Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette A bus with Groomes Tours makes its way along Skyline Road toward the temporary Flight 93 Memorial. In the foreground is a ceramic flag, one of many hand-made items at the site.

By Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

JENNERSTOWN -- Heavy, overnight thunderstorms chased away the humidity, and so this last day of spring in the Laurel Highlands is more comfortable than a silk robe and clearer than a perfectly washed window -- the kind of weather tour guides dream about.

By 9 a.m., ladies of Paradise United Methodist Church and their female companions are sipping coffee in Our Coal Miners Cafe, a popular gathering spot inside the Coal Miners Bed and Breakfast on Route 30.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Some items on display at the temporary Flight 93 Memorial. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Slideshow: 21st Century Heroes Tour "Heroes" tours... if you go Our Coal Miners Cafe and B&B involves community Map of Heroes Tour

It's a fitting place to start the 21st Century Heroes Tour, a 50-mile bus trip through Somerset County that takes visitors from the temporary Flight 93 memorial where 40 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, to the farm where all nine men were freed from the flooded Quecreek mine after a communal, superhuman effort in July 2002.

The heroes tour is one of many guided excursions that has made this loop of grief and joy a popular destination for thousands of visitors over the last few years.

In this hotel's sun-washed dining room, retired coal miners trade local news over breakfast with relatives of men who were trapped in the mine. The fifth anniversary of that joyous rescue arrives on July 28.

Leading the 30-member group of day-trippers is Carol Love, a woman whose motherly presence reminds you of Aunt Bee from "The Andy Griffith Show."

"Is everyone's friend here?" she asks while counting noses. By now, every passenger holds an extra-large chocolate chip cookie and is primed for what's been billed as a mystery tour.

Soon after the bus heads east on Route 30, a PennDOT road crew causes the driver to stop.

"What's yellow and black and sleeps four?" Mrs. Love asks. "A PennDOT truck!" As passengers burst into laughter, she adds, "My apologies to anyone whose family works for PennDOT."

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Members of a tour group read profiles of people aboard United Flight 93 at the Flight 93 Chapel near Shanksville. Click photo for larger image.

Several miles later, road signs for the temporary Flight 93 memorial appear. As the Groomes bus turns up Skyline Road and into a picturesque, windswept valley that looks like an Andrew Wyeth landscape, a reverent silence halts the hum of multiple conversations.

Bob Musser, a volunteer at the memorial near Shanksville, steps aboard, greets the group and tells them what direction the United Airlines jet was flying when it crashed.

"When it crossed the ridge, the plane was traveling 560 miles per hour and it was about 500 feet in the air. Nevin Lambert, the man who owns that farm up on the ridge, was outside working. He thought he was going to die," Mr. Musser said.

Nearby the temporary memorial -- a tall fence full of mementos -- are 15 wooden benches carved with most of the names of crew members and passengers. Made by the seventh- and eighth-grade children of the pacifist Spring Valley Bruderhof Community in Farmington, the benches have arrived gradually since 2002.

"As you know, government projects take a long time," he said, adding that the permanent memorial may be ready for the 10th anniversary in 2011 if a campaign to raise $58 million in private donations succeeds.

So far, nearly $12 million has been raised, said Joanne Hanley, National Park Service superintendent of the Flight 93 site.

"But we haven't gone national yet," she said.

A visitors center will be built on the site of a nearby metal recycling and smelting plant. Around the crash site, 40 groves of conifers, sugar maples and red maples, with 40 trees in each, will be planted to honor the flight's 33 passengers and seven crew members. Near the entrance to the memorial on Route 30, a 93-foot-high tower with 40 wind chimes will be built.

Once a mile-long path and road are completed, "you'll get a lot closer to the actual crash site than you are now," Mr. Musser said.

About 20 minutes later, the bus rolls past the crash site where blackened pine trees, singed by the jet's fiery plunge, stand as silent witnesses to the nation's altered psyche.

