights that you sit around in a small square amphitheatre. Well worth the $4 and one of the few things I remember from my last trip here about 32 years ago. They are getting rid of it to install new media and touchscreens in a fancy new visitor center next year. I almost felt guilty being a touchscreen guy because this was cheap, effective, educational, great technology.
[where: 17325]
Here we are in Gettysburg, PA. The Days Inn here in Gettysburg is simply excellent with well appointed, extremely clean rooms and comfort. Grounds are spotless and pretty. The pool is large, warm, clean. Desk staff has been *outstanding* and professional. Rack rate at the Days Inn website was $141 but the Roomsaver Coupon made the rate $49.00.
Roomsaver and other major discount coupon havepage after page of advertising and a few bad maps. But don’t underestimate these coupons. The books generally require that this “walk in, only when rooms are available” rate be the lowest the property offers to the public, and in my experience this has been the case. More importantly the availability of these is very good on most days. Even in tourism hot spots like here in Gettysburg hotels generally have vacancies Sunday-Thursday nights. Do NOT expect to use the coupons on Friday or Saturday nights or during special events or high crowd times, but always ask about availability of discounts and always keep coupon books in your car. You’ll find them at many McDonalds and gas stations, especially those along the interstates.
Summary:
For mid-week travel try coupon book rates which are often 60% or more off the regular rates.
Brian Caufield has written a great Forbes piece about the impact of new media on … old media. He notes the rise of GigaOm and TechCrunch and the demise of Red Herring and CNET.
My take on much of the new game is that *keeping expenses low* is far more important than *generating big revenues*. We may be seeing a 180 degree turnaround in many industries where we return to small business, entrepreneurial modes of production that use the internet as the mechanism to cheaply scale from small to large. Scaling up in media industries used to take substantial capital but now it takes almost nothing. Info based industries have only begun to reel from the coming changes.
OK, here we are in one of America’s top travel destinations – Atlantic City New Jersey – but I’m having some trouble figuring out exactly what we should do tomorrow. The New Jersey State Tourism website leaves a lot to be desired as it seems to want to lump all of Jersey together in the same format which makes Atlantic City and Camden of comparable tourism worth. Bureaucratically and politically correct but near worthless when you are planning travel. Of course an advantage here is that you are not pestered with advertising and pitches while you try to pick through the bland “politically correct” descriptions to decide what’s the “best stuff” here in New Jersey. New Jersey Tourism official site.
After some surfing the gameplan will be generally to head into Atlantic City and walk around on the boardwalk looking for neat shops and restaurants and swim a bit on the beach, which is miles long and hopefully home to some good sized waves and mild water. The next day we’ll head out to Cape May, the point of land at the south of the Jersey Shore where you can take the Cape May Ferry to Delaware.
Atlantic City’s site is more informative, though I was hoping for more specific info about family related activities. We are staying in Absecon about 5 miles from the Boardwalk and the big Casinos which now seem to dominate the Atlantic City scene. I think I was here about 35 years ago on a family trip but certainly don’t remember much.
Atlantic City Tourism official site
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
Here in Philadelphia’s historic district many of the buildings offer historical tours and insights. Here at Betsy Ross’s actors from “Once Upon a Nation” talk about women and the Revolution. I’ve really been impressed with the quality of some of the interpreters here who make you feel like you really are stepping back in time.
I’m glad to see this approach is becoming a popular way to teach people history. National Park Service ranger guides are usually professional but lack the clothing and often that spark of historical enthusiasm that makes the enactment interpretations so effective.
Dave Winer is both right on and I fear way too optimistic when, in his discussion of Facebook’s value, he says:
I’m tired of building networks of friends, over and over.
Next time I do it, it’ll be for keeps.
Dave I only wish this were true, but I think you’ll need to be pretty stubborn *or* very socially innovative (hey, you -are- innovative! Do it!) to fix the problem of the proliferation of way too many social networks with way too few standards to simplify the whole mess. But I’m with you if you want to start insisting on some standards – basically some sort of informal understanding among social network users that we won’t sign up for any more social networks until there is a way to port that info safely, easily, seamlessly to other social networks with I don’t understand why this standard has been so elusive but I think it’s simply that markets have been driving things and there has, until very recently, been too little or negative incentive to make this happen. As Dave notes Facebook’s open approaches may make them the ultimate social application, leading me to wonder if I was too pessimistic to suggest Facebook’s not worth what many say they should fetch in a buyout.
Good for Intel, and good for the One Laptop project. Intel will cooperate rather than compete to bring laptops to kids all over the world. It was never clear to me that Intel did anything wrong in the first place because the goal is to get the computers to kids, not get *certain types* of computers to kids, but the One Laptop folks seemed to think the Intel “Classmate” computer would impede their progress in spreading the silicon gospel to poor kids all over the globe, so all is swell now.
Wow, I’m here in Philadelphia enjoying the Hilton Hospitality with good free WIFI, but didn’t realize until tonight that the Blog Philadelphia UNconference is going on today and tomorrow. Looks like a great and sold out event, and it’s great to see blogging conferences sprouting up outside of Silicon Valley. I’ll miss meeting other bloggers which would have been fun, but I will plan to enjoy history and cheessteaks with the family as we explore this spectacularly historical American Masterpiece – Philly!
U-S History is one of our Online Highways websites with great history info.
Pennsylvania Travel at Online Highways
Gophila.com is a great information resource but has some serious navigation challenges. For example the drop down menus are annoying and complex, and most crazy is the flash photo montage at the index page which almost immediately wipes out the intro screen that has the navigation a user needs. The pix are OK, but don’t do the history justice. I think local folks don’t realize that people don’t come to Philadelphia to see a pretty garden or Christmas light display. They come here to see Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s house, and the cradle of American Liberty. I guess those things just aren’t stylish enough for the Philly web design crowd? Sillies!
Joe Duck 