Day 202: Heading Down Hometown Hill

We got to Hometown, PA this afternoon and I had a choice to make. Head northeast on Hwy 54 and eventually have to deal with a 6 mile stretch of limited access highway, or turn south on Hwy 309 and have a four lane (so I was told) to walk on. I chose the four lane and immediately started down an 8% grade for about a mile or so. Now this type of walking isn’t as easy as it sounds. Every joint in the knees hurts, you’ve got to really watch your step (don’t want to stumble out into the traffic, or roll down the hill), and you have to watch starting to go so fast that people will confuse you with one of those runners. I got through the downhill and entered the rather large town of Tamaqua, a town that desperately needs bypass surgery. The highway splits into two one-way streets and they aren’t any bigger than a minute. Here are all these big rigs snaking their way through the narrow streets in this town where the houses are built about 5′ from the street curb. Crazy. But, we got through that and finally made our way out of town on the south side and picked up the four lane again.

Now, I started walking after dinner and it was about 5:30. The sun hadn’t set but it was behind the large mountain to our west, so it was getting pretty dark. I walked about a mile and was just about to call it a day when I stumbled on a 12′ wide shoulder. I couldn’t believe it. I got all the way over to my left and walked another thirty minutes and ended up with 18 for the day. I could have walked till midnight.

The ‘money found’ improved today also. For some reason (economy maybe?) I lately haven’t been able to find as much money on the road as I thought I would. Today was different. As Valda said, we had a banner day: good weather, 18 miles, and a bunch of roadside change. I hope tomorrow is just like today, I should be about three more days in PA and then I’m going to cross the Delaware like old George did a couple of hundred years ago. Think someone will paint a picture of me?

The bottom picture shows another typical ‘coal town’. The top picture shows one of those mountains of coal I blogged about yesterday. Makes you wonder what kind of nourishment the trees get from the coal.