East Coast Family Reunion - Day 10 - June 16, 2021

 A short travel day today. We left Harrisburg around 9:00 am and arrived at the West Chester, PA KOA about 11:00 am.

This campground is a large KOA in a wooded setting about 30 miles from downtown Philadelphia. It is near several affluent towns just west of Philadelphia which have retained their rural charm and character.  Lots of history (and money). 

The RV Park is adjacent to the Brandywine Battlefield along the Brandywine River.  It is the site of a Revolutionary War battle in 1775 between General Washington and his soldiers and the British moving up from the Chesapeake Bay.  The British won the battle and subsequently occupied Philadelphia with General Washington retreating to Valley Forge and wintering.  You know the rest of the story.

The area is also adjacent to the town of Chadds Ford.  It is the site of the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Wyeth Family Studios.  It is the home of the collections of works of three generations of the Wyeth family, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth. It has a spectacular collection of Wyeth art and if you are all familiar with and enjoy their art, it is well worth the trip.  It is presently closed for renovation but is planned to open on June 20^th.  We will stop here on the way home after the reunion.  We have been here before and it is worth seeing again.  The N.C. Wyeth house and studio also offer tours.  We have done them before and may do them again if open. 

Today was a logistics resupply day.  Judy did the laundry (I helped).

I also travelled about 6 miles through very narrow  country roads (but very pretty scenery) to buy groceries.  The local grocery store chain Giant is very large and dominates the market in the area. A couple of grocery store comments:

I picked up a 12 pack of beer (to kill the road dust after each day’s trip). As I was leaving the beverage area in the store with the beer, a guy came up to me and said I had to pay for the beer before leaving the area (near the produce).  Sure enough, I noticed his station near the coolers with a register and card reader. I asked him why they were doing this.  He said he didn’t know.  He just worked there but thought it had something to do with small kids in other parts of the store.  Strange, although you can still only buy hard liquor in” State Stores”, liquor stores run by the state.

The other thing, kind of creepy, was there were robots going up and down the aisles and other areas of the store.  They were kind of like big vacuum cleaners with a pole sticking up in the air.  If you came near one it would stop.  I asked a clerk why robots and what did they do?  He said they wander around the store keeping their eye on things (he didn’t go into details) but said if they saw something amiss, they would call someone.  Wow.

We are going to do some sightseeing tomorrow and then have dinner tomorrow night in Chadds Ford with family members who flew in today and my sister and nieces who live nearby.