Pennsylvania

Day Sixty Two – Friday, October 21, 2016

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

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Welcome to our last night on the road, of Our Big Adventure, 2016. Today we covered 343 miles, as we traveled through the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania, making this a four state day, but as we hit Pennsylvania on the way out, our last 3 new states. For those keeping track, our total for the trip is 25 states, and 4 countries – Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica, and the United States. Those are all the numbers I’m going to give you today, because a “by the numbers” blog will, I’m sure, happen next week. Tonight I want to concentrate on this day on the road, and our last night sleeping not in someplace we own!

So, in 62 days on the road, this was just the 3rd day where rain has been a part of just about the whole day. I don’t know about you, but Susie and I are rather flabbergasted with our weather luck! We think back on all the special places we’ve been, all the wonderful views we’ve had, and how less special those views would have been had the weather been against us! So one day at the beginning of our travels in Pennsylvania, one day in Texas when the hammers of Hell fell on us, and, of course, the day we returned to Pennsylvania, were our only total rain days of the last 62! Amazing and let’s face it, it obviously shows that someone upstairs was looking out for us, and wanted to make this trip as special for us as it was!

As we started today in Cookeville, Virginia, Interstate 81 was very busy, and what with showers, and if not showers, ponding on the roadway, was not the nicest morning we have had on the road. We’d had breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express this morning, so our day really just consisted on driving on the Interstate. The crazy drivers continued, and frankly we are amazed at the numbers of people who seem totally oblivious to the weather conditions, and continue to drive like it’s dry and sunny. One truck driver appeared to have paid the price for this kind of behavior, as traffic on the Interstate came to a halt, and we crawled till we passed this accident on the center divider. As I said yesterday, I fear that the folks driving tractor trailers are not the professionals they once were!

As we got into Pennsylvania, we started seeing names we recognized and towns that we’d visited with the kids when they were small. Every fall, right around Billy’s birthday (November 3rd), we’d take a weekend trip down to Amish Country. We probably did it for 12 or more years in a row, staying in places like the Red Caboose Motel, or the Mill Stream Motor Lodge, and riding the Strasburg Railroad every year, and enjoying the “country”. Well, as we were speeding along Interstate 78 this afternoon, what pops up but a place we took the kids back in those days, Roadside America. It’s probably the worlds biggest Lionel train layout, and when we passed that this afternoon, we knew we were almost home!

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Speaking about being almost home, you may wonder why we are staying in a Homewood Suites in Allentown, PA tonight, a mere 150 miles from our home on Long Island. Well, there are several answers to that question. #1, we’d looked at the weather, and realized it was going to be rainy into the night, and had no desire to do the drive in that kind of weather. #2, had we pushed right through, we would have hit the New York Metro Area right in the middle of a Friday rush hour, meaning that the optimistic GPS ETA of 6:30, would have probably been closer to 9 PM. #3, we really don’t want the trip to end. The truth is really a combination of all those answers.

So, late this afternoon, after checking in, we had our last Sailor Jerry and Cokes of the trip. Soon, we will go out for our last dinner of the trip (no, we will not go to Cracker Barrel again), tonight I will take my last shower of the trip, we will spend our last night in a king size bed on the trip (oh God…how will we return to our queen size beds!!!), Susie will take her last shower of the trip in the morning, we will have our last “free breakfast” of the trip, and tomorrow we will head off in the Sonata for the last 3-4 hours of our Adventure as we motor our way, on the very last day of Our Big Adventure home!

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Before I go today, I want to try and capture some of what we are feeling tonight. We started talking about this trip probably 5 years ago. We started gathering information close to two years ago. Back in March, when we realized that we needed to make reservations for the National Parks NOW, the trip became real. Between then, and when we left on August 21st, we continued to make plans and reservations. Then suddenly it was the first week in August, and we now had to start packing and making decisions of what to take and what not to take. Then there was our last weekend on Long Island, when Krissi joined us and we partied with our friends Pat and Steve for one last time, had to get the car ready and then pack it. Suddenly, it was the day we’d said we were going to leave, Sunday August 21st, 2016! We left Mineola, dropped Krissi off in Astoria, and before we knew it, we were on Interstate 80 in New Jersey heading west to Our Adventure! That was Day 1, and today is Day 62, and to think back on all we’ve seen, the people we’ve met, the great experiences we’ve had, and the memories we will cherish for a lifetime.

Are we sad as I write this tonight at a hotel in Pennsylvania? You bet we are. We have so loved every day, have gotten such a kick out of driving the Sonata, with our New York license plates (OCNJ4US), in places like Las Vegas, or Yellowstone, or on Route 66, or last weekend in Galveston with Kenny and Chris in the back seat! Have so loved telling people what we have come to call, “Our Trip Story”, when they inquire what we are doing in Moab, Utah, or Corpus Christi, Texas, and now that’s all behind us. We are in Pennsylvania, early tomorrow will be in New Jersey, and shortly after noon, we should return to the state of New York, where there will be nothing special about a red Hyundai Sonata with NY license plates! Sad, but welcome back to real life, from a 2 month fantasy ride through these United States!

See you tomorrow, when we will no longer be singing, On The Road Again. We will be singing, Home, Home on the Range, but there won’t be any deer or antelope playing!

