Saturday, May 7, 2022. Rainy Poconos, Bethlehem and Allentown PA

Saturday, May 7, 2022.  Rainy Poconos, Bethlehem & Allentown PA

It rained pretty hard and steadily all night, and continued to rain all morning. The rain wasn’t particularly conducive to motivating us out of bed, so we all slept in.  After doing some research into venues for Mother’s Day Brunches, it is apparent that most of the nice venues in the Poconos sell out a year in advance, but they are happy to take reservations for Thanksgiving.  Since we’ll be heading back towards civilization on Sunday, we can try to find a place closer to Newark as John heads back to his apartment and we head towards Harrisonburg VA for our next Harvest Host site.  

Since it was raining steadily, there was really no point in trying to go for a hike anywhere, so we headed into Bethlehem and Allentown, PA to check out the National Museum of Industrial History, located in the remains of the old Bethlehem Steel plant.  Visiting the site and learning about the history of American Iron and Steel lent new meaning to Billy Joel’s song “Allentown”.  

Bethlehem and Allentown were the cradle of the American Steel industry until the ‘90’s.  The plant was based on technologies from the 1920’s, and even though the industry continually evolved, sometimes in leaps, Bethlehem Steel chose to follow a more conservative path with only the minimal incremental changes needed to keep up with the times.  This made them increasingly uneconomical and uncompetitive.  They ended up shutting down the blast furnaces and mills in the mid 1990’s.  

The museum does a good job of highlighting the importance of the iron and steel works in the development of American industrial power, architectural prowess and military might

over the history of the country from before the civil war to the mid 80’s.  There is a gallery devoted to the history of Bethlehem Steel, and the processes behind making steel from iron ore, coal and limestone, but the largest wing of the museum showcases the steam power era with a couple of huge, ornate steam engines, and steel works machines.  There were two internal combustion engines in the transition area to exhibits about the lives of steel workers, and then two seemingly unrelated galleries- one devoted to the silk manufacturing industry that sprung up from New England raw silk production combined with the abundant labor from the wives and children of steel mill workers, and a gallery devoted to the development and subsequent marketing and success of Propane as a portable and versatile fuel source.  We started with a brief docent led introduction and then wandered through the exhibits and galleries in more detail.  We then went back out into the rain and toured the monstrous remains of the blast furnaces and milling buildings.  

The scale of the industry involved with the production of iron and steel from iron ore, coal/coke, limestone and superheated air is mind boggling.  Standing next to the blast furnaces was like ogling an alien spaceship that had landed on the Earth.  

We finished up at the museum in mid to late afternoon.  We then went to a large Dutch Farmer’s Market in Allentown by the fairgrounds.  

In many ways it was a grander version of the one we had visited in Flemington, but it also had many more vendor stands like in the exhibit halls of a big state fair.  In addition to the grander scale of everything, there was also the excitement of last minute bargains as all the food vendors were clearing out their wares at bargain prices.  The locals prowling for bargains know just when to show up and pick up dinner at a bargain.  We ended up buying some baked goods to restock our RV pantry and some sale priced sausage sandwiches.  Those Dutch farmers do make a very tasty sausage.  

We then went to Ritz BBQ, a diner and ice cream parlor at the end of the building that housed the Farmer’s Market.  It looked like an interesting and authentic family owned diner/ice cream parlor, but Ben began having second thoughts after looking up the Yelp reviews, which weren’t very good.  But Janet noticed that the bad reviews were mostly for service related issues when the place was swamped.  But we were being seated early and there was plenty of room in the dining room.  We were seated right away and our waitress was cheerful, attentive and very patient and helpful.  John ordered chicken fried steak, Janet ordered a Turkey BBQ picnic dinner and Ben ordered pork roast and sauerkraut.  

Although John ended up with chicken fried chicken instead of steak, the food was decent with large portions and it was all well prepared and tasty.  Ben was surprised by the amount of roast pork under the big pile of home made sauerkraut, and the hand mashed potatoes.  And the pork was moist and delicious.  We finished up with a huge shared banana split topped with the works.  They had a tremendous variety of ice cream flavors so we tried Shoo-fly pie, Almond Joy and Tastykake (local PA cupcake favorite).  It was all sweet, sticky and yummy.  

We returned to the RV just as the sun was setting, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle after raining hard all day.  We streamed CODA on the Apple TV using our AT&T service.  It was such a touching story, it’s not hard to see that it was worthy of the Oscar for best picture of 2021. Tomorrow we head back to civilization and will hopefully find a place to have a Mother’s Day brunch before parting with John.