Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Day 4--Carlisle PA to Hackettstown NJ

OK...Left Carlisle at about 9am and headed toward our Culturally Significant site. Since there was only ONE post with a guess as to where we were going, I will hereby announce that Katie V is the winner, if only by default. She guessed either a brewery or a distillery. Now given what my usual inerests are, that would be at least a statistically appropriate conclusion to which to come. However, if anyone had looked at a map, they would have found a number of plausible possibilities. There was of course, Gettysburg, nearby. There are a number of Amish workshops at which to see...you know, whatever the Amish do in such places. The area is also often described as the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and we did indeed pass by a number of classic Pennsylvania Dutch historic sites, pictured below. As a side note, I will put on my politically correct hat that proudly displays an Obama for President button carefully affixed to the brim, and mentione that there are only two things I hate in this world...People intolerant of other people's cultures...and the Pennsylvania Dutch. But I digress. We saw the "Worlds (plural, not possessive) Greatest Miniature Village. I think it may be that village Hillary always talks about. We did see the World's Dryest River Boat, also pictured below. We searched high and low for the World's Largest Ball of String, The Three Headed Cow, The World's Most Gigantic Doctor (Scrubs reference), but to no avail. I think those items have been purchased for huge sums of money and are now on display at Wall Drug in South Dakota. We did, however, see a number of rural Pennsylvanians standing around on the side of the road, clinging to their guns and religion. Not sure why, but I thought I would mention it. Now, you must be thinking that any one of these culturally significant sites could have been the ONE to which we were referring, but to that I say, "Nay Nay." About an hour and a half from Carlisle PA is the tiny hamlet referenced in the famous song by The Band called "The Weight." The lyrics go a little something like this..."I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' bout half past dead." Yes indeed folks, we visited none other than the world famouse Martin Guitar Factory. I do have to say, I felt that familar tingle of excitement, dare I say, giddiness as we approached the front door. Jackie took a picture of me in front of the factory. We toured through the museum and saw the 1,000,000th Martin which Doug, Tom and I each held when it was on tour and visited Eddie Mathis' guitar shop in Roswell. We saw Prototypes of many other limited edition signature guitars like the 000-28 Eric Clapton, the D-45 Stephen Stills and many others. We did see, however, a glaring omission from the collection. I did not see the prototype of the OM-28 Night Dive. We saw a production model, but not the prototype, which is much more typical of the collection. Hmmmm. I wonder where they are hiding the prototype. We had a guided tour of the factory watching Martin guitars in various stages of manufacture and then had a nice slice of east coast pizza before heading out toward the burghe of Hackettstown. So, ladys and gentlemen is the answer to the Puzzler. We visited, dare I say, experienced, the 175 year old Martin Guitar company and had a rockin good time. Doug and Tom...eat your hearts out!

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