PS – Another first today…take out boxes! Never before have we done that on the trip, but they will spend the night in the Homewood Suites fridge, and next week who knows…they may be lunch or a dinner!

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Our Big Adventure, Day One

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 6 Comments

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So, the end of day one on the road finds us in the Econo Lodge in Streetsboro, Ohio! We left the house in Mineola at 8:20 this morning, made a stop in Astoria to drop off our daughter Krissi (she came on Friday night to spend the last weekend with us), and then it was over the Triboro Bridge (or the RFK if you choose to use it’s new name), up the Major Deegan Expressway to the George Washington Bridge, and onto Interstate 80, where we spent the entire day. We drove up to the hotel at about 5:10, so not a bad day of driving at all. We went from New York, to New Jersey, to Pennsylvania, and now Ohio. Four states in day one and we drove a total of 451 miles and are are still on our first tank of gas!

The weather was sunny when we left Long Island this morning, and there were occasional sprinkles all through New Jersey, but when we got to Pennsylvania, boy did it start raining! We stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom, and took a shower at the same time. I felt bad because Susie was driving through a lot of it, and on a couple of occasions, it was almost like a switch was flipped as we went from showers to torrential rain in the blink of an eye! Not fun to drive through! Then we came upon an accident in one of the more mountainous regions of Pennsylvania. Some yahoo in a pickup truck was sideways off the road (I say yahoo, because rain or shine, we see folks driving like they are late for their wedding and not giving a damn about safety). There were Police and a wrecker already there, but as we were 3 cars from the accident, they stopped all traffic so that the wrecker could pull the truck back on the road. We sat there for better than 15 minutes…in the rain…such fun!

imageSome highlights of today…First breakfast. We chose to stop at a place we have eaten at more times than we can count, the Landmark Diner just off exit 309 of I-80 in Pennsylvania. This place has a lot of history in our family, and in Susie’s family before there was an us. For years and years, Sue’s Mom and Dad would spend a week at a golf resort in Marshall’s Creek, PA called Mountain Manor. Over the years, they made good friends who also vacationed there during the same week and who lived near them on Long Island. The Landmark Diner was about 2 hours from Long Island, and they would all rendezvous there on the morning they checked in, and have breakfast. Year after year, more folks would join in the group, and eventually we were part of the group who would have breakfast at the Landmark. The summer of 1983, we took a very young Billy there and Frank’s folks even joined the group! When Kenny and Krissi joined our family, we would still head up to that area and always stop there, Turn the clock ahead a few years to when Billy was going to Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. We discovered the best way to get there was to head out Route 80 to Pennsylvania and then go north back into New York State, and yes, then too we would pull off 80 as soon as we crossed the Delaware Water Gap Bridge and have breakfast. Susie thinks that the last time we were there was about 4 or 5 years ago, and we were thrilled to find this morning that it was just as good as we remember! Susie had Creamed Chipped Beef over toast (probably the last time we see that on a menu) and I had a Pulled Pork Omelette! Oh, and don’t forget the home fries….they are still wonderful! The restaurant is a little bigger, the counter is gone (where you could watch them cook the food) and the bathrooms are no longer behind the building, but enough is the same to still make it a special stop off!

Then we were back onto Interstate 80 West heading towards our adventure! At mile marker 111(FYI..at the NJ/Penn border on 80 you are at mile marker 310 and at the Penn/Ohio border you are at mile marker 0) we came across an interesting sign. It said, “You are now at the highest point on Route 80 east of the Mississippi – Elevation 2,250 Feet”. Impressive for Pennsylvania, but not where we are going. Forget the Rocky Mountains or even Pikes Peak, when we are at Mount Rushmore this Friday we will be at 4000 + feet already! Start storing oxygen now!!

So dinner tonight was at Ruby Tuesdays, a place we haven’t been to for years. Even though there is one less than 2 miles from our house in Mineola, we traveled 450+ imagemiles for their salad bar tonight! Then we filled the car up with gas (Sheetz Gas…I kid you not) at $1.95 a gallon, headed back to the hotel and are relaxing with some vodka on the rocks (in our travel plastic cups!)! Tomorrow we hope to cover just under 500 miles and stop near Janesville, Wisconsin…a place we’ve visited before when Kenny was performing at the Armory Theater there.

imageOh, The Big Adventure tip of the day has to do with an App that my cousins, Jeanne and Walt Pratt shared with us called iExit. It cost me 99 cents at the iTunes store, and Jeanne and Walt said it was useful finding what kinds of food, gas, hotels, etc. are at every exit on the interstates. In addition, it gives you the latest prices for gas at the various stations so you always know what you are getting into. When we started trying it out today, Susie started talking about a little hand held digital gadget we had way back in the 90s. After you told it what road you were on, what mile marker you were near, and what direction you were heading, it would tell you how close the next rest stop was and what services they had there. She said it’s too bad they don’t make an App for that. Well, I hit a couple of buttons on iExit and discovered it will also search for rest areas! It was perfect, and we made use of it several times today looking for places to switch drivers. Thanks Jeanne and Walt…welcome along!

On the Road Again…….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvwojnLeMH4