Long weekend in PA

For several months I have had the Women in Conversation retreat at Laurelville on my calendar for April 9-11. Denise invited me to go along, and we also invited several friends to join us. Unfortunately, it didn't work for any of them to go, so we decided to do some other exploring while we were in Pennsylvania.

We left on Thursday morning and drove to Springs, PA where we stayed overnight at Ida & Freda's Springs house. Freda was actually there too so we had a good time visiting with her on Thursday evening. On Friday morning we headed down the hill (really only about 100 yards away) to check out Springs Store, since we had never been there before. It's a nice little community store, and we both enjoyed some amazing donuts made fresh that morning!

Denise with her almost-consumed donut.

Me and my tasty donut.

Next we headed to Ohiopyle State Park. This park is known mostly for it's great whitewater rapids in the summer, but we decided to go hiking instead. We almost had the park to ourselves, we saw very few other people. There are some very nice hiking trails on a peninsula that is a protected nature area because it has some rare plants. It was a little early for wildflowers, but we enjoyed the time in the woods anyway. We were afraid it was going to rain, but instead it was just cloudy and cool (mid-40s).

The Ohiopyle Falls

Falls from the other side.

Figuring out the trails. We still got lost when the trail seemed to end on the rocks next to the falls, so we had to turn around and take a different trail.

Part of the trail on Fernwood peninsula

View of the Youghiogheny River from the top of the hill.

Me by the falls.

Rhododendrons along the trail. They will be beautiful when they bloom!

Next we decided to find the Flight 93 Memorial site, located north of Shanksville, PA. This is the flight that crashed there on September 11, 2001 instead of crashing into the capitol building. This place was literally in the middle of N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Even though we were following the GPS we still had to turn around twice - we were trying to find a road that existed on the map but didn't seem to exist otherwise.

At this point the memorial is fairly simple - a tall chain link fence for people to leave items of remembrance, benches with names of the victims, and many monuments/crosses and other mementos left by visitors. There is a small shed that houses a volunteer, a guest book, some pictures, and a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder (and a heater!!). The actual crash site is about 100 yards across the field, surrounded by chain link fence with a US flag, and considered "sacred ground." Construction is beginning on a more permanent memorial that will allow much closer access to the crash site, although there really isn't anything to see there. It was interesting to see, and kind of sobering to experience.

One of the remembrance monuments.

Benches and fence.

This is pretty much it - shed, benches, fence, mementos around the edges.

The actual crash site.

Finally we headed to Laurelville Mennonite Church Center for the Women in Conversation retreat, sponsored by Mennonite Women. I was excited to go to Laurelville since I had never been there before and had heard good things about it. The focus of the weekend was gratitude, the speaker was Megan Ramer, and she did an AMAZING job. She had many good things to say that I am still pondering.

The Laurelville entrance sign.

We were encouraged to choose a mug and use it for the weekend. Look at what I found!

I was happy to see Suzy Kanode there, who I graduated from high school with but haven't seen for a long time. Another high school classmate was there as worship leader for the weekend, so we took a picture of the four of there from the Bethany Class of '89.
Left to right: Me, Jen (Helmuth) Shenk, Suzy (Brugger) Kanode, Denise.

And that is the end of this very long post!