Scene on the Road

In downtown Wilmington, as my third weekly road trip continues south on Delaware Route 9 toward Dover, I see scaffolding and a row of painted American flags. Since I'm still asking for your flag photos, it gives me an excuse to shoot some of my own.

Artist Max Mason of Wynnewood is painting a "flag-centered tribute to the fallen firefighters of September 11," on the side of Fire Station #1 at West & 2nd Streets, within sight of the Amtrak station. When complete, it will show a procession of firefighters through time. Included will be historic Wilmington fire-stations and apparatus through the years. The mural's most prominent building, "Liberty S.F.E." is no longer around, and we both ponder the initials, coming up with many guesses, all of them wrong. It is the international airport code for San Fernando, in the Philippines, but on this building I learn later, S.F.E. stands for "Steam Fire Engine."

The mural is a community project as well, and we both look up as, "Hi Max," is shouted from a passing car. "Save the face for me," the driver yells. "That's Patrika," Mason tells me. "She lost a friend in 911," and wants to paint him as one of the firefighters. All their helmets will include "343" for the number of Fire Department of New York firefighters who died on September 11, 2001.

And here's a final reminder that time is running out send me YOUR American flags. Email a favorite roadside flag photo as a jpeg attachment to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I will be posting them on Wednesday.

Wildlife sees me coming...and it goes...

Driving on Delaware highway 9, south of the C & D Canal - where the Delaware River turns into Delaware Bay - I find myself face to face with that most notorious coastal salt marsh resident - Tabanus nigrovittatus - the greenhead fly. I AM looking to photograph some wildlife in this teeming ecosystem, but pest close-ups aren't what I had in mind.

Other than roadkill, animal photography is difficult on road trips. Just as I can't spend the whole day in one place hoping the light will change, sitting in a blind waiting for wildlife doesn't work. I always count the encounters - like a rainbow suddenly appearing with nothing in front of it worth photographing - as an experience I can savor, even if I can't share it photographically. Already this day I've seen a fox, a turtle, a small deer, turtle, and lots of birds.

Getting back to the greenheads though, It's the birds - and some roadkill actually - that bring me to their doorstep. I spot a bunch of turkey vultures feasting on the side of the road. By the time I pull over, grab my 300mm lens, roll down and stick my head out the window - all but one of the big birds has already flown off. I manage to get off one frame as the straggler takes flight. I'm not as quick as I used to be. But the greenheads are. With my window open less than a minute, one of them has already found me and is inside my car. Which brings up another Rule of the Road: When life hands you lemons, take pictures that make it look like lemonade. So I missed the huge birds. I can take aim at a smaller target. Almost a half hour later, still parked on the side of the marsh, still inside my car, I achieve success with some macro-entomology photography.

Heading south, Delaware 9 ends near Dover Air Force Base. I learn they offer tours, but only on a limited basis. "Priority scheduling" is given to "youth groups serving high-school-age students with a recruitment potential." I find it a lot easier to visit the Air Mobility Command Museum, right off Route 9 in a restored World War II hangar that was once a Rocket Test Center. Now it houses a collection of historic military airlift and tanker aircraft. It's connected to the base so I am more interested in watching through the fence as huge cargo jets are taking off and landing on the airfield.

North of Dover is the small town of Leipsic, which is a lot quieter now than it must have been in 1814, when a booming muskrat fur market prompted residents to change the name of their town, naming it after Leipzig, Germany, a big fur-shipping port. Driving down a dead end I find Alan Pleasanton taking advantage of a slow crabbing season to replace the white oak planks on his dock with pressure treated pine. His boat (in the water behind him) is the "San," short for Sandra, named after his wife of 35 years. "I tell her every morning she's the luckiest woman in Leipsic." The painting at right is his dad's boat, the "Miss Ruth," named for HIS wife - Pleasanton's mother. It's full of oysters, he points out, back in the 1970's. Not able to count on a catch that size anymore, he opened a carryout seafood restaurant a few years ago so his daughters could make a living. But this summer, for the first time ever, this Delaware waterman has had to buy his crabs from Louisiana. Pleasanton's Seafood, is on Route 13 in Dover. He says it always gets the "Best Crabs" awards from magazines.

