Little League World Series

The county seat for Lycoming County is Williamsport. I have a couple branches of family that lived in and around Williamsport in the late 1700s, so we will spend some time researching those lines. I had also read that the town had a “millionaires’ row of Victorian mansions” and I wanted to go see them. But first we had to get to our campground.

When we entered the town, I noticed lots of signs welcoming families and fans to the Little League World Series.  I did not know that the day we arrived was the kickoff day for all the activities. In fact, the GPS took us down a street that was lined with camping chairs and coolers with folks arriving to take their seats. Turns out that about an hour later, the street would be the venue for the opening parade. We saw teams arriving on their floats – everyone was excited, and it was a real party atmosphere.

When we finally found the campground on the outskirts of the town, we found a place that was basically a big marshy field with only electric hookups. I wasn’t sure that we would be able to pull the trailer out of the muck once we got into it. It was clearly a place full of longtime residents with trailers that had not been out on a road for many years. We moved on.

Found a KOA on the opposite side of the town with an available site and we grabbed it. We find that most KOAs are consistent in their quality and amenities and make a good choice for a quiet place to stay.

The historical society is contained in a small museum with exhibits showing the history of the county from early Native American to the 1800s. We got so busy doing our family history research that we ran out of time to tour the museum itself. After the museum closed for the day, we took a walk on the street where the museum is located. This is the street that advertises itself as the “millionaires’ row of mansions.” Unfortunately, the grandeur of the street disappeared many years ago. A few have been restored and are nice single-family homes. The rest are very tired looking and are apartments for the college kids. Not great to tour. There was a beautiful old church and a square that was very pleasant to walk through on a late summer afternoon, so all was not a loss.

We did not plan to do any sightseeing here and so, after the research was over, we headed out for Buck County. Lots to see and do there and more family history. (Note: I am very behind on my blog updates.  If I thought the AT&T coverage was terrible in Wisconsin last year, Pennsylvania is an order of magnitude worse.  And it isn’t just the AT&T coverage, even my Verizon mobile hotspot is having trouble.)

The Pennsylvania countryside reminds me of England's countryside.  Rolling hills dotted with farms and forests.  We see prosperous and poor farms mixed together. People have been farming in these areas for 250+ years and some of the farms have been in the same family for 5 and 6 generations!

I don't know geology that well, but these rocks sure look like they belong to coal/oil country. I think about the original settlers having to clear the land of trees and boulders using pretty primitive equipment and I am impressed with their drive and determination.

There are several different styles of Victorian homes on "Millionaire's Row".  This is a National Historic District, but there are really only a few buildings that have been fully restored.  I would guess they have a grand plan to, over time, restore more, but I feel they need to hurry on some of them before they totally collapse.

I have always loved the fairy tale nature of the embellishments for Victorians.

In this part of the country, they haven't gotten into the "Painted Ladies" style of San Francisco. They use more muted colors and not as many.

We have seen several very large YMCAs, but this is the first YWCA!

This is one of the tallest spires I have seen on a church. We weren't able to take a look inside but the stained glass looked amazing from outside.