The Big Adventure: Sunken Gardens, Christmas Bling

For a while now, my husband has been talking about heading back to his hometown in Cambria County to visit old friends and take in some local sights. With the recent run of excellent weather, we determined that Tuesday would be the day of the big adventure. As it turns out, it was practically a mini-series!

The plan was bold, and included an early departure, two meals out, a trip to see some amazing gardens, a swim at a state park we seldom get to see, visits to several old cemeteries, a bit of antiquing, and plenty of unstructured time for exploring. We hoped to make the best of the daylight, leaving before 10 in the morning and arriving home sometime before 8 at night.

We started out well, leaving the house just a few minutes earlier than our target departure time. This placed us in Altoona in time to have an outstanding breakfast at Eat 'n Park. I ordered the senior super griddle smile, adding a grilled sticky (or cinnamon roll) onto two eggs over medium, bacon on the crispy side, potato cakes, and Italian toast. My husband had the standard breakfast smile, similar to mine, but featuring sausage. Everything was better than good, and I tucked my grilled sticky into a container for us to enjoy later.

From there, we headed over to the sunken gardens at Loretto, a favorite place that we have always loved - and that my husband's mother took him to as a child - but that we only make it to once a year or so. From the State College area, it's about an hour and fifteen minutes' drive to get there. For whatever reason, we are seldom there in summertime, and we found a profusion of flowers in the gardens like we'd never seen before. 

The gardens, chock full of statues and gorgeous light, are also known as the Schwab Estate, also the Jewel of the Alleghenies, also Mount Assisi, also Immergrun. It is home to an order of Franciscan monks. The Fatima shrine was open (you may view some photos of the Fatima shrine on Instagram), but the second shrine was closed and under construction. I paused a moment to say a prayer and light a candle or two for the unspoken needs of those I love . . . tales I cannot share because those are not my stories to tell. 

Tiny Tiger instantly fell in love with St. Francis himself. There is a statue there of him, and Tiny Tiger first hung out around his ankles, then crawled into his hands. We'll just call this the Blessing of the Tiger! He would have tried to get some lap time in, except that the statue was standing up; no lap to sit in! 

We spent about 40 minutes in the gardens, and I can tell you that any time you spend there just will not be enough. I highly recommend a visit if you're local. Go any time of year, but the flowers in summer will make it well worth the trip. You may see some additional pictures of the gardens at Loretto on Instagram.

After our tour of the gardens, my husband dropped me off in Ebensburg and went to visit with friends. He left me at Old Holy Name Cemetery, which has some wonderful gravestones. There I began my independent adventure, taking lots of photos and basically lollygagging around through history. 

I walked from Old Holy Name down to the Old Welsh Church on Sample Street. The graveyard there is much smaller, and older, dating back to 1804. Its claims to fame are that it was the first Welsh Congregational Church in the nation, the earliest Congregational Church in the state, and the oldest surviving church in Cambria County.

I left the graveyards at that point and walked down to the High Street Emporium, where I spent a delightful hour wandering through a treasure trove of antiques, knick-knacks, and oddities (see Instagram photo set). My grandmother, Grammy Carvell, collected salt and pepper shakers, and so I have inherited a few of those. I always check out the salt and pepper shakers for anything really cute, and so it was that I found a pair of old jalopies for the Crittergators, which I'll hope to show you sometime soon on these pages! 

I found something I adored but that I did not buy: a fancy set of Thomas Pacconi vintage mini Christmas decorations for $55. (As it turns out, this was a reasonably good deal. I have since found this exact set selling other places online for $75 and even $150!) That was well beyond what I planned to spend on this day, so I did not get them, but let me show you this gorgeous set in a photo in the extra photos area.

By this point in the afternoon, I was ready to sit, so I wandered over to the War Memorial and found myself a shady bench. That's where I passed the remaining bit of time, reading a murder mystery, until my husband came to pick me up. 

Our next part of the plan was to head over to Prince Gallitzin State Park, the site of our first ever kiss back in 1986 (!!!!), for a swim. It is named for a Russian prince. We had not been there yet this year, and like the gardens at Loretto, it's a place we make it to roughly once or twice a year. 

The water was relatively warm, and I was glad I had my aqua socks, for the bottom of the swimming area featured some little stones that my husband complained about, but that never bothered me a bit in my awesome little sockies. We showered afterward and headed for our next date: supper!

We had coupons for buy-one-get-one-free double cheeseburgers at Burger King, and fortunately for us, there's a Burger King in Tyrone, right along our route home. So we hopped in the car and went cruising for burgers, but oh boy, burgers were almost not meant to be! 

The last time we visited Ebensburg, and the gardens, and Prince Gallitzin, was September 13 of last year. We were on the Janesville Pike, heading home, and encountered an emergency ahead, such that we had to be redirected, significantly out of our way.

So we were joking around about getting redirected on Janesville Pike! I asked, "Are we ON the Janesville Pike right now?"* And my husband said, "It couldn't happen to us twice. It could only happen on a FRIDAY or a SATURDAY. This is a TUESDAY!" But guess what, we were making good progress  heading toward our burgers, when we saw the sign: EMERGENCY AHEAD. It was followed by another, even more ominous, sign: ROAD CLOSED. "There are going to be NO BURGERS FOR US!!" my husband said, sadly.

We were redirected onto a winding back road that goes past a reservoir on the hill and down into Tipton, about five miles from Tyrone. In the end, we DID get a pair of double cheeseburgers in Tyrone. The rerouting only cost us about five miles and maybe 10 minutes of inconvenience. And they were wonderful burgers, and we ate them and made it safely home from our big adventure and lived happily ever after, THE END!!!


*My husband and I chatted about it later at home, and laughed ourselves silly over the whole thing. "Janesville Pike isn't really a place, it's a state of mind," I said. But be ye warned: if you start out there, you may not end up where you think you will, or WHEN you think you will. In fact, it's one of those places where you may not even be able to GET there from here. After all, it's ALL a great big journey, isn't it? And NOT just a destination. ;-) And that's a wrap!

Our music links for these images and this story are Dave Mason, with Mystic Traveler, for our intrepid travelers; and for my fancy Christmas ornaments, Melissa Etheridge, with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Additional links:

Mount Assisi (Charles Schwab estate)

Mount Assisi Gardens

Sunken Gardens

History of Holy Name Church and Cemetery

First (Welsh) Church

Exploring the High Street Emporium in Ebensburg

History of Prince Gallitzin State Park