Earlier, near Odessa, another town named for a port in the old country - in this case grain shipping in Russia - I find someone actually catching crabs. Mike Gawronski of New Castle and his three kids and fiance are dropping nets baited with chicken drumsticks into the water off what he calls "the old wooden bridge" over Silver Run. It's not wood anymore, but it was when he fished and crabbed there as a kid. Gawronski thinks I'm a County Fish and Wildlife Agent when I walk up - just as he's showing a crab to his nine year old daughter Elizabeth. The minimum size for hard shell crabs is five inches. This one is six and a half, so he wasn't worried even if I were an agent.

Flags were invented to be noticed, and photographers have always made use of their symbolism. Like other representations of objects and concepts, flags serve as a shorthand for us, a part of our visual vocabulary.
We include them in our pictures not just because of what they say, but for aesthetic reasons as well, because they look good and usually add to the composition of our photographs (I'm more partial to hats and umbrellas).

This nation's flag flying fervor reaches a pitch today for the Independence Day holiday, when flags will be seen from barbecues to ball games to parades across America. So to both salute our country's birthday - and to celebrate this photographic element - I asked readers to submit their favorite flag photos. The one above is from Inquirer photographer David M Warren, who has over the years collected hundreds of images of flags. This one was attached to a car antenna. Enjoy.

Larry Browne is a volunteer firefighter in Doylestown and the company photographer, originally from Long Island. He photographed a memorial service there for firefighter Capt. Thomas Moody, who was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. There were 26 ladder trucks forming 13 arches with flags. Browne asked a few of the firefighters about the tribute, and they told him that they planned on doing the same thing at the services for all of the members of the FDNY who lived in Suffolk County.

Matthew E. Jones took this photo at the 2007 Phillies home opener. The soldiers are from the 56th Stryker Brigade of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

Mary B. Harris came up with a flag photo of herself and daughter Mary Louise made thirty one years ago. Harris was a big fan of the celebration for the American Bicentennial in 1976. At that time, she recalled, there wasn't a huge groundswell towards an organized celebration, so she took a longer view. She made plans for a personal celebration for herself, her family, and friends. Among other things, she designed and hand sewed a new flag for this special birthday. The seamstress is now seventy-seven years old! In the interests of family harmony, she didn't want to disclose Mary Lou's age...

Harry M. Roth said his wife thought this would be an interesting flag candidate.

Theodore Lang made this photo of the flag near the Cape May lighthouse. The white streak is a jet airplane, not a scratch.

The Church and cemetery is on Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, photographed by Jim McWilliams, a member of the Delaware County Camera Club.

David M Warren captured a reflection in the fluid drippings in the parking lot of a Cherry Hill Post Office.

I have been seeing the big hand-painted roadside billboards with the Birds of Paradise hex signs on some of my previous road trips - there were even brochures at a Delaware truck stop. So I had to detour slightly to visit while driving west on Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County this week. The Kutztown Folk Festival, which runs through July 8 at the Kutztown Fairgrounds, celebrates German - "Pennsylvania Dutch" - and other early American folk art - and of course funnel cakes.

I figure it's a big deal when bright yellow temporary "no parking" signs line the residential streets for blocks before the grounds. But it's the hand-lettered $3 parking signs - or could it be the lady with the Amish brimmed straw hat on the motorized scooter holding them and pointing right at me - that gets me to pull over.

Kathy Gilmore (in the hat) and Fern Kulp are "working" the parking lot right up against the festival's perimeter fence. It's actually the side yard of Mabel Kunkel's house. "We thought with the rain we'd be slow today, so we sent her away to play bingo," Gilmore says of "Mom." Technically, that would be mother-in-law. Or ex-mother-in-law. She married one of Kunkel's sons in 1969. "That's when I came into the parking picture," she says. They are now divorced, "but I still call her Mom." Kulp has been his current girlfriend for fourteen years now.

Both women work the lot together during the festival's two week run, and get along famously, along with "Mom" and the rest of f her kids, grandkids and great grandchildren.
Mother Mabel bought the house in 1950, a year before the festival began, and has been parking cars in her yard ever since, her daughters-in-law relate. "It started with friends asking if they could park here." That first year they charged 50 cents per car. They had three "quick kids" who were soon selling lemonade (5 cents a cup) alongside mom and dad. A son earned enough one summer to pay for college --at least for one semester. "College was cheaper then too," Gilmore points out, telling me her own grandson (the fourth generation of car parkers) was selling bottled water on Sunday - consumer tastes have changed as well - for 50 cents.

The festival's $12 admission includes parking, but it is in huge remote lots. Their customers, many regulars, "want to be able to find their car at the end," Gilmore says. "And to able to support the local people," adds Kulp.

