First Day

The first day on our vacation we headed for a day trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was only 1 1/2 hours drive from Ryan's house in New Jersey. We enjoyed the scenic drive with the winding roads and all the beautiful trees in blossom. We also experienced the eastern toll roads. This is new to us and have only had to use these when we were in Europe. Just to drive from Morris Plains, NJ to Philly we passed through seven of them! Anyway, we were grateful for warm spring weather because when we left Utah, we had five inches of snow! These are some of the fun things we saw and did that day.
-The Liberty Bell
-Independence Hall (so many historical things happened here...the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. In the same room the design of the American flag was agreed upon in 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted in 1781, and the U. S. Constitution was drafted in 1787, just to name a few)
-Betsy Ross house
-Benjamin Franklin's grave
-Place's where Abraham Lincoln and George Washington gave speeches or ceremonies
-Ate a Philly Cheese steak sandwich at Pat's AND Geno's with wit and wiz! (that's Philly talk for white onions and cheese)
-Mike's favorite- Ran up the steps at Philadelphia's Museum of Art, like in the movie "Rocky"
-Saw the missionaries hard at work and talked to them about the area and mission
-Ran into several Asian groups for some reason wanted their picture taken with Megan. The first few times it was weird, but after 7-8 times we just stopped, nodded, and smiled.

Even though we had a wonderful day of sights, history and fun... we loved driving back to New Jersey to Uncle Ryan's beautiful house to spend the evening with thier cousins Jackson, Emily, Logan and Laurie.