Random Driving...(includes some walking)

Continuing our tradition of driving around aimlessly (because we hate the earth and want to pollute it as much as possible), here are a few shots from the past couple weeks. They include another visit to the Moravian cemetery in Bethlehem as well as a couple other cemeteries around the area (hey, we just think they're cool, it's not like we're ghouls or something).
my girlfriend is way prettier than yours, and here's proof
For some reason I really like taking photos of our kitchen, so here's another one
While walking the extension of the Ironton RailTrail past where old Fort Deshler once stood and into Egypt, we found this great old cement factory near the Troxell Steckel house (plenty of other folks have documented that house built in 1756, like this fella ) which looks like its been sleeping for quite a while. There is an old quarry just to the west of it that a hunting club uses and a little company town, some of which is abandoned.
The locals have a cool rope swing that'll plop you into the Coplay Creek on those hot summer days that seem so far away now... the ladder on this tree leads you to it.
These abandoned homes have been pretty well trashed, and what the local kids haven't done nature is working on but as far as cool places to creepy-crawl, they seem pretty perfect.

I seriously doubt this is up to code...The out-houses are failing a bit, but they sure look neat-o.

I haven't found anything out about this old place, but maybe I'll look into it some more for next time.



I decided to make a point of getting a few shots of the Whitehall Mall interior. As a kid we (my fam) would go here pretty often, and it used to be a pretty cool indoor mall that, for whatever bad reason, was turned into a mostly outside, glorified strip-mall sometime in the last decade or so. However, parts of the old mall still exists and you can actually see where they just chopped off the front of the mall when you walk in the doors . Therough edge on the bottom of this wall is another sign of the Hack job they did on this place. The biggest anchor store (which was a Leh's in my time) was literally chopped in half and now houses a fitness place. It's too confusing for me to even understand what happened to the movie theater. Whatever. Just another sign of how things change and how utterly pointless that change often is.
Yum! Honey Bunny makes me one of these raw wraps everyday!


Some old cemetery west of town off of old route 22.
Our second visit to the old Moravian cemetery that you learned about a few posts ago. We then walked along the bluff in Bethlehem to the next cemetery down the line...










...and we found these creepy, ego maniacal folks' grave! You can also see the most in -you-face evidence of the decline of our society, the remains of the once mighty Bethlehem Steel (1857-2003), now just a rusting hulk. But hey, it's not all bad (actually it is), the good folks who brought you the fall of western civilization have used part of the buildings to bring the world another casino for our new Gulag-Casino economy! Ya-Hoo!!!!



And then we went to the shoe house. Soon we felt like we needed a little intercourse......Pennsylvania, that is.
Strangely we soon found some Amish which we thought could be Menonites until we saw and that kinda straightened us out. we found another covered bridge (this time with a chemtrail!) and ate at a Diner. As you may know, it is a state law that every third structure must be a diner. I don't think we even ate at this Diner, but I'm sure it has the same menu.
And before you ask, yes, this dragon actually runs the farmer's market. Until we go burning up some more of those fossil fuels (yeah right) and wasting valuable mega-pixels, bye y'all.
LELKO

Hawk Mountain

The Mighty Hawk King


As promised, we took a ride up to Hawk Mountain the other week. I was disappointed to learn it was not, in fact, a mountain ruled by the angry Hawk King, ruler of the un-free hawk world, nor was it a mountain made entirely from the carcasses of millions of Hawks. Turns out it's simply a hawk sanctuary, which really means you can go to this cool forest and walk around and see a bunch of birds for a few bucks while trying desperately to ignore the many humans. Not bad for a few chuckles.

You know us, so you are aware that we might drive around given all of our free time. So drive we did, down Route 611, then a left at 31, or thirty-something (that's for all you early gen x-ers!) and found. There were a couple cool barns and an old house that some dead guy built while still alive. I was gonna look into the history, but I have better things to do so, hey, by all means, feel free to look into it yourself.

I believe they call this sort of barn a Swede, cos, you know, the Swede's favored them, even though most of the ones in these parts were built by the Germans, who are called the Dutch, for Deutsche. Don't ask if you don't wanna know.
Emily is always peeking into old dead guys' houses. In case you forgot, we look pretty damn cool most of the time as you can see from this shiny photo.
Our next stop was the cute little (tourist trap) town of New Hope, where every parking space has a meter everyday!

I think they were getting ready to make some soup outta this stuff, but I can't be positive.
Along the Delaware River in New Hope, at sunset, you can just barely make out Luke Skywalker gazing into the setting suns (cos, ya know, the first Star Wars was called A New Hope. get it?)


This weird old place is in Easton, another Delaware river town.



