Philadelphia- Friday, July 3, 2026

      In truth, Julie has been dreading the Philadelphia leg of our trip, and Scott understands.  She was not looking forward to driving in an unfamiliar, crowded, expensive city.  Scott agreed that it could end up being quite a gauntlet.  The record heat wave the country is experiencing this week is certainly sucking whatever fun there might have been out of everything.

     We left Delaware this morning and decided to go straight to Philadelphia.  We stopped at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center because Abby likes to do that now.  We then headed into Philly, with our GPS set for the Museum of the American Revolution.  It's located in the historic section of town, so we weren't able to find any parking when we got there.   Scott suggested that we go to our hotel because there was supposed to be parking there.

     We originally chose this hotel because it's located in "City Center," which made it look like everything we wanted to do would be walking distance for us.  That would have worked fine, but the heat is draining and Abby does not handle it well.  The hotel is in Chinatown, which is interesting too.   Even though we are paying Disney-level prices, the hotel is pretty low-end.  Abby was devastated to learn that there is no pool.  The room is narrow.  The cartoons Abby is used to watching aren't available, and the TV stopped working part way through the afternoon.   

     There is a parking lot next to the hotel for us to use, but it cost us $70 for the two nights we will be here.  We figured that once we parked the car we would walk everywhere else, but again, the heat is stopping us from doing that.  It's basically 100° out there.

     We needed lunch, and after heading out, we found a place in the Reading Terminal Market called the Down Home Diner.  Scott got a Philly cheesesteak sandwich just because.  Every place is crowded with people.  For some reason, some one thought it would be a good idea to schedule a FIFA World Cup game here tomorrow, of all days. 

     After lunch, we had some decisions to make.  In spite of the money and time we spent getting here, walking with Abby anywhere didn't seem like a wise thing to do.   Julie decided that she would stay at the hotel room with Abby and sent Scott to go to the Museum of the American Revolution.   Scott felt bad about leaving them behind because there wasn't much for them to do in the hotel, but it seemed like a logical solution.

     Scott put a bottle of water in his pocket and headed towards the museum on foot.  He chose a path that would take him past Independence Hall, and he got a picture there.  He also found out about how long the wait was to get in (at that point, an hour and a half or more) but that's likely to be longer tomorrow on the 4th. 

     Although he enjoyed them both, Scott judged the Museum of the American Revolution here in Philadelphia to be slightly better than the American Revolution Museum in Yorktown.  He started in a special exhibit on the first floor called, "The Declaration's Journey."  It first looked at the way the news of the Declaration of Independence spread throughout the country and the rest of the world.  In addition to original broadsides, it showed the first newspaper printing of the document, and the first translation (German) of it.  The exhibit then looked at the ways its promises were unfulfilled.  A central display in the exhibit showed a chair owned by Thomas Jefferson (a gift to him from George Wythe) and the bench that Martin Luther King, Jr., sat on when he wrote the "Letter from Birmingham Jail."   Finally, the exhibit looked at the ways that the Declaration has influenced and inspired other documents from peoples all around the world.  There was a short film covering these themes that Scott skipped at first, but watched just before he left. 

     A central staircase takes a person to the main galleries on the second floor.  Like the museum in Yorktown, the exhibits are set up to tell the story of the war in chronological order.  There were four doors into the galleries, and Scott chose the one marked "Concord," since he figured that was the start of the war.  He didn't notice until later that another door was marked "Exhibit Entrance."  When he went in that way he saw that he had missed the causes of the war on his first time through.

     One enjoyable feature of this museum was that there were many life-like wax figures put in rather active poses for tableaus of different events.  For example, one of the first was a fistfight among the Continental soldiers that was being broken up by George Washington himself.  (Scott has heard about this story before).  Another showed a soldier tearing down the equestrian statue of King George in New York City.  Still another showed two British dragoons charging through the Southern countryside.  They were all quite dramatic and action filled.

     Another nice feature was that there were quite a few audio/video presentations to watch.  One of the best ones was set above wax figures of Oneida leaders and explored how they were torn when they were trying to decide to support the patriots or follow the British like the Mohawk had.  Scott recognized so much here.   

     One minor theme that Scott enjoyed was the exploration of symbols that the Patriots used.  There were many examples throughout that caught Scott's eye.  For example, Ben Franklin had suggested an emblem of an eagle attacking a crane, and an example was shown on one of the muskets on display.  There were buttons from 1777 that were probably the first place that the letters "USA" were used to abbreviate the new country's name.  

     Among the artifacts that Scott noticed were:

• the Speaker's Chair that was probably used by Peyton Randolph at the 1st Continental Congress 
• a timber from the Old North Bridge at Concord
• a shutter from a window in Concord that was both shot through and shot at
• Washington's sword from around the time that he took command of the Continental Army
• a piece of the lead statue of King George that had been pulled down in New York and one of the musket balls that was supposed to have been made from it
•  a letter written by George Washington at Valley Forge
• digging tools used at the siege of Yorktown 
• dozens of others, including weapons of all kinds

     The largest single artifact, and the reason for this museum's existence, is the tent used by George Washington.  To see it, you have to attend a special presentation in a theater built for it, where there's no photography of any kind allowed. Scott happened to leave the main exhibition halls just as the presentation in the theater was about to begin, so he went right in.  There's a 10 minute movie about the tent and then the screen is brought up to reveal the tent itself.  This museum and its collections were basically built around this tent.  Scott remembered seeing Washington's tent in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  Apparently that one is no longer on display, but was his dining marquee.  This tent is the one he used for sleeping.  "George Washington slept here," indeed.

     Scott got a guide book and a couple of pins at the gift shop and drank another bottle of water before beginning the walk back to the hotel.  The GPS took him to the opposite side of Independence Hall, so he stopped at the Visitors Center there, which not only has the NPS portion but Philadelphia's as well.  He stopped at the gift shop there and bought a pin for himself and a small Liberty Bell for Abby.  (More about that tomorrow, we hope.)  

     When he got back to the hotel, Julie and Abby were doing OK, in spite of not having a pool, Wi-Fi, or a working TV.  They had left the hotel for a bit to go to some of the nearby stores in Chinatown.  They got some ice cream.  In a Hello Kitty themed shop, they bought Abby a hand-held fan that may help some if we try to get her outside tomorrow.  After Scott arrived, Julie went down to a nearby Panera's to get some dinner to bring back for the rest of us.  Scott got the Wi-Fi password, and the front desk clerk came up to the room with an alternate remote to use on the TV.

     That was about it for today.  We're determined to get something out of our trip here.  But as the sang in the musical 1776, "It's hot as hell in Philadelphia!"