Being it was a beautiful day we had the opportunity to watch a couple hang-gliders just floating through the air. As we descend the mountain you experience the view of unspoiled nature. Our travels took us to Fort Loudon, built in 1756 to protect local settlers from continuing threat of Indian raids on the Pennsylvania frontier. Off to our next exhibit located at Pope’s Orchard there was a mural with an answer to another one of our questions. Heading east to Saint Thomas we stopped at the New Oak Restaurant to find an exhibit and gas pump named after baseball Hall-of-famer “Nellie Fox” painted by David Tisdale. On the road again to Chambersburg for our last stops of the day. We viewed exhibits at the Capitol Theater, the Chambersburg Post Office, Town Square, and at the Ice Cream Station answering more of our questions. We ended the rally for the day touring the Chambersburg Heritage Center before registering in our motel. We only had until 5:30pm to get ready for the Murder Mystery Dinner.

At 5:30 we piled into Lou Dipietro’s 64 wagon and left for the Murder Mystery Dinner. We had a perfect day with Elaine navigating Mike to Chambersburg. That was about to change. The directions had us going off the first exit of route 81. The first exit was a new exit that Penn Dot was not finished with. This exit was built after the writing of the directions. To our surprise the exit back onto route 81 was barricaded. Lou looked down the exit made a u turn on top of the overpass, drove around the barricaded down the exit and back onto 81. We made it to dinner on time and enjoyed another great meal. Suddenly there was a loud scream! A murder had occurred. The photographer has been murdered with a knife to his chest. The investigator stopped everyone from leaving the room, he roped off the crime scene and started his investigation interviewing suspects. Some of the suspects are missing others have alibis. The investigation continued into the next day.

On Sunday, everyone’s up by 8:00 am and met for breakfast. Today we will be ending our rally in Abbottstown, PA. Maureen and I lead the tour. We headed off to our last stop for Chambersburg located at the Lincoln Lanes Bowling Alley. There was a mural that stretches the entire length of the building. We got another answer and started to leave for our next exhibit. Just as we were pulling out onto route 30, Verne and Janet Franz pulled into the lot with their 1963 Impala. We waited for Verne and Janet. The wait became much longer then expected. As Verne pulled into the parking lot another couple Bob and Joyce Inhoff noticed fluid pouring from under Verne’s car. It was determined to be gas leaking from the fuel pump. The lower bowl gasket on the fuel pump seemed to be leaking. Tightening the screws would not stop the leak. Verne was in luck. John Lucus and Lou Dipietro both had extra fuel pumps. John’s 348-fuel pump was an exact match of Verne’s 327. Lou, John, Bob and Verne worked to get the pump replaced. When you are on a time frame nothing goes right. A fifteen-minute job took over an hour but they got it together and we were on the road again. We had lost time that we needed to make up to be in Abbottstown by 1:00 pm. We pulled out of the parking lot onto the Old Lincoln Highway. We bypassed Caledonia State Park and headed to Mr. Ed’s Elephant Museum.

Mr. Ed’s offers a wide variety of candies, fresh roasted peanuts and gift merchandise as well as a museum stocked full of elephant items. We decided to only stop at the exhibits that we needed answers to our questions to make up time and will later return to some of the sites we missed. We bypassed the round barn and continued on to the McKighstown Post Office, Larson’s Quality Inn, through Gettysburg, New Oxford Train Station and then Aero Energy. We have approached our final stop of the day at the Abbottstown Fire Hall for lunch and the conclusion of the Murder Mystery. Lunch was an authentic Lincoln Highway meal of chicken and waffles. I don’t think anyone in the group had chicken and waffles before. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

Now the conclusion of the murder! The investigator went over his clues. Notified us that the DEP employee was also found murdered in the park. His investigation showed that the Penn Dot worker was in the area at the same time of the murder. He examined the crime scene once more and found dirt. He determined that the dirt was the same type of dirt that was on the shoes of the Penn Dot Worker. The investigator made his arrest of the Penn Dot worker and closed the case. Murder solved.

This was a great weekend. It was fun being with our friends and meeting new ones. This years rally had over 100 participants from Michigan, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Texas and of course, Pennsylvania. The Jersey gang would like to thank the members of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor for their hospitality and hosting this event. We hope to see everyone in 2006.