We started the day meeting Daryl at his apartment at about 9:15 a.m. with about three day’s worth of sightseeing to somehow cram into the next ten hours.  The activities included going to the Mercer Museum and Castle in Doylestown, taking a covered bridge tour in the area around Doylestown, and driving over to Nina’s childhood home in Long Valley, New Jersey.

The Mercer Museum was stunning. Henry Chapman Mercer collected more than 22,000 tools used in the 17th and 18th century in America in farming, blacksmithing, pharmacy, tanning, fabric making, and on and on and on. Probably every profession in existence during that time is represented in the museum. He invented his own system of classification and built a huge building in downtown Doylestown to display the collection. The picture above was taken from the fourth floor of the building looking out into the common area. There is stuff everywhere! Along each floor are small rooms devoted to a particular craft along with all of the tools associated with the craft. In the middle common area are all the larger tools, such as the blue whaling boat in the left of the picture. The hour and a half we spent at the museum barely scratched the surface.

From there we went to the Mercer Castle … a rather unique building he constructed out of concrete to be his own personal castle. Pictures were not allowed in the building, but eventually some pictures will show up in the picture album. We left that place shaking our heads about his eccentricity. Follow the link above to read a bit about him.

By now it was 2 p.m. and time for a very quick lunch (McDonalds in New Hope, PA filled the bill). We drove along a canal by the Delaware River and started the search for covered bridges. Nina had downloaded a tour guide to the covered bridges in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and we started in about the middle of the tour. We visited seven covered bridges and again took many pictures. A couple of them were hard to find as roads were either closed or routes had changed since the tour was originally put on the Internet. However, due to Daryl’s diligence and tenacious driving, we were successful. It was not 6:30 p.m. No time to drive over to Long Valley!

We had dinner at Bonefish, a nice seafood restaurant near Daryl’s apartment and we got back to the RV at about 9:30 p.m. It was a full day and a lot of fun.