From there, it's a five-mile drive to the Flight 93 Memorial Chapel, an interdenominational sanctuary run by Alphonse T. Mascherino, a former Catholic priest of the Altoona-Johnstown diocese.

"Fill up the front rows because we only take up the collection in the back rows," he joked. (In a way this is literally true: In a back corner of the chapel, souvenir T-shirts, coffee mugs, lapel pins and a replica of the chapel are for sale.)

Built in 1901, the former Lutheran church closed in 1969, becoming a seed warehouse for farmers and a feast for field mice. Mr. Mascherino sold his antiques and Hallmark holiday ornaments to buy the building and cleaned it out with volunteers. After Maggie Hardy Magerko provided a $23,000 grant and a crew of workers, the building was renovated by Sept. 11, 2002.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Benches at the temporary Flight 93 Memorial. Click photo for larger image.

Americans, he recalled, poured into churches, synagogues and mosques to pray after Sept. 11, 2001, and extra services were scheduled.

"Their faith told them that this event is so immense, we need God's help. That's the faith this chapel is meant to memorialize," he said.

He asks the women to stand and leads them in singing "God Bless America."

As the motorcoach heads through the valley, Mrs. Love observes that "we've done some very solemn things, but that's good, that's good for our hearts."

The bus passes by a large wind farm, and Mrs. Love notes that Blaine Mayhew, the youngest miner rescued from the Quecreek Mine, works there.

"He works 240 feet up in the air. He can still see the sky," she said.

After lunch at the Oakhurst Tea Room's smorgasbord and dessert table near Somerset, the group travels to Dormel Farms, also near Somerset, where all nine miners were rescued.

Inside a large, clean garage, Lori Arnold, who owns the 200-acre organic dairy farm with her husband, William, jumps onto a foot-high rubber platform that serves as her stage. A few feet away is the capsule used to rescue all of the men.

Mrs. Arnold is wearing a headset with a microphone, a T-shirt, denim shorts and bare legs tanned from 14-hour days of hard work. She's as strong and straight up as a double shot of Kentucky bourbon.

For the next 70 minutes, she engages her listeners with an intense, stream-of-consciousness commentary about her close bond with Karen Popernack, stepmother to one of the rescued miners, as well as the amazing coincidences and never-give-up heroics that ultimately saved the nine miners.

Mrs. Arnold was stunned when she learned about the mine disaster from her husband in a brief telephone call. Still holding the receiver in her hand, she stared at her daughter and admitted that she didn't know what to do next. Her daughter suggested putting on a pot of coffee.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette In July 2002, Lori Arnold and her two children, Morgan, 3, left, and Janna, 5, wait as rescuers work to free nine men from Quecreek Mine beneath their farm in Lincoln Township. The fifth anniversary of the rescue arrives July 28. Mrs. Arnold and her husband, William, own Dormel Farms. Click image for larger version.

But Mrs. Arnold wondered, "How in the world am I going to feed all these people who are coming to my house?"

She woke up everyone she knew and pretty soon, Burger King coffee and sandwiches arrived along with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Giant Eagle ham and Papa John's Pizza and urns of coffee from the Oakhurst Tea Room.

And she has nothing but praise for the 25 handsome, polite Navy divers who participated in the rescue and helped out at the farm.

"If you were young and single, this was the place to be," she said.

When Mrs. Arnold finished, her audience had a chance to eat delicious cookies, buy books on the mine rescue and see a memorial that honors the nine men.

Then it was time for the last stop of the day at H & H Greenhouse in Somerset, a Mennonite business that sells produce, eggs, cheese, meat and homemade peanut brittle.

Since 2002, thousands of people have taken this bus tour, and attendance continues to rise.

Overall, more than 750,000 people have visited the temporary memorial at the Flight 93 crash site, said Donna Glessner, the Somerset County woman who organized the group of volunteers called ambassadors who greet and talk with visitors.

Joan DeFilippo, a day-tripper from Mount Pleasant, called the trip "awesome. The way she [Lori Arnold] portrayed everything happening brought me to tears."