Photos in Valley Forge National Historical Park During the early December Supermoon

Naked and starving as they are we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery,

Washington at Valley Forge, February 16, 1778

I'm not a great photographer, but back on December 3, I posted Supermoon behind the trees. As I noted then, it was a couple photos of the full moon taken from my front yard. It happened that this was during the occurrence of a supermoon, which is:

when a full moon approximately coincides with the moon's perigee, or a point in its orbit at which it is closest to Earth. This makes the moon appear up to 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than usual.

A couple of nights later, we happened to be on the road, and I decided it might be fun to play around with my phone's manual camera settings and take some more photos of the supermoon. Since Valley Forge National Historical Park is not too far away, I thought that would be a good place to take some photos.

As you may recall from your history lessons, Valley Forge is where General George Washington and the Continental Army spent the winter of 1777-1778 during the American Revolutionary War.

Most of the roads in the park are closed at night time, but @lisa.palmer, @cmp2020, and myself were able to pull off to the side near the National Memorial Arch and take some photos from there. With tonight's 18 degree (Fahrenheit) December weather, it seems like a good time to post the photos and think about an army that wanted Freedom enough to endure hardships like spending the winter camping in these conditions when they would very much prefer to be home celebrating the holidays in comfort with their families.

I apologize for the photo quality, but hopefully some of them came out ok.

First, here are a couple I took of the moon by itself:

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And here is the side of the Arch that faces the street.

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With a close-up of the engraving at the top

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It started getting cloudy, but here is the moon above the Arch

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And here is the back side of the Arch, with a full view and the engraving at the top.

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These are from the side, with the supermoon in the back ground. Clouds still rolling in, and I was playing around with F-stop and ISO settings.

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Here are some of the engravings inside the Arch

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This was inside the Arch, too. Not sure what it is, but it's an eye-grabber.

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If the soldiers were lucky, they got to shelter in cabins like this one. Probably just officers, I guess.

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This flag is across the street from the Arch. By this point, the clouds were really obstructing things.

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So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed some of these pictures. If you ever travel near south-eastern Pennsylvania, I emphatically recommend going to Valley Forge as part of your visit. Although I can't do it justice with my amateurish photography skills, the park is filled with history and scenery and it's definitely a worthwhile way to spend your time.