Atlantic City... huh.

Continuing on our adventure on the East Coast, Mom and I spent a night in Atlantic City. I had always thought that Atlantic City was the East Coast Vegas and would live up to that rep. Ummm, it didn't. It was remarkably small and seemed almost antiquated.It was also quite chilly and foggy, since we were right on the ocean. We had a good time, lost some money in the slot machines, saw the musical 42nd Street and spent time in the spa. Then we headed off to Delaware to visit Mom's sister and her family.

Coming in to Delaware we drove through Pennsylvania and thought it might be cool to see Independence Hall. However, we were on a freeway that gave us no idication where Indepedence Hall might be. After driving all the way through town and realizing we had no way to figure out where we were, we spotted a cool looking cemetary on the bank of a river. We managed to wind our way over there and spent some time looking at some very old graves in the Laurel Hill Cemetary.

Laurel Hill Cemetary was established in 1836 on the banks of the Schuylkill River and designed to be a "permanent, non-sectarian burial place for the dead, but also as a scenic, riverside sanctuary for the living."

I am often struck by the work the folks before us put into commemorating things, be it church buildings or monuments to the dead. I have disliked the current trend of economy in burial where you are forced to choose a tombstone that can be easily mowed over. While I don't endorse the borderline worship or pride that some monuments can represent, I also don't like being told, that in order to make the groundskeeper's job easier, I can't commemorate my loved one in a style of my choosing with a monument that holds significance to me or my family. You are a groundskeeper, keep those grounds! So there.