The weather has been a little cooler than it was last week, but today I was once again able to tour the ruins of Pennhurst. There is just something eerie about that place. You walk around crumbling buildings and wonder if you’ve just wondered onto a set from the X FILES. Or maybe you’ve hit a time warp and this is what it looks like after the fall of civilization. The signs of former activity are all over the place: you can’t walk ten paces with out running into a fire hydrant sticking up out of the ground or a still-functioning street light. Where late the sweet birds sang.

My original intent was to write about the history of Penn. I’m finding that I really don’t need to do that as El Peecho’s website already had plenty of information on the place, both in the past and present. My only complaint is that he should put the bulk of it into a coherent whole. There are plenty of fragments on the site, but if there is a Pennhurst timeline I have yet to find it.

The wildlife at Pennhurst is always the highlight of my trip. I still haven’t seen any “venues” of vultures circling around, but I did run into a deer herd. Saw a fox running down a road. The same woodchuck was staking out its territory on the way in and back. Of course, Tiamara, my canine companion, went nuts each time we saw them. I used to let her run free on the grounds, but that was years ago before she started figuring out she could find her own way back home.