Trip to Pennsylvania

Patrick & I had a wonderful 6 day trip to Pennsylvania to celebrate our 10th anniversary!
Our main attraction to Pennsylvania was to watch the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Pennsylvania 500. We were at the racetrack Friday for qualifying, Saturday for a few events and Sunday for the race. Saturday was a rainy day, so here we are near Victory Lane in our ponchos trying to keep dry. The Sprint Cup practices for Saturday morning were canceled because it didn't stop raining until around noon. They did get the track dry for the ARCA series race that afternoon.
After the ARCA race on Saturday we were scheduled to walk for the NASCAR Foundation and Red Cross fundraiser. Thank you to everyone who donated to the walk!! We raised $115.
We made it onto the track for the walk, and they announced that everyone had to get off the track because there was another storm coming into the area. We made it to the car before it started raining, but it rained more on and off throughout the evening.
Before leaving the track from the walk, Pat stopped to sign his name on the start/finish line.
He was big into signing his autograph that weekend. Here he is by Mark Martin's pit on Sunday morning wishing him good luck. We had Pit passes for the entire weekend, and we were able to walk around the pit area watching the crews get ready for the race, and then watching as they rolled the cars out onto the racetrack. We weren't lucky to get up close to any of the drivers, but it was excited just to be in their pit areas. Well, I shouldn't say we didn't see any drivers; we did get autographs from AJ Allmendinger (the youngin) and Bill Elliott (the veteran). We'll know better for our next race to get there earlier on Friday; and hope that practice isn't canceled for rain.

We had pretty good seats for the race on Sunday. We were high enough to see the entire track (2.5 miles). The weather was nice for most of the race. Around lap 130 we saw the rain start coming. It didn't rain long or hard, but it rained enough to stop the race for about 30 minutes so they could dry the track. Carl Edwards won the race and did his famous back flip off the car at the start/finish line.
We did also take in some other sites while on our trip. We went to Steamtown and rode in a train car pulled by this steam locomotive.
We went to Bushkill Falls ("the Niagara of Pennsylvania" - I don't think so - more like the Gooseberry of Pennsylvania). The falls were beautiful and we 'survived' the red hiking trail. They had signs all over, for non-hikers to go back to the main falls, only hikers were encouraged to try the red trail that went all along the many falls. I could definately live with the sounds of a waterfall or brook running through my yard.
We also went down into a coal mine. Our tour guide explained that the Miner would load 10 drilled holes with dynamite, and then he said "Then what do we do." I quietly (or so I thought) said 'run.' And he said, thanks for volunteering. So, I got to detinate (sp?) the dynamite.