Pennsylvania has several interesting places and some great scenery. In a lot of places, the road conditions interfere with the beauty of the landscape. It’s hard to look at mountains and trees while the road is so bad it’s blurring my vision.

The plan for today started out at the “Plastic Brick and Toy Museum”. I guess calling it a Lego museum would be bad because Lego is a registered trademark. There are a lot of creative people that find time to build very elaborate things from these interlocking plastic wonders. I did remember to leave my shoes on just in case there were blocks left sprinkled on the floor. I’ve included some pictures of just a few of the masterpieces in this facility. The “world’s largest plastic brick mural” is here. It takes up the entire space of school gymnasium floor.

If you have children in your life, you are aware of the cost of Lego blocks. My amazing son and daughter-in-law are on their own so I’m not in the brick buying market any more.

Leaving the blocks behind with no foot injuries, we proceeded to locate the Fred Rogers Exhibit. If everyone in the world would strive to be like Mr. Rogers, the world would be a happier, amazing place. You will recognize some of the items in the collection in the pictures below. This is located in an event center and there happened to be a kindergarten graduation that wrapped up while we were about half-way through the exhibit. Small kids can certainly scream a lot. I didn’t enjoy that part of the visit. I did learn that Fred Roger’s middle name was McFeely. The first few years of the show, the sweaters that Mr. Rogers wore were hand-knitted by his mother.

What a kind, generous man he was.

We left the “Neighborhood” and headed for the museum of a Hollywood Super Star. The Jimmy Stewart Museum is in Indiana Pennsylvania (his hometown). I didn’t realize he was a Brigadier General and had many awards for outstanding military service. Jimmy Stewart led a great life but remained a humble man dedicated to serving his country, community, and family (It’s a Wonderful Life).

The final tourist stop of the day was at the Johnstown Flood Museum. I never understood why my parents kept pictures and postcards showing the Johnstown flood of 1889. The town flooded a couple of more times but the damage did not approach the devastation of the first one – 2200 people lost their lives. I didn’t take many pictures there as a lot of the presentation was video plus I was wearing out. The large, lighted diorama on the first floor does an amazing job of presenting the series of events that created the devastation.

We drove the last few miles to the hotel and decided it was time to eat. There was a recommendation from the hotel desk attendant that seemed right – The Pine Grill had a great menu. Unfortunately they were out of some items (they did have meatloaf which was calling my name) and the service there was about as bad as it gets.

During dinner we made an executive decision to change the plan for the entire rest of the trip. That’s not as bad as it sounds. My master planning son was able to accomplish that feat before the last of the meatloaf disappeared from my plate. You’ll just have to stay tuned to see where this family fun leads until we head back to the Rambling Ranch.

If any of these places interest you I encourage you to use your favorite search engine to get more details. Better yet, load up the car and the family so you can hit the road and see this great country in person.