Surprisingly, at least for me, there are a pile of old covered bridges in these parts. Maybe I'll tell you about them next time, but right now I think I'm gonna go for a walk. See ya later, brah.
LELKO

Crazy Moravia

This here photo is looking in to the old colonial industrial quarter of Bethlehem

If you find yourself hangin' out in downtown Bethlehem (Bethlum is how they say it around these parts) you can't help but notice the beautiful old college named after the Moravians. Who the hell are the Moravians? As if you don't know. Just in case you're a little rusty on your reformation era churchies here's a bit of a reminder; catholic-ish folks from Moravia and Bohemia (the lands of my people) who, after an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Moravian settlement in Georgia (1735-1740), settled in Pennsylvania on the estate of George Whitefield. Moravian settlers purchased 500 acres to establish the settlement of Bethlehem in 1741. Soon they bought the 5,000 acres of the Barony of Nazareth from Whitefield's manager, and the two communities of Bethlehem and Nazareth became closely linked in their agricultural and industrial economy.
Walking around present day Bethlehem one is treated to all kinds of great old buildings. The Moravians started a college here in the 1880's on some land from their church, and strolling through the grounds of the campus is like being transported back to...well, some other time. It's actually really pretty and the leaves
falling in the autumn air really adds to the feel.
Here is one of the entrances to the Old Moravian Cemetary (1742-1910). The stones all lay flat on the ground for some damn religious reason, and it's wild to find stones of people born in the late 1600's. Apparently the Moravians were friendly with the Injuns and quite a few can be found buried here 'bouts.

Creepy door knobOne of the many sweet old houses around town.



There is a cute, but also kinda late-in-the-season-to-really-enjoy-it Garden down here called the Miller House garden. As the name indicates, the garden graces the house of the miller who ran the grist mill, which ran until the 1950's!That's the miller's house behind the ruined mill. Behind both is the Bethlehem Hotel, built circa 1910.


The trout stream running through the old industrial area.



The 1762 waterworks is considered the first municipally pumped water system in the country. Since Bethlehem is built on a hill, it took quite a bit man-power to deliver the everyday water needed to live and work, so, voila! The waterworks!

Next time on Lelko Blog...Hawk Mountain!!!!

Jeez, I guess it's been a while...what haven't we done since last we visited? Well, for one, we haven't gotten any jobs. Oh, I guess I sorta work and make money as a Guy who drives people around, but it ain't steady. Not that I'm complainin'. Just sayin...


We've had the good fortune of experiencing some nice thunderstorms (ya know, where the sky gets all green and dark and there's lightning about fifty times a minute and it frickin rains like mad, that kind) which we've both missed since living out west.
Our Dumb Grey Cat has some kinda sore on her foot that she won't stop chewing on, so we had to give her the old cone-around-the-neck (known as an elizabethen collar ), but you know how cats are..she can still somehow reach it, so it's been a vigilant week for us. Also, she hates us.
Though it seems like a million years ago, it looks like we went to Bushkill Falls in the last few weeks. It was totally awesome. We took the long hike, which wasn't really that long or difficult, but there were signs every few hundred yards warning us how dreadfully strenuous it was. Now, we are not in any way very excersise oriented, but it was not a tough walk. How fat and out of shape are these people? And what miracle brought their lazy asses up to the Poconos? This was before the cat thing, so we had a little more free time on our hands (and feet).

Hey ya know what I hate? The state. Not this state, as in Pennsylvania, but the concept of the state (you know, a monopoly on force), and i feel like I haven't spent enough time here on Lelko Blog making this clear. So, may I direct you to our Permanent links to the upper-right. The road-side blog is fun, but the others are something you should at least peruse, because the quicker we all get over this whole 'it's okay to be slaves' thing, the quicker we can all have the option of Complete Liberty .
But, hey, who am I to rain on your parade? Let's get back to those all important giggles ("you're not human tonight, Marlowe").
Apparently the indians around here were very short and shiny. Who woulda thunk it?
This was near a living, old-time farm where you can go and watch them do old-time farm stuff, like, I don't know, animal husbandry or something. The farm was closed the day we went, but maybe we'll make it back for the old-time Halloween they do. As a side note, we were thinking of some hi-larious costumes, like the sexy quadruple amputee, cos, you know, Halloween is all about being a sexy something or other. At least that's how it appears judging on what they have in the windows at each of the 812 halloween store near us. What a boon for the economy halloween is...
Dill, pesto, tomato, Raw cheddar-stuffed mushrooms. All raw baby! Yeah, we've been doing pretty good with the Raw foods. I'd say we are about 80-90% raw these days, and feelin' fine.