As the mother of two young boys and calendar coordinator for her Mom’s Cub, Jennifer Jones has become somewhat of a regular at America On Wheels in Allentown. As her sons marveled at the room-sized, ‘O-Gauge’ model train platform in a second-floor gallery at the museum of over-the-road transportation, Jones said she keeps abreast of new exhibits and visits several times a year.
“We love it,” she said as the boys watched the trains and checked out the historic Soap Box Derby cars mounted on the nearby wall. “We enjoy it …

The last time I heard any real numbers, the Lehigh Valley was losing farmland at a rate of about 3 square miles a year. I’m sure the current recession has put a little hitch in that giddyap, but it’s still a concern. One of the attractions of the region is the rural, open nature that has long surrounded the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton and their immediate suburbs.
But take a Sunday drive in the Valley these days and it seems the biggest cash crop over the past two decades …

Several years ago I talked my editors into letting me go to Gettysburg to cover a statewide paranormal conference. Topics ranged from visual images of ghosts to electronic voice manifestations to the existence of vampires. While there, I interviewed a self-proclaimed psychic and a man who said his dog could see ghosts.
We decided to drive out to Devil’s Den, a particularly haunted section of the historic battlefield, after nightfall – which, technically, isn’t legal – to see if either the psychic or the dog could pick up any trace of …

For most Americans, it seems that history goes back only about 235 years – to our own Revolutionary War. Sure, we all learned about the Pilgrims and Puritans and William Penn in school, but the real scope of history seems to escape us, as a nation. That’s why I am sure many people will be shocked to learn that Eastern Pennsylvania has been inhabited by humans for more than 12,000 years.
That’s one of the first things you learn when you enter the new Sigal Museum in Easton. A product of …

When it comes to fine art, I’m pretty whitebread. OK, boring is more like it. I like portraits and landscapes. I can appreciate Norman Rockwell and Gilbert Stuart. Picasso makes me think someone was hitting the sangria a bit too hard.
That’s why I like the Allentown Art Museum. They offer a good mix of permanent exhibits, including Stuart’s portrait of Ann Penn and a great painting of Niagara Falls. But they mix it up, too. The current exhibit “Peter Grippe – A Personal Vocabulary” mixes Grippe’s modernistic sculpture with the …

When you think about scuba diving, what exotic locations pop quickly to mind? The Florida Keys? The coast of Belize? Australia’s Great Barrier Reef?
How about Nazareth, Pa.? Didn’t think so.
But Dutch Springs, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend, has become one of the hottest scuba destinations for divers on the East Coast over the past three decades and now draws more than 35,000 dive students and enthusiasts each year.
“If you are not involved in scuba diving, you may not know that we have scuba here in the Lehigh …

Every day hundreds of people file past the Liberty Bell in its glass home outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Over the past two centuries the bell has become known as a symbol of freedom and democracy across the globe. What isn’t as well known is the fact that if it wasn’t for a committed band of Lehigh Valley farmers, the iconic bell might not have survived the first year of the Revolutionary War.
The Liberty Bell Shrine at Zion UCC Church in Allentown is a tribute to the brave patriots …