As I come back from the festival to retrieve my car, Mabel Kunkel, back from bingo, comes out on the porch to say hi, and repeats many of the parking stories I've already heard. Except hers come out in a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent. "I'm Dutch-a-fied," she laughs. "This is what they come to hear. I'm the real thing."

I'll be posting more later from inside the festival, and along Route 73. When the festival is over, you can go to the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at nearby Kutztown University. They have a museum, and a year-round program dedicated to the preservation of "Pennsylvania Dutch" history, folkore, and traditions.

I'm still on my slight detour off Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County (the same 73 that crosses the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and becomes New Jersey Route 73) to visit the Kutztown Folk Festival (through July 8 at the Kutztown fairgrounds). As any fair-goer knows, the real purpose of a festival is good eating. And at a Pennsylvania Dutch festival, you can count on the chicken pot pie, corn fritters, funnel cakes, shoo-fly pie, strawberry shortcake, and apple dumplings. But my guilty pleasure would be ice cream (remember the exception to the "Don't eat anything that's served out a window" Road Trip Rule?). So I end up in front of the "4th Day Homemade Ice Cream" counter, where a wooden display stand is filled with cups of sundaes looking just-scooped.

Wondering if they're the plastic replica food you see at sushi bars, noodle shops or even trendier izakayas, I ask seventeen year-old Kristy Angstadt (although her name tag says "Roberta Lee") who directs me to owner Laurie Davis (name tag "Sassy') of Valdosta, Georgia. "Oh, it's real alright," she tells me. "Real mashed potatoes."

At first Davis used Crisco, but while the shortening lasted longer than a scoop of real ice cream in the summer heat, she hit on the old food photographer/food stylist's trick. She mixes up a bowl of instant mashed every morning, and dribbles each sample scoop with REAL carmel, hot fudge, strawberries and peaches.

But where did the name come from I ask. "Well, Christ rose after three days. The fourth day..." He ate ice cream! I interrupt. "No," Davis continued, "the fourth day is the rest of our lives to serve him. We plant the seeds."

So she and husband Alan visit fairs and festivals in the northeast, on a sort of "Ice Cream Ministry." They hire a crew of local young ladies at each stop to pedal the bicycle-powered ice cream maker and scoop the vanilla (one flavor only) into cups or waffle cones.

More people and photos from my slight detour off Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County to visit the Kutztown Folk Festival.
All the stickers plastered on the suitcase and guitar cases, right next to the Hoedown Stage caught my eye. Singer songwriter Alicia Keister and guitarist Jason Shaffer of Harrisburg were lost, looking for the Children's Theater where they would perform later, and the tent of Butch Imhoff's Acoustic Roadshow. Keister has a new CD out and plays coffee-shops and smaller venues, "because we're mostly acoustic." Imhoff is also bringing his roadshow to Musikfest in Bethlehem next month, where Keister will be among the more than 300 performers from across the country and around the globe, on 13 different indoor and outdoor stages (nine of the them free).

Chip Buck moved in for a closeup of his nephew visiting from New Jersey, when the goat moved in even closer. Now that the festival is over, you can go to the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at nearby Kutztown University. They have a museum, and a year-round program dedicated to the preservation of "Pennsylvania Dutch" history, folklore, and traditions. Also Pennsylvania's official travel and tourism site has a "Fairs and Festivals" search function. Look for it under the "Arts and Entertainment" pull down menu. I'll be back to Route 73 on my next post.

I am deeply touched by a cartoony bear as I stand near a cemetery facing Route 73 in Boyertown, in the rain during this week of Independence Day, watching water drip from the saluting figure's face.

On the border of Berks County, the highway becomes Philadelphia Avenue as I drive into Boyertown. It's here where I notice one of downtown's many artfully decorated "Bear Fever" fiberglass bears - the kind of public-art display that began with a 1998 fiberglass cow exhibit in Switzerland and in this country with Chicago's "Cows on Parade" in 1999.

Over the years there have been giant frogs in Toledo, race horses in Lexington, baseball bats in Cincinnati, and guitars in Nashville. Around here, I've seen the recent zoo animals in Chestnut Hill and Moorestown's Nippers.

So I admit seeing the bears didn't get me to pull over. Until the Fairview Cemetery on the edge of town. There I see a bear in military camo, standing upright in an erect salute. I have seen and photographed many memorial ceremonies and monuments, but this one got to me.

The bear's name-tag and dog tags say Zimmerman, but the plaque reads "...May this 'Military Bear' honor all Boyertown veterans, although separated by generations, shared a common undeniable goal..."

Army Pfc. Travis C. Zimmerman is a 19 year-old 2005 Boyertown High School graduate who was killed April 22, 2006 by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat reconnaissance operations in Baghdad. The quote next to his senior yearbook photo said he planned to join the Army after graduation.

The Reading Eagle reported that when sifting through Travis' belongings, his father Lloyd Zimmerman discovered that his son had saved the front page of a newspaper from the day after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "That must be when he resolved to make a stand," he told Eagle reporter Jason Brudereck at the funeral. Zimmerman's senior classmates raised the money for his bear last year, honoring all men and women from the Boyertown area who died in service to their country. It was completed in time for the town's 5th anniversary commemoration of 9-11 last September and installed this past Memorial Day.

Here's another of my "Rules of the Road Trip." Actually this one is more of a photographic road trip "Reality:" Pictures often present themselves when the driver/photographer is in the wrong place at the right time. Besides great light, great photography is all about timing. Sometimes it's being able to react to the instant. At other times it's having the patience to wait.

On a road trip, you don't often have the luxury of time. So you make the best picture you can in your situation (see previous post: Greenheads - Making Lemons Look Like Lemonade). Heading north on Route 73 between Schwenksville and Gilbertsville, a huge red fireball suddenly appears on the horizon. I watch it for miles as it slips behind trees and the two lane road dips in and out of the hills. Around each bend I lean forward in anticipation of seeing something - anything - worth silhouetting in the foreground.

Finally, even though I'm driving west, opposing the earth's rotation, I'm not moving at quite the same speed, so the sun starts to fade for good on this day. Nothing photographic materializes, so in a desperate move to salvage a photo - I pull over in front of a field of corn.

That's a lot like many of my daily newspaper assignments. Besides "careful, my face is gonna break your camera," the thing I hear most from photo subjects is: "you shoulda been here twenty minutes ago...." Or even worse, when shooting a photo for the next day's newspaper: "You should be here tomorrow!"

This brings me to another call for your photos. Reader Jim McWilliams emailed me some of his photos after I completed my third road trip down Route 9 in Delaware. He commented, "I love that ride any time of the year. I discovered it about 6 years ago as an alternative to Rte 13," and sent me photos he's shot of the wildlife - and the cooling tower at Hope Creek - in different weather and light conditions over the years. That's HIS photo at left.

I'd like to see - and share - some of your pictures made repeatedly over time in the same place. Maybe you've visited the same state park, or Jersey Shore spot to photograph in varying conditions over the years. Send them as jpeg attachments in an email, with caption information (date, location, circumstances) to me at: RoadTrip@phillynews.com. I'll post a selection later on.

For inspiration, check out the website of Jim Brandenburg (click on "Chased by the Light" under Gallery heading). To get "back to the soul of his work," the National Geographic photographer gave himself the challenge of taking only one photograph each day between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. He just made ninety single photos in ninety days around his home in the boreal forest of northern Minnesota.

There are a lot of good reasons to hit the road: Spring Break, death or divorce, a midlife crisis. I have friends who are trying to visit the birthplaces of all 43 US presidents, and as I've already bragged here, I've been to all fifty states. But one of THE most popular excuses for a road trip is built around America’s favorite pastime - taking in home games at professional baseball stadiums.

As if I need an excuse, I figure the All Star break is a great time for a minor league journey, so I head south on US Highway 40 toward Ripken Stadiumin Aberdeen, Maryland, home of the Baltimore Orioles single-A league IronBirds. The stadium is right off I-95, but parallel to the freeway is a section of US 40, a classic pre-interstate cross-country route, one of the original 1920s highways. After leaving Atlantic City, it used to go all the way to San Francisco, before I-80 was built and absorbed it in Utah. More on the road later, now it's "Play Ball," as the game starts with a parade of little leaguers on the field.

Cal Ripken, Jr. and his family (with some help from their hometown of Aberdeen) built the fan-friendly 6,000 seat stadium modeled after Baltimore's Camden Yards, where Cal played his entire career. Just like at most Minor League games now, the staff interacts with the crowd, and brings fans onto the field for contests.

Tonight, between innings as the IronBird's are beating the Phillies Williamsport Crosscutters 15-10, there are tee shirt tosses, "hillbilly horseshoes" (toilet seat tossing) and dance and sports trivia contests. There is a Picnic Plaza and a Kid Zone near left field has batting cages, pitching speed booths, and an inflatable moon-walk. Most home games become sold out, but standing room tickets go for $5.

