Our rigs in the parking lot at the Flight 93 Memorial

May 26, 2021

 

We left Jellystone Park about 10am, heading for Cowan’s Gap State Park, a short 2 day layover before we go to Philadelphia for Memorial Day Weekend.

 

On the way we stopped at the 9/11 Memorial of Flight 93. We have already been to the Pentagon and the World Trade Center Memorials, Flight 93 is no less touching. From an overlook at the Visitor’s center  you are looking straight at the crash sight, where the nose of the plane hit the boulder. Inside the VC, the displays are set up on a timeline, what was happening elsewhere while the passengers of Flight 93 were trying to figure out how they could change the course of history. Change it they did! To quote the brochure on the Memorial site…”A common field one day. A field of honor forever”

The walkway up to the visitor's center and overlook

Explanations of what we are about to see

The timeline begins, as a break in the walkway, of each flight that crashed on 9/11

Before we got all the way to the high, curved walls, the breeze was mild, the closer we got to the walls, the harder the wind blew!

"A common field one day. A field of honor the next"

Looking at the crash sight from the overlook by the visitor's center

The Hero's wall

Memento's from the volunteers 

Nothing left but bits and pieces

A birds eye view of the destruction

More timelines

The view through the gate

Each Hero's name is on a slab of marble.

We didn’t get to stand under the “Tower of Voices” as it started storming just as we got there. That was very disappointing! The tower is 93 feet tall and houses a musical instrument holding 40 wind chimes. I don’t know that we would have been able to hear it over the pounding rain and thunder, we will have to go back.

 

In and out of rain, packs of big rigs and hills and dales, the GPS had us doing loops and hoops to get onto the 76 turnpike. We have driven on worse roads, but when you are paying extra for the privilege, you expect better! Not one that beats you to death!! We rolled into the campground around 4pm. Had a heck of a time finding it. GPS once again failed us, had to make a u-turn at a wide spot on a two lane road. Then we couldn’t find a check in place or host camp, so we just drove to the campground. That’s when we saw a sign that said if we had reservations that we just needed to go to the site on the reservation and what do you know, there is a copy of our registration on the post at the end of the site. This a more rustic park than I thought it would be, 30 amp electric only, nice breeze blowing though, so we are doing fine.

 

When I said hills and dales, I wasn’t kidding. At one point today, we had a 9 mile, 9% downgrade, throw in some hair pin curves and you have a breaking nightmare!! We kept seeing signs for big rigs over 21 tons to pull over and turn around, but there was no place for them to do so!! At the top of one hill there was a big sign for them to stop, but again, no place to pull off of the road. Like they would have wanted to turn around and make that 9% climb back up the ‘hill’.