Sorry, sorry, sorry!

I know I haven't been writing and posting anything, even though we've been on the road... oh... I don't know... was it the 21st??? Anyway, we saw sandhill cranes.
I need to remember how to do this blog thing since it's been since Miami that I last blogged. I was going to put up a picture of the cranes we saw in Nebraska but then remembered that the first picture I put up is the last in the blog.
We are in Pennsylvania right now. What a place!!! It's so different!!! Their fields don't have fences for one thing. We can't figure that out. What is growing there. It just looks like grass. This place is OLD! Right now I'm sitting in a coffee house in a town called Carlisle. Have you ever heard of it? We hadn't. It's just where the interstate has the nearest exit to Mechanicsburg where the Eckels are all buried in Pennsylvania. This town is really a surprise. It's about the size of Laramie with a small college, which, by the way, is the FIRST college built in the United States. it seems like every other building had George Washington in it doing something. This building I'm sitting in, called Blaine House originally, was visited by George Washington in Oct. 4-11, 1794 while mustering an armed force to quell the whiskey rebellion in Western Pennsylvania.
The buildings all over the countryside are really old, big two story rectangular stone or brick. The barns are huge with 3 or 4 silos next to them. I'll try to remember to take a picture of some examples. It's very steep and hilly with deciduous forests covering the hills. We are camping in a state forest outside of Carlisle. today we will be going to Mechanicsburg to find the Silver Spring Cemetery where about 30 Eckels are buried, including 4 of our ancestors. The first Eckels to come to this country about 1744, Charles Eckels, is buried in a cemetery about 20 miles away but it's a really old cemetery and the headstones are too worn to read. His son Nathaniel, who was born on the boat coming over, in 1744, is buried at Silver Springs, or at least has a plaque there placed by the DAR because he was a revolutionary war soldier. His son William is buried at Silver Spring Cemetery, with his wife Jane Starr. So that is what we will be doing later today. Our ancestor, William and Jane's son, James Starr Eckels moved to Princton, Ill in 1857 so that's all the Eckels ancestors that were around here.
Jay just came back with a smug smile on his face so apparently he saw some pretty good stuff while he was exploring around town while I blogged. I'm going to download some pictures and take my camera to go see what there is to be so happy about. It has to be good since he's such a history buff and wouldn't get excited with just anything!