Besides the IronBirds There are a whole bunch of professional league teams in our tri-state region. Here are links to their websites: Atlantic City Surf; Camden River Sharks; Harrisburg Senators; Lakewood BlueClaws; Lancaster Barnstormers; Newark Bears; New Jersey Jackals; Reading Phillies; Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees; Sussex Skyhawks; Trenton Thunder ; Williamsport CrossCutters; Wilmington Blue Rocks; and the York Revolution.

I'm driving "south" in Maryland, on US 40 - the east-west route between New Jersey and Utah. I probably confused some readers in my previous post. The classic transcontinental highway just runs parallel to north-south I-95 for a while before it heads west near Baltimore. US 40 itself doesn't go north-south.

But US 40 is one of those old cross country road trip routes - not unlike the much more famous Route 66, where Martin Milner and George Maharis' characters drove a shiny new Corvette convertible in the 1960's television show.

During its heyday, US 40 went from Atlantic City to San Francisco, and was one of the highways created in the 1920's when the U.S. government took over the numbering of federal roads. So in many sections of the country, US 40 replaced classic road names like "Lincoln Highway," "Victory Road" and "National Road." These couple dozen miles of US 40 in Maryland are NOT on the old Lincoln Highway, which is a road well documented by fellow Inquirer photographer Eric Mencher and his wife Kass Mencher. They have been shooting the Pennsylvania portion - US 30 - for years now and last year together retraced the entire route to the West Coast.

Not wanting to step on their toes, I am avoiding a Lincoln Highway road trip this summer, but this still gives me chance to drive on a piece of that particular American road history.

The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 diverted or killed off many of the rest of the cross country US highways.

As the stretch of I-95 in Delaware is the most-expensive toll road on the East Coast (and with an upcoming increase, is set to become one of the costliest in the nation) many drivers use US 40 to bypass the booths, where if they look hard, they can see remnants of the Golden Age of Automobiling.

On my drive south on US highway 40 in Maryland, I'm in my car, waiting out a sudden afternoon downpour. I'm sitting in front of the Concord Point Lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay in Havre de Grace. On a road trip I never "just" sit in my car, so I'm experimenting with different shutter speeds, apertures and planes of focus trying to combine these various elements to make an interesting picture of this oldest continuously operated lighthouse in the state. I always feel liberated when shooting a well known landmark, and enjoy this kind of photography the most, as I believe I have more latitude for creativity.

From their brochure: "...on the banks of the historic Susquehanna Flats, the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum houses one of the finest collections of working and decorative Chesapeake Bay decoys ever assembled."

Earlier, while stopped at a traffic light in Perryville, I begin to wonder (told you I never just sit) just what it is about a road trip that makes it so appealing. I figure it's not unlike other hobbies - collecting coins or stamps or refrigerator magnets. Visiting all fifty states or the presidential birthplaces is just another way of collecting - encounters, experiences, anecdotes - and snapshots. Speaking of sitting, America's two favorite pastimes, according to the Harris Poll, are reading (35%) and watching TV (21%).

Between raindrops, Nancy Schmidbauer of Joppa is leading a line of women walking along HdG's homes, downtown restaurants and dozen antique shops. They are the wives of the National Association of S Gaugers, having their convention at the Travel Plaza on I-95. As the local, with the host Baltimore American Flyer Model Railroad Club, she organized the tour. "This gives us a couple hours away from the guys. We don't want to spend all day looking at trains." The group collects 3/16" model trains.

I meet David Richman and his son Ray on Aberdeen Proving Ground's "Mile of Tanks." From Silver Spring, they're also on a road trip, with their nine year-old grandson/nephew. I recall every tank I've ever seen parked outside all the VFW halls and all the American Legion posts around the country, and figure there are probably that many - and more - here at the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum. They have hundreds of tanks and big-guns-on-wheels spread over 25 acres.

But all l think about is John Candy and Joe Flaherty doing the "Farm Film Report" on SCTV, where they explode things behind the barn. "That blowed up good. It blowed up real good." Or David Letterman dropping watermelons from his roof.

It's not all laughs though. I don't see anything about IED's in Iraq, but there is a Desert Storm memorial outside the museum, next to the 30 foot tall bomb, and inside are collections of all kinds of guns and displays of ammunition, chemical weapons and even non-explosive booby traps from Vietnam. I also learn that shrapnel was a person long before it was an ingredient of car bombs. British artillery officer Henry Shrapnel designed the new type of artillery shell two hundred years ago. They used it against Napoleon where the Duke of Wellington wrote of its effectiveness in the Battle of Waterloo.

