A few Philly Disappointments

 

Backside of Independence Hall

   At the beginning of August Laurie and I went to Philly for what would be our third time. Philly is probably my favorite city to visit. Though it can be argued that Washington DC was way more museums and statues, I like going to Philadelphia. All the fun stuff to do is pretty much in two places. The historic stuff is in Old City. You can walk around Independence Hall, Congress Hall, and the other sites in the area of the Visitor Center. Most of the museums are on the Museum Mile. You need to take one of the buses to get to the museums from Old City but it really isn't a problem.

    I suggested a trip to Philly and we came up a way for it to work with our schedules. The plan ended up being we go from Thursday til Saturday. The first two days were hers in Philadelphia. Saturday we went to Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge. I wanted to go to Brig last year, but, well, Covid. So I was planning on a solo trip this year, but when Laurie wanted to go away and Brig is 90 minutes from Philly, it was a no brainer. 

   When there are a lot of attractions we usually put them in a list and each of us prioritize them. One being the thing we most want to do and the last number being the thing we want to do least.  We then add the scores and the things with the lowest number are things we try to do. Usually we are on the same page and want to see the same things. In our two days the things we most wanted to do/see were 

A tour of Independence Hall

See Washington's Tent in the American Revolutionary Museum

Barnes Foundation Museum

A tour of the Rare Books at the Philadelphia Library

A Murder Mystery Walk through Old City at dusk

  We had done Independence Hall a few times. However it is such a treat to stand where our Founding Fathers stood. It never gets old. Washington's tent is in a special room in the museum. Because it is so old it is kept in the dark. You can only see it during a presentation every hour. They light it up for a minute or so. The presentation will bring you to tears.

  The Barnes Foundation is an excellent museum. It is not as big as the Museum of Art but I've been there three times.  The Rare Book tour may sound boring, but the library has amazing artifacts. On the tour you will see Dicken's pet raven which is stuffed and at the library. Some of the rare books are actually from the middle ages and even older.

   Lastly, we had done both of Philly's ghost tours. The mystery tour takes place walking through town looking for clues. We were looking forward to it and thought it would be fun.

Our trip...

 

A portrait of Big George

    We left North Attleboro at the god forsaken hour of 4 am. Despite our early start the George Washington Bridge was not kind to us. We got stuck in NYC traffic for ninety minutes. We finally managed to get to the parking garage under the Independence Hall Visitor Center at 11 am.  Our first stop was the visitor center. Here we planned to pick up timed tickets for Independence Hall. 

   When we asked the ranger if any tickets were available he said they don't give out tickets anymore. They are only available online. Before you say "Duh, Covid", this change had only been made om August 1, 2021. Switching to only online tickets was not Covid related. Legitimately, they only switched to this system six days before our arrival! This was crushing to us. There are very few places more historic than where our Founding Fathers walked, debated, and argued. Even the floor is original, so you actually stand where Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin stood.

   Since we couldn't go to Independence Hall we skipped ahead to walking through the other parts of the historic district. Laurie had read the American Revolutionary War Museum was only open Fri-Sun so our plan was to go there Friday. This was going to make going to the museums in the morning tough and made planning a problem. However, when we walked by it looked open. I pulled on the door and it was unlocked. It turned out Laurie had read the winter hours. So we went in and saw the presentation for Washington's tent. We felt our luck had changed for the better.

 

   After going to the museum, we got a cheesesteak and went to the portrait gallery in the old bank. That pretty much ended our day.

   Friday morning we took a bus to the Museum Mile. We didn't think the bus would get us to the 10 am Rare Books Tour at the library. However, it dropped us off at 9:57. We ran up the library stairs and pulled on the door handle. Locked! I don't know why the library was closed. There wasn't anything on the website. So unfortunately, we could not go on the rare books tour. 

I wanted to get a photo of Rodin's "The Thinker" that actually didn't suck.  I partially succeeded in that quest.  Despite taking photos up close, further away, with people, without people, I didn't get any wallhangers. The white overcast sky was just too bright.

   From there we went into the Barnes Foundation Art Gallery. This place is awesome. In the early 1900s a rich doctor became obsessed with European Art and started a massive collection. Before he died he set up the museum to share it with the public. The collection is huge with many paintings from Van Goh, Picasso, Monet, and many others. Besides the artwork, there were short 20 minute lectures about some of the paintings. We sat in on them and learned a lot. 

After we left Barnes we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is the museum where Rocky ran up the steps. We pretty much hung out in the Monet area for an hour before catching a bus back to out motel. 

   When we got back, we got another cheesesteak from Sonny's then went to the motel. Laurie rented a motel with a rooftop pool and we had a blast swimming from the top of the world.

Van Gogh's "The Mailman"
at the Barnes Foundation

   You may be asking, what about the Murder Mystery walk. We tried to get reservations for the Friday tour on Thursday, but it was sold out. 

   Needless to say, our trip was filled with a few disappointments. Not going to Independence Hall, the rare book tour at the Library, and the Murder Mystery Walk did dampen the experience. Why did I write a post with so many disappointments? As I've stated before I want to write the truth. Not every trip is going to be an epic adventure. Sometimes there are disappointments. Also, if you ever go to Philly, you now know you need to buy your Independence Hall ticket online. Hopefully, this can save at least one person the crushing blow of going to Philly without going to Independence Hall.

   Saying all of that, the trip had many fun points. The post was an honest description of my trip. But it is not complaining, I'd still rather be disappointed on a short vacation to Philly than be at work! That is the most honest statement I can make!!!

I can thank William Penn for founding
a city I have visited three times and eaten
a dozen cheesesteaks in!

   

Brigantine

Roseate Spoonbill

   The first weekend of August Laurie and I went on a three day getaway. Laurie was having a tough time and needed a trip. I needed to get away from work. We went to Philadelphia for two days and went to Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey on the last day of the trip.  I had been trying to figure out a way to go to Forsythe and was hoping to make a trip there
in August anyway. When Laurie and I came up with the Philly trip it was a no brainer to me to go to the wildlife refuge also. 

   Forsythe NWR used to be called Brigantine. I don't know when they changed it. I suspect they wanted to honor Edward Forsythe, but I haven't looked into it. Most of the locals still call it Brig. That is why the name of my post is Brigantine. I guess I feel like a "real birder" calling it by its old name.

   Laurie and I left for Brig very early, I had read it was about an hour from Philadelphia, but the GPS correctly estimated it was over 90 minutes. So, we got there later than I would have liked. As we all know birds are more active in the morning. However, shorebirds and wading birds are usually active all day so I probably overreacted to our late start. 

    Brig is a birders dream. Looking at ebird lists from August of 2020 showed I could possibly see thousands of birds. Some species of shorebirds would be in the hundreds. Even the number of species was amazing. Some of the lists would have upwards of eighty species. I really wasn't worried about the number of species or number of birds. I wanted birds to look at and I had a few targets. I was hoping to see Carolina Chickadee, Black Skimmer, Gull Billed Tern, and American Avocet. None of these were lifers and it was unlikely I'd get a lifer unless a rarity showed up. 

   Within a few minutes of going through the gate we had some good birds. I saw a flock of Pectoral Sandpipers that numbered about a dozen. I had never seen more than two together.  There were some other shorebirds in the mud. Across the street I watched Black Skimmers feeding in the drainage canal. While I was looking at the shorebirds someone told me a Roseate Spoonbill had been seen in the area in the early morning. Roseate Spoonbill is a southern swamp bird. One of the few species I missed in Florida and probably number one on species I most wanted to see! 

Caspain Tern

   A little further down the road I pulled up to a group of cars with people looking at gulls and shorebirds. Immediately I saw two Caspian Terns. Caspians are the largest terns. They are as big as a gull. My big camera lens was still away waiting for backordered  parts to arrive. So I was relegated to using my inadequately small 300 mm. This was a huge disappointment not having my big lens at one of the premier destinations in the country for wildlife. 

   As I was laser focused on Caspians I was talking to a guy also getting photos. He said how amazing it was right there and didn't even care about the people. I asked him if we were both looking at the Caspians. He said "no, the Roseate Spoonbill is right there". In my least impressive acts as a birder I had another birder point out a large pink wading bird in the middle of a mudflat to me. Still, there it was, I got to see a Roseate Spoonbill. It stuck around, mostly napping, for about twenty minutes before flying over to another mudflat. I did get some photos, but even while taking them, it was crushing to think what damage I could have done with my 600 mm lens.

   Brigantine has a wildlife loop drive about 6-8 miles. It does loop back to the visitor center. Most of the road goes through a huge marsh mixed with salt ponds and mudflats. We drove down the loop twice. We left the refuge to grab some sandwiches at a gas station in between passes.  Half way through the loop I came across some Gull Billed Terns. They were pretty far out but easily seen in my spotting scope. We also saw Boat Tailed Grackle. 

   There had been a Black Bellied Whistling Duck on the refuge for a couple weeks but it was not in view while I was there with a bunch of other birders looking for it. However, the next day while I was home there was a Black Bellied Whistling Duck in Rhode Island which I got to see after work. Which was a lifer and a Rhode Island State bird for me.

Juvenile Common Tern

 

   The other target bird I needed was a Carolina Chickadee. Brig is about the northern limit of Carolina Chickadee. They are found further south in the Appalachian mountains. I actually had to work pretty hard to find one. By midday the temp was well over nintey degrees and the Greenhead flies were borderline unbearable. I walked through the short woods trails for almost an hour looking for the chickadee while killing flies that were landing on my sweaty skin. Finally I saw one eating fruit from a choke cherry tree. 

   I never did see the Avocet. Unfortunately I had to work early on Sunday so I couldn't spend the whole day there.  There were also Snow Geese somewhere on the refuge, but I simply ran out of time. None the less I got an unexpected lifer in the Spoonbill. I saw Gull Billed and Caspian Terns and Skimmers. They are all birds I love seeing. Because of all my effort to find a Carolina Chickadee, I felt good that I actually worked for and found a bird I targeted. As opposed to pulling up to a group of birders and there is a bird right in front of you, it was actually rewarding to find the chickadee.

Diamondback Terrapin

   I would definitely go back to Brig again. I'd probably go the second week of August instead of the first week. The only reason would be to hope the Greenhead flies would be more scarce.  The wildlife loop is beautiful. I'd go for two days and stay at a motel in the area. I'd bird until it got hot and cool off at a motel. The refuge is directly across the bay from Atlantic City and I could see the skyline.  The refuge is simple to get to. It is four miles from the Garden State Parkway.

Again, I can't say enough how much I wish I had my lens. I would have taken a lot more photos. 

Whydah Pirate Museum

 

   I've done all kinds of fun things over the last couple of weeks. I'm happy to have a computer and can write about them again. Last Friday I did one of those fun things. I did went to the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, MA. Laurie and I took the trip down. Going to the Whydah Pirate Museum was one of the last things I could think of doing in MA that I had never been to. I was excited when we came up with the idea. 

  First off...the name. Whydah is the name of a pirate ship that sank off of the coast of Wellfleet in 1717. The ship had been lost for three hundred years even though it sunk only five hundred yards offshore. The ship had been captured by pirate Sam Bellamy. After he captured it, he turned it into his flagship. He was on his way home to Massachusetts from plundering the seas for a year. In that year he captured over fifty ships. The Whydah was caught in a nor'easter and crashed on a sandbar. All but a few passengers (pirates) died in the storm. The pirate treasure is one of the only pirate treasures ever really found despite what we were taught as kids. It is by far the largest pirate treasure ever found.

   The museum is open 10-4, closed Mondays. Cost for an adult is $17. I did have to wear a mask. I was only allowed to take photos near the front desk where there is a painting of Sam Bellamy and the anchor recovered from the shipwreck. I was not allowed to take photos in the main galleries. Heading east on Main Street (Route 28) the museum is set back on your left.

Pirate Captain Sam Bellamy

   The little museum is awesome. All of the artifacts were discovered/recovered from the wreck of the Whydah. There are multiple canon and pistols on display. There are coins from all over the world on display. You can even touch one of them. There were many other artifacts you wouldn't think about such as the forks and cooking utensils that the pirates would have used to eat during their daily lives. 

   There are a few bones found from the bodies that were buried in Davy Jones Locker. The youngest pirate on the ship was a little boy. There is a femur that is almost certainly his. 

Reading all of the info, it only takes about ninety minutes to go through the museum. I found all of the info fascinating. I loved seeing the canon and the treasure. Though not very big, the Whydah Pirate Museum well surpassed my expectations. I went to a shipwreck museum in Key West in 2019 and frankly I was bored. However, this museum was the history of one ship, its crew, and its sunken treasure. It was fascinating. Go if you have any interest. 

Robert Frost Farm, Derry, NH

 

   Saturday morning Laurie and I went to the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH. From the MA/NH border on I-93 it is a about a twenty minute ride. It is free to tour the grounds and barn (some photos and a gift shop are in the barn). If you want to tour the house it costs an out-of-state tourist five dollars for a forty five minute tour. The Frost Farm is owned by NH Parks Dept.

   My advice, take the tour. I learned so much about Robert Frost in forty five minutes that it made my head spin. The guide, a NH park ranger, knew everything about Frost. For one thing, Frost moved a lot. He had 55 addresses during his life. He owned the farm for eleven years before moving on. I could go on and on about facts I learned, but you really should go yourself if you have any interest.

   Unless I read it wrong, the website said photography was allowed outside but not in the house. However, the ranger said photography was alright but video was not. Because of my research, I did not bring my camera into the house. So I used my cell phone camera instead, yes I felt dirty!

   After Frost sold the house the land was turned into a car junkyard (you read that right). When the farm was finally bought by the state it took ten years to clean the property before the public could visit. Because the house was out of the Frost family for so long there is very little in the house that is original. The house was restored to look as it did when Frost's daughter was a child. Unfortunately, she was nine when they moved away and when she came back to help with the restoration, she couldn't remember it all. None the less, it looks like a 1900 farmhouse, and there are a few original things that Frost surely used. 

   

Outside you will find some apple trees. There is a very pretty field that Frost surely walked in hundreds of times. Along the perimeter of the property there is a trail. Every hundred feet or so there is a Robert Frost poem to read. Where two trails split off in the woods there is one ofFrost's poems. Any guesses which one?  If you know it is "The Road not Taken" you would be correct. 

   We walked around the field and read most of the poems. I ate at least three apples from the trees careful not to eat any worms. They were very good apples though. After our tour we went through the gift shop and bought a Frost book of poems for $3. 

   I highly recommend this day trip. You don't have to love poetry (I don't) but if you like history or respect this great American author you will love the Robert Frost Farm. Check the website. In the fall the farm is only open Wed-Sun. It will close for the winter in October. Link and two more photos below.

https://www.robertfrostfarm.org/

Ranger Bob
This crib is one that Frost's children used as babies

Frost did sit here!

Bronx Zoo

   

   About fifteen years ago I took my son and his little sister to the Bronx Zoo. We got the all inclusive pass and tried to see everything. We failed. We probably saw eighty percent of the zoo in the day. The main reason for our failure was standing in lines. Our pass included a monorail ride through "Asia". We waited in that line for over a half hour. We spent a lot of time in the Congo Forest looking at the gorillas.

   Laurie and I decided to go back to the zoo this year. We specifically went the first Friday in September. The reasoning being that kids would be back in school and the place would have very few people. Also, going in September we hoped the weather would be a little cooler than the summer. We knew going on a Friday would mean commuter traffic going into New York, but we were willing to deal with that to avoid weekend zoo crowds.

   We left North Attleboro at 6:30 am. We arrived at the zoo at 10:30. We did sit in traffic in southern Connecticut for over an hour. Then when we got into the city, we missed a turn and it costed us twenty minutes as I did three rights to loop back to our original turn. Without any traffic the ride would be less than three hours. Parking is seventeen dollars. Tickets are $40 for an adult. Annoyingly, you can not get a printed zoo map. You can take a photo of maps throughout the zoo or you can download their app for a few more dollars.  Using your phone means you are dealing with the sun's glare all day. Again, for forty dollars, a paper map would have been nice.

   That is my only complaint about the Bronx Zoo. We had a picture perfect day with highs around seventy five degrees and no humidity. I guessed right and the zoo was deserted. The only people there were single moms and dads with strollers. We did buy lunch which was of course overpriced, but you are as caged as the animals so you pay it or starve. We did get the $10 souvenir cup which allowed us unlimited refills all day. 

   As for animals, I am impressed. The animals are kept in large natural enclosures with plenty of room to roam. We managed to see everything at the zoo except the Madagascar House. We could have gone in, but chose to go back to the grizzlies hoping they were awake (they were, it was a good choice)

   

   My favorite exhibits included a bird house that had Scarlet Ibis and a Roseate Spoonbill. The Spoonbill was great because I had seen one a month before in New Jersey but did not have my big lens. My other favorite exhibit was simply the bison. Even caged it made me long for seeing the west again. Watching those one ton grazers brought back memories of seeing them in South Dakota and Yellowstone. They may not be beautiful but they are majestic. 

   One surprise was a Solitary Sandpiper. It was a wild bird that I saw fly in while we were at the bison exhibit. We watched it feed in a mud puddle for ten minutes. That was probably ten minutes too long for Laurie, but I liked watching it. 

   The zoo opens at 10 am and closes at 5 pm. You need to buy a timed ticket to get in. Not really sure how this stops the spread of Covid because people spend the day, but hey, their rules. 

   We left right at 5 pm. We got stuck in bad NYC and Connecticut traffic. Our ride home took five hours. I did not expect that. Friday evening was the beginning of Labor Day weekend. I thought many places would close at noon and traffic would be dispersed throughout the day. I was wrong. We did not get up to highway speed until at least 8:30 pm. 

Solitary Sandpiper, wild

Almost There

    My computer finally shit the bed on me last month. I was just so busy at work, and then sleeping, I never had time to buy one and set it up. Finally I couldn't take it any longer and spent some time (with my tech savvy brother) researching computers. I finally bought one. However, in my research I never looked to see if it had a card reader. This one that I bought and typing this to you, does not. So I had to buy a card reader so I can download my photos from over the summer. It should arrive tomorrow. When I sort through my photos, I will be doing a bunch of blogposts. I didn't do a lot since my last post because work has been nuts, but I still have some good stories to tell. Hopefully I can give you info on the places I've been to put you in the right direction if you are interested. Be patient just a little longer