We stopped by the Gettysburg visitor's center in the morning of this day, to see what insights it might offered into the cataclysmic battle that had raged there.  We stayed only an hour or so.  Again, this was a National Park Service shindig, and it was not done well.  However, we did like the town of Gettysburg itself.  It has a very nice, old-world feel.  We drove and walked around a bit, and then headed back to camp to pack up and continue West.

On our way out, we actually got a little lost, for only the second time on the entire 10,000 miles of this trip to date.  We were heading for Southwestern Pennsylvania, to see Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater.

The drive across the Southern Allegheny mountains went well for a while, until around the time we hit some serious thunderstorms that tried to drown us.  The water was really no problem, but the car started making an odd noise, and a bad smell of something burning came from the engine.  All the gauges checked out OK, and I could not see anything visibly wrong, so we looked for and found the nearest state park we could find, in order to get the trailer parked before we became stranded.  We landed at Kooser, about 1 hour from Fallingwater.

The next day I found a Chevy dealership about 15 miles from camp, in the hamlet of Berlin.  I had suspected that we had a pulley bearing on its way out, and I was close.  The dealer found that it was the air conditioner compressor (running off of the same belt as the pulley I had suspected), which was frozen solid and needed replacing.  Of course, none were in stock, but one could be delivered via UPS the next day.  So I had some other odds and ends repaired, and then I brought it back the next day for the compressor installation.  For this trip, Joya accompanied me, for which I was grateful.  While we waited, I read and she worked on her math.  After 5 hours they told us they were done, and we settled up.  The compressor was covered by our extended warranty, thank god ($800 parts and labor total, all paid by the warranty).  However, right after we drove off the lot, at 6:30 PM, Joya discovered that most of the dash electrical components were dead, including the radio, interior lights, etc.  We went back, but all the mechanics had gone home for the day.  So, yet another trip to the dealer was needed, this time to fix something that was not broken when we had brought the car in.  Arrrrrgh.

We had several wondrous happenings this day.  The first occurred late morning.  It was pretty warm outside -- almost hot.  Suddenly a storm blew in and began dumping substantial quantities of water upon us.  This campground has no showers, so we took advantage of the one falling from the sky: all 4 of us stripped down to underclothes and went and capered about in the rain.  I even soaped down a bit first, and got enough rinse afterward to make it count as a real shower.  It was grand.

The next happening was in early evening.  We were sitting around our campfire (usually OK in most state parks) and just gazing about during the early twilight time.  There was a small clearing near our campground in which numerous fireflies could be seen performing their odd, blinking dance.  It was magical.

During all of the fun that I was having sitting around in the Chevy dealer's waiting room for 2 days watching the paint dry and admiring the lovely 70s decor, Jody and Jordan had some small adventures of their own back at the trailer.  Mostly they just hung out, read, caught up on email, napped and the like, including hiking up to the small lake here at Kooser.  This is really a lovely little park.  It is very wooded, and we have it nearly entirely to ourselves.  However, it has no showers, and only pit toilets, so we are nearly 'dry camping' (with no hookups).  As you may note from the change of tense, I have also caught up to real-time on this travelogue, which our semi-stranding here has allowed.

During our stay at Kooser, we made time for some badly-needed personal grooming; remember, Kooser had no showers, and we had no hookups and were 'dry camping'.

We all washed our hair outdoors, using wash tubs.

I also got a haircut and shave from Jody and Joya, respectively.

Many of our late afternoons and early evenings were spent playing cards -- mostly Hearts, but also other 3 and 4 person games, likes Jacks.