Hopefully, nothing happened in the world today. If anything did, nobody told me. We are now about 250 miles from home in another Washington, this one in Pennsylvania. In February, we were in Washington NC.

We have been here before and ate tonight in a restaurant we have been to before, the large and always jammed Union Grill.

But on the way, we had several interesting stops. The first was Bedford PA, an attractive, historic town where George Washington both slept and commanded troops. We had a really good lunch at the Pub at the Golden Eagle and visited the local art museum, where they were having their annual photo exhibit.

This is the Espy House, built in 1771. It is here that George Washington slept during the Whiskey Rebellion.

This one is even older. What its connection is to the French and Indian War, I am not sure.

So you have this small, attractive, historic, prosperous looking, trendy little town, and when I Googled to see how it voted in 2024, I saw it voted 80% for Trump. 80%! That’s like deepest Mississippi or Wyoming. How could that be?

I decided to ask someone, and selected the proprietor of a shop which sold viniger and oil and pickles and jellies. He seemed like a nice man, probably in his 70s. He told me it was just a very conservative area. He thought it was more pro-Trump than anti-Democrats. I asked him how Trump was doing, and was he losing any support? He told me that he thought Trump was maybe trying to do too much, too fast. And that was raising questions.

From Bedford, we went to see the memorial that has been established to commemorate the victims of Flight 73, which was supposed to hit the U.S. Capitol, but crashed into a field near the very small town of Shanksville PA on that infamous September 11, now almost 25 years ago. Set among acres and acres of land, it is very impressive. Here is the entrance from the parking lot.

For some reason, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, which gives you an extensive, detailed, respectful, sobering account of what transpired, minute by minute, seat by seat. Definitely worth a visit. Here is a view from a window, looking out.

Our next stop turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be. Donora PA, a not too close part of the Pittsburgh metro area, a former coal and zinc smelting town, and the home of St. Louis Cardinal great Stan Musial, born there in 1920.

You cross the Monaongahela River on the Stan the Man Musial Bridge and then you are surprisingly thrown into a world you didn’t think still existed. Like Camden or Selma on a bad day. The downtown business area, once obviously extensive  and active, is now almost entirely boarded up. You can buy houses for $30,000 dollars.

There is a graveyard for hearses.

Churches have mysterious signs.

And, while the Musial family house seems to be gone, the yard across the street contains a museum of its own.

We are now in Washington,  Pennsylvania, where we have been before. Anything, other than dinner at the Union Grill, will be part of Day 2.