Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania

Jim Thorpe is a scenic town set in a deep valley among the mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania.  It's a weekend tourist attraction filled with curiosity shops selling old-fashioned or unusual merchandise.  Although I promised my wife a quaint shopping destination, unfortunately, most of the groovy art stores, bookstores, and boutiques were closed on a Tuesday.  The town is picturesque but compact, dense, and totally unphotographable with an iPhone.

 The place is known for its wonderful old architecture.  Mansions.  Churches.  Townhouses.  Public buildings.  Everything here is ornately designed and built on a slope.  After some years of decline, the town tried to recreate itself in the 1950s by changing its name from Mauch Chunk ("Bear Mountain") to Jim Thorpe.  It was a publicity stunt in honor of the once-famous Native American athlete from Oklahoma.  On the edge of town, there's an unremarkable monument to the eponymous Indian.  Truly, almost any name would be better than Mauch Chunk.

 Jim Thorpe is a witchy kind of place.  The few stores that were open sold Wiccan and neo-pagan religious items...and kitschy St. Patrick's Day hats and decorations.  Voodoo dolls.  Books of spells.  Evil-looking statues.  There are also lots of alternative religious items, like figurines of the goddess Ganesh.  One strange shopkeeper said to my wife: "I'm a universal minister...and by that I mean a medium."  Ah, but who can resist the martial charms of a castellated Episcopal church?  It's defensible, like some medieval fortress, presumably to ward off an attack by the neo-pagans and fashion zombies.