I'm heading north back to Philadelphia, still on US 40 in Maryland, where my day-trip has turned into two because of the IronBirds night game in Aberdeen. I'm thinking of the golden age of motels and diners before the Interstates as I pass a small "postcards" sign.

Figuring they might have cards from the days when US 40 went from Atlantic City all the way to San Francisco, I meet Mary Martin, who took over "The World's Largest Postcard Store" - her mother's mail-order business in Perryville a few years ago.
"I didn't just put that there for fun," she tells me as we start looking for vintage US 40 cards. "It's not like all those 'World's Best Crabcake,' we really are." She has MILLIONS of cards. We talk about the "collecting gene." Her mom, dad, and she has it, but not her siblings. Her son does - "I could tell when he was three" - but not her daughters (that's seven year-old Anna running above). Her dad started a coin-stamp mail order business when he was still a teen, eventually opening a store in Baltimore. Her mom became interested in postcards while tagging along to stamp shows. "This is truly her hobby grown amok," Mary says. She thinks children should do more collecting - of anything - and encourages them through her work on the board of the local Boys & Girls Clubs.

We find three vintage motel cards from places Mary thinks might still be along my route and I head out trying to find one.

It's not easy among McDonald's, Home Depots and RiteAids, but right next to a construction site in Elkton - for still one more drugstore - I see an old motel sign, or rather an M***L sign. I would have never seen it from the road, but here it is. Behind a drive-thru coffee hut, totally hidden from the highway behind HUGE overgrown trees is the 1950's Ciampoli Motel from one Mary's postcards! Dennis Prince (that's him in the photo above) is sitting on a lawn chair and knocks on a door to wake fellow residents. Dennis Mitchell (below, on the left) and Jack Patrick step into the daylight and check out the post card - sent by someone from the motel to a relative in St. Louis in 1954. Mitchell says he first stayed here, "when I got back from 'Nam," and entertains me and the others with his stories from "before the Democrats took over in Baltimore," when "dignitaries and aristocrats" stayed here all the time. I'm introduced to Nubbs, one of the community cats, "honest to God, it was born without a tail," and I leave declining an offer for dinner on their grill, but promising to mail them all copies of the card.

After five weeks of two lane back roads, I was afraid I might be sounding too sanctimonious about avoiding Interstate highways. I realize sometimes you have to get someplace freeway-fast. So, I get off my high horse long enough to decide this week I'm taking the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

I begin at Exit 356 (old Exit #30) - the Delaware River Bridge connector to the New Jersey Turnpike. If I were to keep driving west to Ohio, I'd cover 357.6 miles and pay a $19.75 toll. In looking into tolls, I learned this bridge is the only one that charges a toll to enter South Jersey (you pay here BOTH ways - on the others the toll comes as you leave the state).

Because of its limited access, my plan is to spend time at each of the turnpike's three westbound rest stops, get off at Exit 286 (old #21, Reading) then drive back east hitting two more. Oh yeah, and I'm starting this at 3 am because I'm curious who's on the road then, or more importantly, who's gotten off the highway. Plus, the night might add some visual variety to my road trip photos.

Pulling into the North Neshaminy Service Plaza (milepost 351) it's mostly empty. The three cars parked in the lot appear to have sleeping drivers. Just outside the door, Rahsan Allen, left, and Brian Cost are on a smoke break. They make up two thirds of the third shift - 11 pm to 7 am - at the rest stop. Both say they prefer the night duty (it pays one dollar per hour more) and both were initially hired to work days at the Burger King. They were switched to the Travel Mart counter (Allen) and the Starbucks kiosk (Cost) when BK stopped being a 24 operation.

The rest area is only four miles from the Bensalem entrance, so I don't expect to see many people pulling in so soon. One who does is long haul trucker Bob Hooper of Roberta, Georgia. I'm shooting outside as he walks up and asking how far away Ft. Washington is, then goes inside to check the rest stop's "You Are Here" map. He left Raleigh, NC yesterday, in the afternoon, but bad cell phone reception kept him from calling his consignee for directions, until they'd already clocked out for the day. "I usually know where I'm going," he says. But this time, "it was Plan B: get close and figure it out when you get there."

