We wanted to take one more short trip before putting the RV away for the winter. Joyce wanted to visit Byer's Choice in Chalfont, PA, www.byerschoice.com, where they make the caroler dolls that she collects. I found an RV park located between Easton and Chalfont.
Monday, we headed out on the 70 mile route to the campsite. The GPS had me getting off I-78 in New Jersey and going down to Milford then crossing the Delaware. There was a height restriction of 11'-6" somewhere along this route. I made a U-turn and went back to I-78. The GPS routed us again to Milford where we ran into construction. Once in PA, we had to climb some really steep hills and cross a bridge which had a capacity of about half what the RV & car weighed. I had to cross it as there was no way of turning the rig around.
The campground was practically empty except for us, a couple of transient rigs, and a few permanent trailers. I was told at check-in that we would get not satellite TV or phone service as the campground was in a hollow and heavily wooded. They did have cable, six fuzzy channels without ABC. Joyce had to do without her soap or Dancing with the Stars.
Tuesday, the weather turned bad, really bad. High winds, rain, and snow were the order of the day. We drove down to Chalfont and did our tour of Byer's Choice. They had an observation window where you could watch the dolls being made. There was a museum and a store. The museum had to have over a thousand dolls in all sorts of groupings and settings. They also had a store.
It was snowing when we left BC. The snow flakes were big and sticking to everything. This kept up for Tuesday and Wednesday. The wind was very heavy also. We stopped for gas and it was so windy that the snow/rain mixture was horizontal. It was a bad day for self-service gas.
Wednesday, we headed up to Easton & Nazareth to visit the Crayola Factory and the Martin Guitar factory. Needless to say, Crayola was more for kids. We did get to see how crayons are made. They now had two layers of paper wrapped around them to prevent breaking.
There is a canal museum on the top floor of the Crayola building. This was more to our liking. Joyce got to pilot a remote control barge through a seventy foot long canal with all kinds of locks.
Our next stop was the Martin Guitar Company. This I really enjoyed. The factory was in a residential area of Nazareth. You walk into the big guitar shaped foyer with offices on the right, a museum, a store, and an area with a dozen or so guitars that you can sit there and play.
We took the guided factory tour which was over an hour long that showed us the entire process from the wood coming in the door to the completed guitars going out the shipping door. Some of the woods they use are extremely rare and therefore very expensive. They make the wood tops by book-matching, sawing through the board on its edge and opening the two pieces like a book then edge gluing them. Each part is marked with the guitar serial number, seven digits, and go to different operations and come together for final assembly, inspection, tuning, and shipment.
We were each given a sound hole cutout with the company's logo and the year of the visit. This will probably be the closest I will ever come to owning a Martin. We then went into their museum. The company has been in business since 1833. There are guitars from the early days up to the present including the one millionth and the million & first units. They spared no expense when they made these. The guitars were absolute works of art. The are covered top, back, and neck with inlayed woods. The millionth is priceless but I wonder if the million & first can be bought.
The weather cleared on Thursday in time for us to head home. I did not follow the GPS on the trip home. We went north to Easton and got on I-78 there. The only excitement on the way home was that I came close to running out of gas. This would not have been too much of an issue as I have the car in tow.
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