79: Eastward Bound

(Stone shadow.)

Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University.  It’s a good stopping point for us as we head towards Delaware.  I am so glad to be out of the truck.

Truck, you ask?  Yes, truck.  M rented a truck to fill with the equipment he is picking up on Monday.  It’s a noisy thing.  Stinky too.  It smells like men who drive trucks and slop food all over.  There are crumbs and pieces of dried up food and candy everywhere in the cab.  The rental company needs to do a better job of cleaning these things out considering the amount of money paid to rent them.  Or I’m becoming incredibly snobby (crabby?) in my old age.  There was a time, early in my married life, when I would have been so excited by the trip that I wouldn’t have been paying much attention to the condition of the cab.  I am spoiled now.  Used to cleaner, more comfortable conditions.

I need to get over it.  Yep.  Have fun.  Enjoy the ride.

We saw a lot of that (above) not far over the Ohio border into Pennsylvania.  It must have gotten pretty rough out there during the lake-effect snows that gave us some grief during our visit to Cleveland the other day.  There were several trailers in ditches (one in a creek) and two new accidents, one of which had traffic backed up for a couple of miles (going the other way, thankfully).

We had good weather and road conditions today.  Tomorrow should be good too.  Sunday and Monday may present some problems but we’ll worry about that when we get there.

Our one stop was at a truck stop in Emlenton, PA, a place we’re familiar with, having traveled this route many times over the years.  It is an interesting place, this truck stop.  M bought a brief case there several years ago.  It’s a nice leather brief case that has all of the features he had been looking for when he spent months shopping for one.  It was about half the price of many of the other brief cases he looked at.  He still uses it, sometimes doubling as a case for the laptop when he doesn’t want to carry two bags.

They must get a good deal on leather products for the truckers.  Today we found leather driving gloves — nice leather driving gloves — for a great price.  Too bad they didn’t have any that fit me.  Truckers all have big hands, I guess.

My outdoor time today was mostly about loading our travel stuff into the truck, waiting while M moved the truck around, taking a short walk during our rest stop, and the walk to and from dinner tonight.  I really enjoyed the walk to and from dinner.  It felt great to move around after four hours or so in the truck.  We ended up eating at a chain restaurant so M wouldn’t have to drive the Behemoth (the truck) around State College.  There are some great restaurants near the campus but it would have been difficult to maneuver around town in a 15-foot truck.

I’ve been playing around a bit in Photobucket with the photos, just for the fun of it.  The top photo I uploaded before we left, thinking I’d write and not bother with trip photos this time.  But the camera wanted out of the case so there you have it — bad shots through a dirty truck window.

I’m hoping we’ll get in a hike early tomorrow while we’re still in the mountains.  I’d like to wander around in one of the old graveyards and take some photos in the snow and fog.  It’s all about atmosphere this time of year.