Market Square, Harrisburg, Dauphin County

You all are amazing! When I updated last week, I said that the blog was about to reach 17,000 hits for the month. Well, apparently some of you took that as a challenge, because July ended with more than 18,000. (Think we can get 20,000 this month? Let's find out.)

As my Facebook followers may have seen, I took the leap and started an Instagram account for the blog. I have never used Insta before and I have practically no idea what I'm doing, but let's see how it goes. If you're on that app, please consider giving MQ a follow - you'll find it here. Not much there just yet but I'm trying.

For this week's quest, I realized it's been months since we talked about anything in Dauphin County, so I decided a look at Harrisburg's early days was in order. As you might expect, it looked very different than it does today.

Azilum, Multiple Communities, Bradford County

My husband and I spent two days chasing history in the Endless Mountains region of Pennsylvania, which is incredibly well named. We lost cell signal a number of times, which caused our GPS to be a bit unreliable, but we eventually found every place we intended to visit plus a few unexpected side quests. I know that not every man wants to spend his birthday driving around collecting historical facts and soaking up nature, but Kevin assures me that he had a great time. 

One of our intended destinations was the subject of this week's quest, and it's one that I'll admit that I was really looking forward to visiting. Ever since I knew this place existed - or, more accurately, used to exist - I've been extremely curious to see it for myself. Pennsylvania has plenty of historical sites that a lot of people don't even realize are there, and this is a perfect example. No one ever taught me in school that we used to have a house intended for Marie Antoinette.