In my life I have visited Valley Forge countless times but one day it struck me that none of those visits had been in the Winter, and Winter is at the heart of the story of the place. Having decided to make my first Winter visit, I nonetheless kept putting it off until Winter lifted and I had missed my chance. Then I waited for next Winter and then Winter came and I continued to put it off.
But when it came to the point where George Washington's birthday was coming up on Saturday, I had to pull the trigger. Visiting in the Winter on George Washington's birthday was too fitting. So I visited Valley Forge and, for the first time, visited George Washington's headquarters. The people there tell me the wood railing on the stairs is still original so I've now used a railing that George Washington also used.
Aside from visiting in the Winter and honoring the birthday, my other goal was to see the powder horn of Jabez Rockwell. I did a few laps around the museum and didn't see it. When I asked the Park Rangers where it was, they looked at me like I had two heads. No one knew where it was and so that objective ultimately failed. Turning to AI to locate it, it seems to be one of those cases where you get a completely confident answers that are nonetheless completely wrong. One AI answer does tell me this though:
The horn maintains an honored place within the historic collections of Valley Forge National Historical Park.
Oh, does it? Ok, show me. Searching for the horn on the park's website doesn't even return any results. A famous artifact that's nowhere to be seen and not worth mentioning? A "National Treasure" level heist is afoot.
So the final twist of this story is that the Park Rangers actually gave me contact info in case I want to actually call some people up to track this mystery further. Very strange. I may be enough of a loser to do that.
If you'd like to read the story of George Washington, Jabez Rockwell and his powder horn, you can do that here.
I always assumed that there was something I was missing about the Super Mario Bros 3 sliding picture game - I was sure there was a skill or "trick" to it, but I never figured out what that trick was. The following video goes pretty deep into NES programming, it's not going to be for everyone, but the point is: there is no skill or trick that would guarantee success. It was frustrating because it was always down to blind luck.
