Pennsylvania Friends, Flight 93 National Memorial, and Local Adventures

Two days and 10hrs driving to visit our friends Ken and Julie Recker and Joe and Kim Payne seemed to fly by as the promise of good times with good friends drew us into the heartland.

A little background, we met these fine folks in a swimming pool in the Dominican Republic like 15 years ago. We’ve found a way to get together every few years since.

Julie and Kim wanted to get the full camping experience so we had them over for bbq and bags one evening. Joe even brought his traveling Bird Dog exhibit. Although the true camping experience happened a few nights later after with impromptu hotdogs on burger buns and leftover bbq after our daytrip to the Flight 93 National Memorial.

We took a daytrip to the Flight 93 National Memorial (https://www.nps.gov/flni/index.htm) which I encourage you to visit. They do a great job of telling the story throughout your tour. The Tower of Voices, Memorial Grounds, and Visitor Center are all well done and make for a powerful experience.

A few details from our tour.

The Tower of Voices had 40 wind chimes representing each hero and requires a 15mph wind for the voices to be heard.

The rock memorial in the middle of the field is at the impact site.

There was a crater 15ft deep and 30 ft wide at the crash site with much of the debris being found at 25 ft deep. The reason for this is the crash site is in an old strip mining site so the ground wasn’t as compacted as it could have been.

The wood beams at the end of the wall of heros are made from hemlock. There was a hemlock grove just south of the crash site that was burned and is where a lot of debris and remains were found.

The entire memorial is aligned with the flight path of Flight 93.

We spent our last day with our friends taking a day trip to the Altoona area to visit a few local breweries. One even had Duck Pin Bowling, which made for more good times.