Hooper drives "anything and everything - whatever fits in a dry box." That, he explains is what his truck is. There are also flat beds and reefers - refrigerated trucks. He and Worf, his 100 lb boxer (named after the Klingon character in Star Trek) travel some 140,000 miles per year. He sleeps well at night, not worried about being bothered. "(if) you try to do something to my truck and see him look DOWN at you...you think there's gotta be something easier to do." They drove through the night, avoiding rush hours in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

The other third of the overnight shift is Tanya Krekmanova from Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, who talks with Allen when it's slow. Her English is great.

A university student in Sofia, she's here for four months with the U.S. Department of State's Summer Work and Travel Program as a barista at the Starbucks.

She wants to travel to "New York, for sure," and to Niagara Falls before she returns home. "My cousin was there and she said it's so beautiful." So far she's been to Franklin Mills Mall and "the Old Town in Philadelphia." She'd also like to go to Las Vegas.

She's one of twenty-four International students working at the rest stop. The others come from Russia, Turkey and the Ukraine.

The sun is coming up as I merge back onto the freeway, joining mostly it appears, morning commuters. It's 23 miles to next Service Area - King of Prussia.

In the light of morning, I can now see the eastbound South Neshaminy Service Plaza right across the barriers on the other side of the turnpike. It is empty because it closed on June 30 for construction of a new E-ZPass-Only Bensalem exit. This side will be demolished as well in the next few years for construction of the long awaited interchange with I-95.

Looking at "freeway fast" travel, I'm OFF the two lanes and ON the Pennsylvania Turnpike for Week 6, making a tour of rest stops east of Harrisburg - both east and westbound.

I sometimes feel snobbish for stressing the journey - usually on back roads - over the destination, but I'm the first to admit If covering great distances in the least amount of time is your goal, you can't beat the interstate highway system. But they ARE boring. Well, at least not as visually interesting as the slower routes.

So as long as I'm on the freeway going fast, I decide to slow down as I visit a few of Pennsylvania's "multi-concept service plazas" (rest stops to you and me). As East Coast drivers, with all of our toll roads, we take our rest stops for granted. In most of the rest of the country easy-on, easy-off means vending machines. Ours have video games, clean and spacious restrooms, pay-phones, travelers maps, CNN on television, as well a smörgåsbord of eats. Some even have outdoor Farmers Markets.
The westbound Peter J. Camiel rest stop at mile post 304.8 - "46 miles to next Service Area" - offers Cinnabon, Brioche Doree, Roy Rogers, Sbarros, Starbucks, Hershey's Ice Cream, a gift Shop, plus an APlus convenience store at the Sunoco gas station.

Among the morning commuters stopping for coffee, that's where I meet Alice Gray sitting in the passenger seat of her King Ranch F-350 Ford pickup, attached to a 28 foot trailer. They stopped to walk Sparkie, and so husband Jim could take a little nap at the start of a three week cross country road trip. They planned to leave at 4am, but got a late start from home in Browns Mills, NJ. They're going to South Dakota's Black Hills, Yellowstone and Colorado before coming back via Branson and Nashville (besides the Great Outdoors, they like music).

As I run back to my car to retrieve my pen, Alice wakes Jim up. The couple "started with a tent in the mid-80's," he says. "Then we got a pop-up camper, a travel trailer, and now this. It's called a fifth wheel." Jim figures the next step, which he's in no hurry to take, would be an RV. With the trailer, they can leave it in the campground, and still take day trips with the pickup.

I'm on a different kind of road trip this week, driving really fast and pulling over not when and wherever I see something I want to photograph, but ONLY at official government-sanctioned sites. I'm visiting rest stops - both west and eastbound - on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

At the westbound Peter J. Camiel Service Plaza - milepost 304.8 - I get out of my car, and in the space next to me I see real cash money and valuables right out in the open on the front passenger seat. The sight jars me, like I've entered a parallel universe. Not that crime doesn't happen in the country, where I've heard people don't lock their houses and leave their cars running outside the Post Office. But I can't remember ever seeing a pile of broken automobile glass along the sidewalk or curb in rural America.

Checking my voice mail messages, I'm standing at a pay phone in the foyer of the eastbound Bowmansville Service Plaza - milepost 289.9 - when I hear a body slam hard into the glass door. My camera's right there, so I point and shoot. It's seventeen year old Katie Grantz racing her younger brother Jeff from their car.

