We spent the morning relaxing in our hotel, catching up on blogging and planning, before leaving to track down a couple of letterboxes in the town of Exeter.  One of the boxes we found took us on a trail adjacent to the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy (pictured above), one of the acclaimed New England prep schools.
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Before leaving Exeter, we revisited the eclectic Blue Moon Evolution, a health food store turned funky restaurant.  Servers are friendly and helpful and the kitchen staff is passionate about fresh, local, organic ingredients and using herbs and spices to infuse them with delicious flavor.

After lunch, we hit the road for Manchester, where we would overnight, visit a few historic places and find some letterboxes before heading west to Vermont.  On the way to Manchester, we stopped near Nottingham at Pawtuckaway State Park, where we hoped to find a spot to plant our New Hampshire letterbox.
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The 5000-acre park on the shores of Pawtuckaway Lake offers 195 camping sites, 15 miles of trails of all difficulty levels, picnic areas, and, of course, boating, swimming and fishing activities.  One of Pawtuckaway's trails provided the perfect hiding spot for our letterbox, so we moved it into its new home under a rock, where it happily awaits visitors.
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For a change, we arrived at our hotel a little earlier than usual, checking in around 3:00.  I settled into the room and pulled out the computer to catch up on some letterbox clue writing and blogging while Ken headed out to run some errands.  Since we were at a hotel that provided an evening meal with the cost of the room, we didn't even need to worry about finding a place for dinner.  All we had to do was go downstairs.
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So after Ken returned, rested for a while, and watched a bit of news, we headed downstairs for the buffet.  Happy to be finished with our evening meal and back in the room for the night around 6:15, Ken went back to watching news in the bedroom while I let my computer know it was time to get back to work in the living room.
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As I was waiting for the Sony to boot, I heard an electronic key inserted in the door of our room.  Figuring another guest had stopped at the wrong door, I looked out the peephole, ready to open the door and explain their error.  To my surprise, I saw instead three police officers in the hall.

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Manchester Officer

Opening the door, I greeted them with a friendly, "Hi.  Can we help you?"  The lead officer introduced himself and his assistants and asked if they could enter.

"Of course," I replied.  "Why didn't you just knock on the door?  Why were you trying to enter our room with a key?"

(Fortunately we were both fully dressed, not always the situation when we're in our hotel room for the night.  One of us could have easily been bathing at that hour.)

The sergeant explained that they were concerned about their own personal safety and didn't know whether we might pose a danger to them if they knocked.  That certainly threw me for a loop.  They'd have a very difficult time finding anyone less of a threat than us.  But obviously, the local police didn't know that.  Nor had they been schooled in the legal requirements of no-knock entries.

In our research on the matter since this incident occurred, it appears that generally, courts have ruled that no-knock entries require a "no-knock" search warrant issued by a judge.  Courts reserve these warrants for situations in which a building's owner or occupier could destroy the sought-after evidence by the time law enforcement waits for the owner or occupier to open the door.

No warrant— knock or no-knock—was involved in this matter.  In our estimation, their attempt to enter our room without notice was a blatant violation of our rights—but only the first one.

As soon as they entered the room, Ken came into the living room, and Manchester's Finest began questioning both of us regarding where we had been, what we had been doing since we arrived at the hotel.  Immediately we asked why they wanted to know.  We were completely mystified about why any of our activities would be of interest to law enforcement.

And as far as we knew, New Hampshire was still part of the United States of America and we had not entered a realm where our rights to privacy as U.S. citizens no longer applied.

"We're not at liberty to divulge that information," the sergeant replied and continued asking questions.  Since we had nothing to hide, we answered their questions as best we could.  After all, we had not kept a minute-by-minute log of our afternoon activities.  I told them I had been in the room working on our blog, and Ken said he had been running errands.  When Ken mentioned that he had receipts for the shopping he had done in the afternoon, they wanted to examine those and did.

Over and over, we asked why they were questioning us.  What was the concern?  Had we been accused of something?  If so, what were we accused of?

Totally ignoring our Sixth Amendment rights to be informed of the nature of the accusation against us, they refused to answer, no matter how many different ways we framed the question. 

