Honoring Heroes in a Pennsylvania Field – Flight 93 National Memorial, Shanksville PA [October 10, 2018]

Visitors Center walkway that follows the flight path of the doomed flight

Where were you on September 11, 2001?  For many of us, that question triggers a sweep of sad and difficult memories.  The Flight 93 Memorial is a thoughtful, powerful testament to the 40 brave men and women who caused their flight to crash less than 20 flight minutes short of its target in Washington, DC.

The flight path was through the openings in the panels, with the balcony overlooking the crash site

When you arrive at the memorial, you walk down a sidewalk into the Visitors Center, marked with the times of impact of the other 3 flights into the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon.  The walkway follows the flight path of Flight 93 as it crashed.  When you continue walking to the end, you stand on a balcony cantilevered over the hillside, looking directly at what was once the crash site.

The plane flew from here...

...to here.  The boulder marks the crash site.

The Visitors Center has a serpentine exhibit that talks about the context of these attacks, the attacks themselves, news coverage, and Flight 93 and its passengers.  You pick up telephones and hear the messages left as passengers called their loved ones, hearing panic, grief and resolve in their voices.  You watch videos of our national leaders and hear their healing words around the terror of the times and later at the dedications of different aspects of the Memorial.  You learn about the immense effort by the FBI to collect tiny pieces of debris, including human remains, and piece together what actually happened and who was there.  We saw the credit card owned by one of the terrorists which led to the unraveling of how these attacks were financed.

Wall of Names

From the Visitors Center you can walk a .7 mile path to the Memorial Plaza, walk along the 1 mile Allee to the Plaza, or drive to the Plaza.  The Plaza borders the crash site and debris field which has since been filled in and is marked by a boulder in a field.  The remains of the passengers and crew are still in that field, and their names are written on a wall that continues the course of the flight path as it was marked from the Visitors Center on the hill above.

The Tower of Voices

Unlike other Memorials that we have visited, this one feels very new.  There are young trees along the Allee and drive, which you can imagine will one day be lovely mature groves.  The brand-new Tower of Voices has 8 of the 40 planned wind chimes whose simple melodies greet visitors at the entrance from the highway.  Somehow, this newness gives more power to the Memorial.  It has been created to honor a tragedy and sacrifice that happened during OUR lifetimes, and to tell the story in the future to people who did not live through it, so that it should never be forgotten.

Wind chimes

On personal notes: Jim, Pat, Sheryl and Mike, you shared that day with Dana.  She remembers the smell of jet fuel from the Pentagon a few miles away, the constant sirens, the phones not working, and the gridlock as terrified commuters fled DC driving through Arlington. Russ remembers Shannon running into his office telling him to go to the conference room, that a plane just crashed into the Twin Towers.  Where were you on 9-11?

Fun Days Hiking, Driving and Kayaking Along Fundy – St. Martins New Brunswick [July 9 & 10, 2018]

One of the St. Martins sea caves at low tide...

 

...and at high tide.

Our last stop on the Bay of Fundy was easily the best stop.  The tiny, scenic village of St. Martins, New Brunswick (population <400) has sea caves that you can walk to at low tide, two covered bridges, and one of the few kayak outfitters that will take you kayaking in the Bay of Fundy. It also is the entrance to the spectacular Fundy Trail and Fundy Trail Parkway.

The harbor and covered bridge (to the left).  Note kayak group that stayed in the protected harbor.

Other covered bridge (both bridge photos from top of the lighthouse Visitor Information Center)

The Visitors Information Center in downtown St. Martins is located in a re-purposed lighthouse next to the protected harbor.  A few feet to one side is a covered bridge, and a few feet to the other side is another covered bridge.  At high tide, the fishing boats float along side the wharf, and at low tide they sit on the muddy bottom of the harbor.  A classic Bay of Fundy scene.  We camped an easy bicycle ride away from the harbor, so peddled down a couple of times during our stay.

High tide in the harbor

Low tide in the harbor

Just outside of the harbor are the majestic St. Martins sea caves.  At low tide, you can walk across the gravel sea floor and climb inside the caves.  At high tide, you look across at the waves splashing against the cliff face.  The breadth of the caves is created by the constant pounding of the tidal motion and waves.  The height of the caves is caused by ground water seeping through cracks in the sandstone and freezing and breaking off chunks of the cave roofs.  The caves are quite an attraction and tour buses come from the city of St. John 42 km away to see the caves and to have the tourists eat at the two seafood restaurants located on the beach.  Both claim to have the best seafood chowder, but the best chowder this trip for us was made by our cousin in Weston VT.

Part of the Fundy Trail coastline

And this untouched beach

At one time, St. Martins had a thriving wooden ship building industry, with the 3^rd highest production in Atlantic Maritime Canada, producing a total of 500 ships.  You can learn about this rich heritage at the Quaco Museum in town.  When wooden ships were no longer being used, the region turned to harvesting the plentiful trees for wood and paper until the 1950s.  The area where a lot of the lumbering took place has been left alone since and is now part of the longest undeveloped coastline on the Atlantic Coast of the US or Canada.

Craggy cliffs

Over the years, a rugged 41 km hiking trail was built here, connecting St. Martins with Fundy National Park.  The hike has very steep ascents/descents and crosses several tidal rivers.  The demanding, isolated trail (or footpath as they say in Canada) takes 3-4 days to complete.

Crossing the suspension bridge over the tidal Big Salmon River

Tides that go out forever at Long Beach

Most recently, they have started building a motor parkway that follows the same coastline path as the trail.  30 km (19 miles) are done with overlook pull outs and hikes along the way.  In some places the mountain has been hacked away to provide cut-throughs for the road.  In others, you ascend a 16% grade, which you will descend when you return at the end of the day, a challenge when driving a many-ton motor home.  Scenic vistas of coastline cliffs and pristine beaches await around many corners.  It is an exquisite drive.  You can walk across a suspension bridge and you can use cable “stairs” to descend down the sides of cliffs for better views.

Kayaking Bay of Fundy!  It looks calm, looks can be deceiving

Yup, just 2 boats for this excursion

On our last day in St. Martins, we explored the sea caves by kayak.  You rarely see any pleasure boats on the waters of the Bay of Fundy.  The water is hypothermia cold, and the currents and tides are powerful and dangerous.  We were fortunate to go out on a kayak excursion with just one other tandem boat that also had experienced kayakers.  Our guide took us on a more challenging paddle than he would have taken novices.   We paddled around a point of land to caves that you can only walk to at the lowest tides.  Russ had walked to them the day before, the scramble to get to them on foot was beyond Dana and Tiki.

Cave with water in it

Same cave, no water, note the beach at the end.

Inside the cave, looking out

The paddling was spectacular and the views of the cliffs from the water were marvelous.  There are red cliffs of sandstone, and grey cliffs that are what is left of deposition from an ancient river that flowed there during the times of Pangea.  We learned even more about the geology of the region from our guide, supplementing the bits we have been learning along the way.  Once again, we wished that we had studied geology at some point in our pasts.  We pushed our nose inside a flooded cave, and beached our boats on a secluded beach for a snack and a rest.

View from the beach of that cove

When Russ scrambled around to see the remote cave at low tide, he looked back and zoomed in to take this picture

This is what he climbed on to reach the cove.

The view of the caves from the campground

The view of the campground from the caves