801. Philadelphia, Philadelphia County (PA02)

Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love!  The county is coterminous with the city, so the center of political governance is Philadelphia City Hall.  As I would expect from one of the preeminent cities of the country, it did not disappoint.  I didn’t actually photograph the front, but it didn’t matter. It was unquestionably more impressive than many courthouses I’ve seen.  Of course, when you’ve had vast revenues and hundreds of years to get it right, you’re going to end up with something spectacular one way or another. 

Kittydcota dropped Godot and me off as she looked for a place to park, so he and I started on a Multi-cache named after Crispus Attucks at the African American Museum.  We ended up making it more difficult than it needed to be because we miscounted something at the redirector.  We walked a few blocks away to the wrong coordinates: a lovely courtyard with an iron-spiked fence.  Before we jumped it, at great danger to ourselves, we discovered our mistake and headed back, finding the cache a block from where we started.

Kittydcota, Godot, and all gathered back together and started walking about, soaking in the city and looking for new caches to grab.  We ended up at the Arch Street Friends Meeting House for a Virtual at the site.  It was open, and they were kind enough to let us inside for a look. 

I’m not a religious man, but there’s something about sacred spaces that makes me want to meditate on the nature of … stuff, whether natural or supernatural, physical or metaphysical. Perhaps the altered state that such a space, removed from the mundane world we all inhabit, opens up allows me to set down cares and consider things I don’t normally have the time or mental alignment to examine. I stood for a short moment and absorbed the quiet before returning to the hustle and bustle outside the walls. Had I known that the first Commandant of the Marine Corps was buried in its graveyard, I might have visited it, but just as I am not religious, I am also not a marine. Besides, I already had my brush with a celebrity grave.

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify—I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), the grave of the First American himself, Benjamin Franklin.  I was a bit amazed to find there was no Virtual there, but the cemetery charged admission, so I guess nobody wanted to make everyone pay for a cache.  Not that it really mattered.  The grave was so close to the outer fence that I could have touched it if I wanted. 

Ben is also buried across the street from the Philadelphia Mint.  I was able to add another mint to my list!  We soon received a phone call from the others.  We were ready to go into full-bore tourist mode.  Neither 4everlyn, Krissy4884, nor I had been to Philly before, so of course …

… we had to visit the Liberty Bell.  With the throngs of people around us, it was hard to get a photo that wasn’t full of people, so I did the best I could before we continued across the street to …

… Independence Hall.  If American liberty had a birthplace, it was in that building (or possibly in Boston, depending on your point of view).  Of course, I would add in a few other places like Harper’s Ferry or just north of Frederick in Gettysburg.  Others might add in Seneca Falls or New York City at the Stonewall Inn.  Those men in powdered wigs sitting in the Philadelphia heat didn’t go far enough.  They kicked a lot of cans down the road.  But I give them credit that they started.  In some ways, they sucked, but they made that first step, and sucking is the first step to being sorta good at something.  It takes time to make a more perfect union. 

Soon lunchtime was upon us. And when you’re in Philly, you know what to have! It was not the finest that the city had to offer, possibly not even the finest fast-food equivalent, but we had Philly cheesesteaks all around! I had whiz on mine! We plotted and planned our next move. Even at that point, it was apparent that our (and by “our,” I mean my) planned route was too ambitious for the fellowship. We opted to cut out a few stops (I sadly opted to skip a few county seats), but we still had things we wanted to accomplish, and we knew where we wanted to start the next day. We set off again, bound for our next destination…