Finally, Sarge had an inspiration and asked if he could take our photo.  Since I had already taken a couple of pictures of the officers**, it seemed a fair trade.  He took our pictures on his cell phone and excused himself from the room, leaving Officer 1 and Officer 2 to guard over us in his absence.

Still in shock, we continued trying to convince the officers of the absurdity of us as suspects while we waited to see what would happen next.  Finally the Sarge contacted them on the radio and apparently told them that the investigation of the innocent Georgia couple was over.  Officer 1 and Officer 2 made their parting remarks and left, refusing one last time to answer our questions regarding what all this was about. 

Totally dumbfounded, we asked each other what had just happened.  We still had absolutely no clue whatsoever why the local gendarmes had invaded the privacy of our hotel room and pelted us with questions for half an hour.

Maybe an answer lay with the management of the hotel.  We went downstairs and asked to speak with the manager on duty.  A congenial young woman, she could not have been more apologetic.  And she finally gave us some answers.

A guest at the hotel had reported that her eight-year-old child claimed that she had been taken into a hotel room against her will.  And the child kept insisting it was room 406, the room where we were staying.  When the officer showed our photos to the child, she apparently told him that we were not the guilty parties.

Whether anyone did detain the child or she later recanted her statement, we never knew.  Nor did we learn what allegedly occurred while the child was in the room.  What we did know is that we were ready to leave Manchester and the entire state of New Hampshire as soon as the sun rose.  Forget any historical sites, forget any letterboxes.

The entire incident was so far outside anything we had ever experienced that we never really comprehended the possible impact until later.  In fact, we both woke during the night pondering what might have occurred if the child had falsely accused us when she was shown our photos.  Neither of us had forgotten the reminder we had in Salem, MA, a few days ago about the potential outcome of unsubstantiated false accusations.

But what happened in Salem couldn't be repeated in 2012, right? Our efforts to reassure ourselves of that fell flat in light of our experience with the Manchester police.

And we thought Greenville, South Carolina was bad.
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**During the time the officers were questioning us, I picked up my camera and took a photo of them.

"Did you just take a picture of me?" the sergeant asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"That's going to be on your blog, isn't it?" he asked.

 "Yes," I replied.

And it is. 

MONDAY, 30 APRIL 2012

     
After we spent a couple of hours on the computer investigating New Hampshire mystery letterboxes on Atlas Quest, we left the hotel for a day's adventure.  Unfortunately, at just the moment we walked out our door, the guest next door decided to depart with her Bassett hound, who aggressively charged at me, growling loudly, struggling against his leash. Strangely, the dog's owner found it humorous that I was frightened by her out of control beast.
     
Whatever.  We didn't let the dog's bad behavior deter us from our goal, which was to slip over the border to find and plant letterboxes in the scenic state of Maine.  With helpful guidance from our GPS, we drove into Kittery, ME, where we had a few letterboxes to find.  After locating a couple of boxes in town, we headed to Fort McClary State Historic Site (pictured above).
     
Built in the early 1800s, the fort was used throughout the nineteenth century, primarily to protect the approaches to the nearby Piscataqua River.  The old blockhouse has been renovated and now houses a museum, which had not opened for the summer season yet.  The popular park was busy, but not enough to prevent our stealthy location and logging of three letterboxes within its boundaries.
     
Of course, one fort wasn't enough, especially when there were more letterboxes to be found, so we made tracks for Fort Foster Park.  Another of Maine's historic coastal forts, the park is now part of the Kittery parks department.  Seaside hiking trails and picnic pavilions are among its offerings—and a few letterboxes, of course.  Though we didn't recognize the name of the park, we both realized when we drove up to the park entrance that we had visited and letterboxed there when we came through the area two years ago.
     

Orchard Grove Cemetery

Before we left Kittery—and Maine—we needed to plant a letterbox, part of our goal of leaving a little treasure behind in every state we visit.  The Orchard Grove Cemetery proved to be just the right place.  A beautiful burial ground, Orchard Grove was large enough to offer some wooded areas where a box could hide without disturbing the residents.
     
After finding another couple of boxes in the Kittery area, we set our sights for Portsmouth, NH, where some letterboxes were waiting for us, including a mystery box with an unusual carve from one of our Georgia letterboxing acquaintances.  He hardly ever carves; we couldn't miss that.  And we didn't.  

     

An authentic Eidolon carve!