"They've been stuck with me for hours," their mother Beth says. The three are on their way from New Castle, near Lake Erie, to a Christian retreat - camping on the beach - in Wildwood, NJ. A home-schooled junior, Katie is also visiting colleges along the way. Mom wants her someplace close. "I'm gonna follow you the rest of your life," she tells Katie, who gets in the last word: "I have different plans." All three are looking at the Starbucks menu board, before opting for a soft pretzel at another kiosk. That's also them pointing at the "You are Here" map - a "Travel Board InfoCenter" - at the top of this post.

I'm still at Bowmansville when two cars full of women get out to stretch their legs. They're re-arranging - and re-distributing - some of the refreshments in the back of Tina "Rosemary" Miller's SUV when I wander over. The scene just shouts "Road Trip" in capital letters. They even have a theme! That's Victoria Samson in the hat. They've been on the road about an hour, headed toward Cape May.

The group began when Sally Rhine, center, and Denise Shrander, second from left, started carpooling to work north of Harrisburg twenty years ago. They were joined by other co-workers and high school friends and relatives, and eventually started taking annual "girls only" vacations to the shore. Two more will be joining them tomorrow, and three are no-shows this year. Oh, the theme for this year's trip? Purses. Previous themes, still in evidence: sunglasses, tiaras, cup cozies, shoes and sunglasses.

In most of the rest of the county, commercial businesses like gas stations and restaurants are not permitted at rest areas. Our full-service rest stops were grandfathered in when Eisenhower created the Interstate highway system. The government's idea was to protect businesses in small towns that provided those services along the highway.

Sunrise (near Mid-County - Exit 20) and moon rise (at Valley Forge Plaza - Eastbound at milepost 324.5).

I'm on U.S. Highway 322, passing though upper Lancaster County as I drive from West Chester to Hershey. Since I spent a week exploring "Pennsylvania Dutch" country for the newspaper last summer, I am avoiding most of the Amish-themed tourist sites on this Week 7 Road Trip.



But the religious heritage of the area is impossible to ignore. Thanks to William Penn's tolerance, many sects having trouble with authorities in their own homeland found their way to Pennsylvania. I end up in one of the oldest of those communities - the Ephrata Cloister.

After being banished from Germany. Pietist Johann Conrad Beissel also ended up here, where - after first settling in Germantown - he founded the Cloister in 1732. At it's peak, some 300 celibate Brothers and Sisters and married local farm families awaited the second coming, living simply at the Cloister, instead of seeking earthly rewards. That's Beissel's home on the right. Above is Saron, the Sisters House, constructed in 1743.

But a monastic life didn't mesh well with the pioneer spirit of our new nation, and even Beissel's successor could see the writing on the wall, telling Benjamin Franklin: “The mind of Americans is bent another way.” By 1813 the last of the celibate members had died.

The smell of ancient wood is all around and the temperature feels like it's dropped ten degrees as I step into the old-tree shade and walk among the surviving original structures, now restored and administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The sound of a worker's power saw is the only intrusion I encounter as I make still life photographs of the old European-styled buildings.

Just as in areas of wonderful natural beauty, I am torn between waiting for another visitor to walk through the scene - giving it some scale and human interest - or just making photographs of the details. As is often the case, patience loses out as I attempt to capture visually what I feel and experience at the site.

Less than a mile up Ephrata's Main Street I encounter another religious community in a traditional religious setting - the church fundraising car wash. Colorful sign and balloon-holding teenagers are waving down passing cars, inviting them to the Bethany Slavic Church parking lot.

Fourteen year-old Valentina Zaytsev (she's on the right, in the photo below) and Lily Danilyuk, 15, (next to her) along with members of the church's youth group are collecting money for orphans in Russia. Zaytsev's family, who immigrated in 1991, will travel back to their hometown of Lipetsk outside Moscow later this summer on a church mission.

They just got their own church three years ago. The Pentecostal congregation was founded by pastor Mikhail Khoklan in in 1989, and over the years had been renting space at a big Mennonite church in East Earl Township. "It was, like, surrounded by cornfields," Zaytsev tells me. "All the other Russian churches called us the Corn Church," Danilyuk adds.

The division of labor: the teenage girls out front on Main Street, the twenty-something men of the congregation doing the wet rag heavy lifting in the parking lot behind the church, and the teenage boys counting the money on the steps.




Lancaster County is home to about a half dozen other Russian churches, most started by families of émigrés who arrived during the time of glasnost, when the Soviet government allowed evangelical Christians, many fleeing religious persecution, to leave for the U.S.