Day 191: Taking on the Mountains of Pennsylvania

As stated in the previous couple of blogs, I have been climbing up and over summits here in PA. Now they have only been around 2450′ high, but when you start out at about 1500′ at the bottom, it is still a pretty good little climb. I was thinking about those passes I crossed over in CO and UT and NV. The summits might have been significantly higher, but the overall climb to get over the summit wasn’t much more.

Today was a perfect day. The weather was nice enough that at about 9:30 AM I got rid of my cargo pants and donned walking shorts and a short sleeve shirt for the first time in a couple of weeks. It was very warm and sunny and is probably an Indian Summer of sorts. I’ll take it. The rain passed during the night and it looks to be nice for the next few days.

We are currently near Yellow Springs, PA, a dot on the map at best. As a matter of fact, I may have passed it and don’t know it. We are heading to Water Street, PA where we will have our route change. We will make our way west a mile or so to SR 45 and take it up past State College (home of Penn State) and on toward the town of Sunbury. Now this keeps us off the forbidden road of US 22 and gives us a more northerly route which eventually gets us to Easton and the NJ state line. I asked a fellow today about SR 45 and what kind of road it was and he just smiled. I then asked him about the truck traffic and he said it should have little traffic compared to US 22. That cinched it for me. This part of PA must be the dump truck capital of the USA. I’ve never seen so many dump trucks in my life – and they are the big mammas too. It is a little disconcerting to be walking a sweeping right hand turn and see a large fully loaded dump truck coming at you at 60 mph or more and drift over the white line and into your pitifully small walking lane. Talk about moving fast to get out of the way! Valda thinks I’m out there practicing the Cha Cha Cha.

I want to thank Keith and Peggy, owners of ‘At the Hop’ restaurant for letting us stay in their parking lot during dinner. They said we could spend the night and we were going to, but we stopped 3 miles down the hill from them at a church and that is where we are bedding down, right next to the cemetery.

Tomorrow will be the last day to walk this week before taking Saturday off. We are staying at the Greenwood Furnace State Park and are looking forward to that. Then Sunday, it is off once again on the walk. If you are in the Indianapolis area, tune in to WIBC radio, 93.1 FM at 11:35AM on Sunday for a live phone-in interview. John Strauss has called me a couple of times since I left Indy and does an update. I think they might have a live stream on their website if you live elsewhere and want to check it out.

Pictures: At the Hop, a cool looking barn, and a statue of Admiral Perry who was the first to set foot on the North Pole. This was taken yesterday as I passed through his birth town of Cresson.