Finally around 6:00 we decided it was time to stop looking for "one more box."  We finished the day with ten finds, a very satisfactory result and returned to our hotel in Exeter tired and looking forward to seeing some of the town tomorrow.
     

The rationale for reconstructing and maintaining this bankrupt ironworks as a national historic site, we're told, is its role as a training ground for skilled iron workers who would help create America's iron and steel industry.  Decision makers in the National Park Service apparently believe that the site's annual visitation in the 10,000 range (most of whom are probably squirming school kids who wish they were anywhere else) justifies the cost of maintaining this complex ($894,000 in FY2012, according to the NPS budget).
     

From Saugus, we drove ten miles to another NPS unit, the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.  Unlike the ironworks, Salem's maritime industry was an international force for more than a century.  Soon after its founding in 1626, Salem became a colonial center of shipbuilding, starting as a fishing port but soon switching to the more lucrative shipping trade.  By the 1700s ships from Salem were importing luxury goods from India, China, Europe, Africa, and even Australia.  When the English crown imposed taxes and duties that cut deeply into the merchants' profits, Massachusetts shipowners stepped up as major financial backers of the American Revolution.  After an embargo imposed during the War of 1812, the Salem shipping industry never recovered, and the city's economy turned its focus to manufacturing.
     

Without doubt, Salem is most remembered today for an ugly chapter in its colonial history—the witchcraft trials of 1692-93.  We were a bit taken aback at the plethora of local businesses capitalizing on historical persecution.  A few offerings:  Salem Wax Museum of Witches, Salem Witch Museum, World of Witches Museum, Salem Witch Hunt, Witch History Museum, Salem Witch Village, and Spellbound Museum.  Salem is also home to the bizarrely named 40 Whacks Museum.  Although the famed Lizzie Borden allegedly wielded her ax in Fall River (70 miles away), the museum owners apparently were attracted by Salem's steady stream of tourists overly willing to part with their cash to kitschy witchy sites.
     

What to do?  We had to commemorate this historical event, but there was no way we would pay to see one of these cheesy tourist traps.  What we chose to visit was the Salem Witch Memorial.  Unlike the commercial sites, the memorial is a respectful tribute to the 20 persons, both male and female, executed in the witch trials, a textbook case of mass hysteria in colonial Salem.  Dedicated in 1992 by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel for the tercentenary of the Salem Witch Trials, the memorial is simple courtyard adjacent to the Old Burial Ground cemetery in the center of town with twenty stone benches, each engraved with the name of one of the witch trial victims.  

Far superior to any of the commercial Salem efforts at telling the story of the witch trials, Arthur Miller's legendary drama The Crucible, a fictional account of the Salem tragedy, effectively evokes the wrenching emotion and terror of the accused, whose innocence was of no consequence to the hysterical masses.  We saw an outstanding production of The Crucible in York, England, last year and highly recommend the play to anyone who has an opportunity to see it.

On the way from Salem to Exeter, NH, our destination for the next couple of days, we found the perfect location to plant our Massachusetts letterbox in the aptly named town of Boxford.
    

     

     
DAILY STATS

• Miles driven:  87
• Walked:  1.8
• Letterboxes:  3 F, 1 P
• Witch-named attractions in Salem:  76
• Other visitors at Saugus:  1

The small size wasn't the only surprise this great rock had in store for us.  We learned that the legendary boulder where the Mayflower passengers disembarked was never mentioned by the Pilgrims in contemporary accounts.  In fact, it was 120 years after they landed at what became Plymouth before someone indicated that the early settlers had landed on a rock.  The town had decided to build a wharf at the landing site in 1741 when a 94-year-old resident of Plymouth expressed concern about the historical value of the spot and, based on knowledge supposedly passed down to him from his father, he pointed out the precise rock on which the Pilgrims had first stepped.
     

Since then, the poor rock has been relocated from one part of the city to another numerous times, during which it has been broken in half on more than one occasion.  The date 1620 was not carved into the rock until the late 19th century when it was housed in a Victorian canopy with iron gates to stop souvenir hunters prone to taking home a piece of the rock.  Since 1920, the great stone has been housed under a formal Roman portico.  Only about a third of the original 20,000 lb. rock remains, and its location under such a  lofty structure makes it appear even smaller.
     

At the top of Cole's Hill, just above the rock's current home, stands a sarcophagus housing the remains of numerous Mayflower Pilgrims.  The bones were collected and stored here after a couple of unfortunate accidental releases of the Pilgrim fathers and mothers from their graves.  The first occurred in 1735 when flooding washed bones down the hill and into the harbor.  Later workers digging sewer lines in the 1800s turned up more ancestors.  Once stored in a casket elevated over Plymouth Rock, the bones were interred in this sturdy sarcophagus in 1921. 
     

South of Cole's Hill, Leyden Street leads from the harbor uphill to the town square.  This is where the Pilgrims began building their houses in 1620.  The street continues to be the heart of the town, today's version lined with an assortment of 18th and 19th century houses.

One of the early families residing on Leyden Street was John Howland, an indentured servant who had sailed on the Mayflower, and his wife Elizabeth Tilley, whom he met on the voyage.  In the middle of a turbulent storm during the crossing, Howland was tossed overboard.  He managed to grab hold of a rope dangling from one of the sails and was hauled back onto the ship.  The Howlands went on to have ten children and 88 grandchildren.  After surviving his near miss at sea, Howland lived to the ripe old age of 80, having outlived all other male passengers except one.  A historic marker in the current village of Kingston indicates the spot where the Howlands built their later home.  And, yes, in case you're wondering, we were drawn to this spot by a letterbox.

Like a number of other Pilgrims, John Howland's final resting place is Plymouth's Burial Hill, a cemetery located on a high point above the waterfront. Among the other Pilgrims buried there are Governor William Bradford and Mary Allerton, the final surviving passenger. Squanto, a Native American guide and interpreter for the Pilgrims, is said to be interred in an unmarked grave at Burial Hill.
     

After locating the letterbox hidden at the cemetery, we indulged our inner taphophiles and strolled through the beautifully maintained grounds, examining the ancient graves.  We had just commented on the remarkable condition of some of the 300-year-old headstones when we came across a group of volunteers gently scrubbing the markers.
     
They told us that the cemetery had become quite overgrown until a local group of volunteers took an interest and began clearing away the weeds and brambles.  The product they were using is D/2, a biocide that removes stains caused by plant and animal growth with no detrimental effects to the stone.  The results were quite evident.
     
Our last stop in Plymouth was the National Monument to the Forefathers.  Unlike Plymouth Rock, this monument was much larger than we expected.  Commissioned by the Pilgrim Society, the statue was completed in 1889.  As originally planned, the statue would have stood at 150 feet, about the same as the Statue of Liberty.  Financial exigencies reduced the height to 81 feet, still plenty imposing and quite impressive.
          
Since our destination for tonight, Salem, is less than 60 miles away from Plymouth, we were in no particular rush to complete our sightseeing and letterboxing in Pilgrim land and move north.  What we forgot to consider is that Boston lay between the two towns.  So, of course, we ended up driving through Boston at the height of rush hour.  Though we experienced a few delays, we have nothing but praise for the designers of the famed "Big Dig," Boston's central artery tunnel through the heart of the city.
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Diving into the Big Dig

What would have been a three-hour (or more) nightmare traversing central Atlanta at rush hour turned out to be a barely one-hour jaunt through Boston.  Though this project has engendered more than its share of criticism for cost overruns and other problems, it worked great for us today.

     
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Oh, come on!  Quit being such a honky."   - Ken, after listening to the 127th Boston driver blow their horn at another motorist

     

    

Provincetown, MA

Provincetown Cemetery with Pilgrim Monument in background

Race Point Beach

Early in the nineteenth century, southern plantation owners began to build stately vacation homes in Newport where they could come to escape the brutal summer heat of the South.  By mid-century, they were joined by wealthy Yankee merchants, who constructed even grander estates.  Of course, no Gilded Age industrialist could resist such a place, so by the turn of the 20th century, the nation's wealthiest families were spending their summers in Newport as well. Vanderbilts, Astors, Wideners—all had expansive estates in Newport.

    

After the Vanderbilts moved into the neighborhood in the 1890s, the "modest" 11,500-sq. ft. manor was eclipsed by far larger "cottages."  Arguably the grandest of Newport's mansions is The Breakers, the 70,000-sq. ft. house built in 1895 by Cornelius Vanderbilt, older brother of George Vanderbilt, the owner of Asheville's much larger Biltmore House. 
    

The Breakers (photo from Wikimedia)

Today The Breakers and several other mansions are owned by the Newport Preservation Society, which has opened them to the public for tours.  Under the terms of various wills through the years, the current Cornelius Vanderbilt heirs are still permitted to vacation in the upper floors of The Breakers while tourists file through below.

While the super-rich had their seaside estates, the rest of Newport was offered Cliff Walk, a 3.5 mile recreational trail that runs between many of the largest mansions and the sea.  Some of the estate owners built tunnels through their property to ensure it still had shore access while complying with opening the coastal walkway to the public.

   

In addition to the appeal of a couple of letterboxes hidden along Cliff Walk, the trail offered stunning views, both seaward and inland.  Being here in the off-season, we have enjoyed the lack of crowds on the path, as well as in restaurants and shops.  As in many expensive resort towns, low season prices are quite reasonable also, leading us to contemplate a lengthier Newport stay in the future.

A cooper at work

In the village cooperage, we met Mike, who was shaping a slat for a bucket.  Wondering how a young guy ended up with a 19th century job, we asked whether he had imagined himself growing up to be a cooper.  "No," he replied, "I actually wanted to be a blacksmith when I was a kid."  And that was the training he obtained and the skill that earned him a spot as a craftsman at Mystic Seaport.  Since he's been on the staff, he has also been learning coopering and the craft of sailmaking and works at the various trades depending on the day of the week.
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Mystic's on-site shipyard

The museum has its own working shipyard on site, where specialists repair and restore the many historic ships in the collection.  One of the most fascinating projects is the massive restoration of the Charles W. Morgan, the last existing wooden whaling vessel.  Built in 1841, the Morgan sailed the seas for 80 years, chasing the great mammals and escaping fire, cannibals and Confederate raiders.
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Charles W. Morgan in restoration

The 113-ft ship arrived at Mystic in 1941 and underwent an initial restoration in 1968.  This first refurbishment was intended to allow the ship to sit at the dock as a museum piece.  In 2010, a more ambitious project began to actually make the Morgan seaworthy again.  More than two years later, much remains to be done on this multi-million dollar project, and skilled shipwrights labor daily in pursuit of the goal of seeing the leviathan sail away again.
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Among its collection of maritime equipment and memorabilia, the museum gave visitors an up-close look at a lighthouse light.  Actually, this was what is called a fourth order lighthouse lens.  Invented by Frenchman Augustine Fresnel in 1822, the revolutionary Fresnel lens design employs curved panes of glass to concentrate light from a single source into a beam that can be projected a great distance. 
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A 4th order Fresnel lens for a lighthouse

The lenses come in different sizes from 1st order to 7th order (smallest).  This 4th-order lens weighs about 500 pounds and can project a beacon of light up to 15 miles away to enable approaching ships to gauge their proximity to shore, even on a starless night.
    
Mystic Seaport is certainly a place where you can learn as much maritime history as you have time available.  We were there for a couple of hours but could have easily filled four or more hours if we had arrived sooner.  Tickets were a bit pricy at $24 ($21 with a AAA discount), but with all the village had to offer, we were not disappointed.

    

     

In our quest to explore anything and everything historical on this trip, today we stopped at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange and immersed ourselves in industrial history.  Only rarely does an inventive mind of Edison's caliber come into the world.  Like Leonardo da Vinci, Edison lacked a formal education, having attended only a few months of school.  This left him free to channel his curiosity and creative genius in many different directions rather than one specialized area.
     
Thanks to the generosity of Edison's heirs, his research laboratory complex and West Orange home are now part of the National Park Service system.  Both the labs and house were preserved with almost all their contents intact, allowing visitors to see them as they were when Edison himself lived and worked there.  In fact, NPS archivists have inventoried more than 400,000 artifacts on the Edison properties, one of the largest museum collections in the system.  Included are 48,000 sound recordings and Edison's personal library of 10,000 rare books.

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On our tour of the chemistry lab (pictured above), the park ranger guide speculated that today OSHA would probably padlock the doors of all Edison's laboratories, but at the time, he was on the cutting edge of development, founding what is widely credited as the first industrial research laboratory.  The complex included a three-story main complex with machine shops, specialized experimental rooms, a power plant, and Edison's large office and library.  Separate one-story buildings housed labs for chemistry, physics, and metallurgy.

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Edison's office

Like da Vinci, Edison was fond of taking power naps throughout the long days and often evenings he spent working at his labs.  Rather than resting his head on his desk, however, one of the alcoves in his three-story office/library was fitted with just the equipment he needed for a bit of polyphasic sleep.
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Edison's office

Though he is most remembered for developing a practical incandescent light bulb (after 3,000 attempts), the impact of his inventive genius reached much further.  Once he had the light bulb perfected, there was no workable use for it until Edison fashioned the socket to provide it with electricity.  Since there was no readily available source to deliver electricity to the socket, he devised a system to transmit power into homes and businesses, including wiring, insulation, and all the other elements needed to make use of that light bulb practical, safe, and economical.  This delivery of electrical power on a wide scale, making it a functional and affordable utility, is perhaps his greatest accomplishment.
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One of Edison's many phonographs

But wait, there's more.  Today's entertainment industry owes its origins to the mind of Thomas Edison as well.  In 1877, as he was trying to improve Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Edison invented the phonograph, the grandfather of today's iTunes market. In 1880, he discovered that electrons would transfer between electrodes within a glass globe, leading to the development of vacuum tubes which made radio and television possible.  And in 1890, Edison created his first kinetograph, the original motion picture camera.
     
Edison was also a shrewd entrepreneur, founding dozens of companies to manufacture and distribute his inventions.  "I always invented to obtain money to go on inventing," he said.  Edison was still working at his labs, experimenting with new ideas until his death at age 84.  One of his last projects was undertaken on behalf of his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, who asked him to come up with an alternate source of rubber so they could escape the uncertainty of dependence on foreign sources.  A sample of the 15-ft goldenrod strain he developed for this project is on exhibit in his chemistry lab, just where he left it.
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In 1886, Edison bought a 29-room brick and wood mansion in an exclusive West Orange neighborhood.  The house had been built by an office clerk, who spared no expense in the construction and furnishing of his splendid home.  After all, why should he pinch pennies?  All the costs were paid by money he embezzled from his employer, a bottomless well for this enterprising fellow.  When his misdeeds were discovered, Edison stumbled upon a bargain, purchasing the estate, complete with a greenhouse and several other outbuildings, for the fire sale price of $125,000, including all the furnishings.  Guided tours of the home are provided by knowledgeable rangers, and since this is National Park Week, all admissions were free.
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After our pleasant three-hour visit to the Edison site, we had to negotiate our way across metropolitan New York to western Connecticut.  We expected to drive north of the city, but due to some construction and road closures, we suddenly realized that by blindly following the GPS, we were headed right into the mouth of the beast. 

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Thankfully, it was Sunday or theoretically the traffic could have been heavier.  However, a steady rain more than made up for the lack of volume.  We sat in line for an hour negotiating the final mile to the toll booth for the George Washington Bridge.  In a risky game of odds-playing, the lane darters constantly flitted from one lane to another, increasing the annoyance factor and the delay.  The stop-and-go-and-stop-and-stop traffic didn't end until we were well beyond New York City and almost to Connecticut, but as the traffic became lighter, the rain grew heavier.  Finally, we completed our 78-mile trip in a little more than four hours.  Tomorrow we hope to hook up with a cousin who lives on the Connecticut coast and to stay out of rainy traffic.

Glenmont, the Edison home

Graves of Edison and his wife

Influenced by their Quaker beliefs, the reformers argued that, given the right circumstances and ample time alone, criminals could reflect on their misbehavior and reach a state of penitence for their sins.  To promote this remorsefulness, complete isolation of prisoners was deemed necessary to eliminate any distractions which might interfere with their spiritual reflection.  So there would be no need for prisoners to use communal areas, running water and toilets as well as central heat were provided to every cell, innovations which had not even reached the White House at the time.  Each cell also had its own private exercise yard.
     

Another aspect of the criminals' transformation process was mandatory labor, which reformers believed would encourage good habits and teach prisoners a trade.  However, the need for labor did not override the essential principle of isolation for repentant contemplation.  Rather than having the prisoners work in a central location, cells were equipped with small tables and tools needed for such trades as shoe repair or weaving.
     

So convinced were the reformers that this new system would lead to prisoners' penitence, they even gave the compound a new name-- penitentiary.  As the word about this new kind of prison spread, it became a worldwide sensation.  Governments both in America and abroad began to copy what became known as the Pennsylvania System of inmate management.

From the beginning, this modern wonder attracted tourists.  Philadelphians traveled by horse and buggy to see the building.  Even Charles Dickens placed Eastern State near the top of his must-see list when he visited the U.S. in 1842.
     

Over the years, as new waves of reform and new philosophies arose, the isolation system came under increasing criticism.  Its use slowly waned until it was officially abandoned in 1913. After Eastern State's infrastructure aged beyond repair and renovation, the prison was finally closed in 1970, sitting empty for the next 15 years until the property caught the attention of developers.  Preservationists thwarted the demolition squad and by 1991 a campaign to stabilize the ruins was underway.
     
Since 1994, the prison has been open for daily historic tours, and museum quality exhibits have been installed in some areas.  For the past 20 years, Terror Behind the Walls, promoted as America's largest haunted house, has been a very successful Halloween attraction and fund-raiser for historic efforts.

Eastern State Prisoners of Renown

In a particularly egregious abuse of power, Pennsylvania Governor Pinchot exercised his executive powers in 1924 to sentence Pep, a black lab, to life  without parole.  Pep was convicted without trial for allegedly killing the beloved cat of the governor's wife. As the photo shows, he was even given an inmate number and mug shot.  Pep ended up with the last laugh.  He was much loved and lived among the other inmates for a decade.  Now the ESP gift shop sells T-shirts, magnets and, yes, mugs with his mug shot.  You can even purchase a dog tag on a 24" chain with Pep's likeness and the inevitable "bad dog" label.
     
Eastern State also gave the notorious Al Capone his first experience at prison life in 1929 after he was sentenced to a year in prison for carrying a concealed handgun in Philadelphia.  By this point in history, strict prisoner isolation had been relaxed, and prison officials allowed Capone to bring in elaborate furnishings, a radio, and other comforts for his cell, a privilege not afforded to most inmates.  It was said that Capone enjoyed listening to waltzes in his cell.
     

Without doubt, Eastern State was the most unusual tourist attraction we have visited on this trip, but the experience taught us a lot about the history of criminal justice in America.  And we didn't even have to pay the $12 admission charge, thanks to the friendly guide at Historic Philadelphia who gave us a couple of free tickets.  We had a new letterbox with us and really had to fight the urge to hide it in the bowels of this eerie place, but our objection to planting a box in a place with an admission cost suppressed that temptation.
     

On our way east this afternoon, we had to cross the Delaware River, the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  What better place to traverse the river than Washington Crossing, the small Pennsylvania town located at the site where George Washington famously led troops across to Trenton during the Revolutionary War?
     

In a local park, Washington and his troops perpetually brave the elements in the form of a statue donated to the town by the Indiana Limestone Industry in 1976.  No less than three parks in the immediate vicinity (on both sides of the river) are named for the event—Washington Crossing Park, Washington Crossing Historic Park (there seem to be two of these), and Washington Crossing State Park.  They all tell the same story.
     
On Christmas evening, 1776, General George Washington and some 2,500 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River from their winter encampment in Pennsylvania into New Jersey on their way to attack Hessian troops holding Trenton.  Their surprise attack on the British mercenaries was successful, a desperately needed victory after a string of defeats.  Because this victory renewed the colonists' spirits, the battle  has often been called the "Turning Point of the American Revolution."
     
After finding a letterbox in one of the parks, we followed GPS directions into New Hope, PA, where we would cross into New Jersey.  Our crossing turned out to be a mild challenge, as we cruised into the middle of New Hope's annual Renaissance Festival.  By our estimate 74% of the residents of Bucks County, along with an impressive representation from western New Jersey had turned out for the event.  Creeping along Main Street at 0.5 mph, we finally escaped across the river and made our way to the Hampton Inn at Parsippany, where we found much nicer conditions than those experienced by either Washington's troops or the residents of Eastern State, even Al Capone.