When the rain reigns

The flat lands of the

Dakotas seem a lifetime behind us now as we weave through the unfolding mountains of Pennsylvania. We are truly in the east of the US now. Bruce points out as we pass the handsome town of Harrisburg that this is the historic territory through which General Lee marched his barefoot troops way up from Virginia during America’s most terrible

Civil War. They ended up at Gettysburg, those poor half-starved Confederate boys.

Harrisburg is the actually capital of Pennsylvania. But it is not our destination.

We’re headed to Williamsport and it is a bit of a drive.

Furthermore, the sky is darkening.

We fork out $7.25 in toll payment as we head onto 99 past Johnstown. It’s beautiful country. We’re driving through a valley with huge mountain ranges on either side. We turn off

and are in another lovely valley.

We can smell the rain before it begins.

And then it comes by the bucket.

Splash, splat, swish on the windscreen. Hiss, whish beneath the wheels.

We’re in Clinton County in the Susquehanna Valley. Little villages nestle on mountainsides.

We discern pretty little towns through the whack of windscreen wipers.

Drive carefully. Trees, trees, trees line the road. A broad-spread community is tucked in behind them.

Is that a sign to Holidaysburg? What a wonderful name. I wonder what the story is.

Google tells me its claim to fame is the manufacture of the slinky toy. Well, you can’t win ‘em all.

First impression of Williamsport is not brilliant. There are lots of For Rent signs. Big gracious homes for rent.

We are weary from the hard drive. We head for our Hampton Inn accommodation, have a bloody mary and head out for buffalo wings and salad in a family-friendly sports bar.

This Hampton Inn turns out not to be the best of the Hampton chain. My bed is a bit pulpy and the bedding is too heavy. My travelling quilt comes in handy.

The hotel pool is good and, oh bliss, empty in the morning. I get a good burst of aqua before we hit the road.

It has rained all night and it is a glum sort of day.

We explore the former timber town some more, finding some of the most brilliant graffiti art I’ve ever seen - a whole little town square

colourfully illustrated completely on three sides. Ah, it’s the town art centre.

We find a nice theatre, the unmanned PBS studio playing the same program we are listening to in the car. We find a huge newspaper building. Education seems to be the local economy now with two universities. We find masses of eclectic rickety-looking student rental buildings. In complete contrast, we find the town's salubrious suburbs with some of the most striking houses I think we have ever seen. We find the most immense and inviting bookshop. We find an old Gothic-style stone prison which is now a bar called The Cell Block.

And we find the road out of town.

Wolf township raggle taggles along a mountainside beside a lovely rocky stream.

Picture Rock is another gorgeous mountainside town on the rocky stream. It has a fascinating assortment of interesting old houses.

We drive through valleys of corn and soy crops, around curves with walls of green, past ramshackle towns with falling-down houses beside quite nice houses. Penn township. Lovely corn crops. We have become so very fond

of the sight of corn. This is a lucky thing in a country where corn is the major crop.

Winding through more valleys, admiring red barns. The almost-ripe corn looks golden in the soft light.

Oh, look! That creature running across the road in front of the car, running for its little life…it is a beaver!

A sign to a scenic point lures us to detour up a hill where we can see the ranges as a vista, rolling green into the distance. Ah, yes, we surely are in the mountains.

Uh-oh. Rain can come quickly in this country. And it does. Suddenly we are swamped in another blinding deluge. We make a dash back to the car.

We drive cautiously. Houses nestled in among the trees have their lights on as if it is night. Indeed, it is grey and dull.

We pass Loyalsock State Park and Loyalsock Creek. The name Loyalsock fascinates us and we spend some time pondering ways in which socks may be loyal, be it to each other or a shoe or a wearer…

The rain is in full-frontal attack. It pummels the car mercilessly.

Cars around us are followed by bridal trains of white spray.

It is slow, scary going.

Then Dushore appears. What a nice township. A proud church sits on a hill overlooking the little town's square.

And there, prominent on the corner of the square is the bright red Jolly Trolley Restaurant. Lunch.

We park beside swirling gutters and rush through the gushing rain. We are immediately drenched, of course. But the Jolly Trolley is a

joyous relief. We are not the only sodden travellers taking refuge. Inside it is a classic shiny diner with cheerful girls darting around cooking and serving. I order their special hamburger and it turns out to be the best hamburger I ever had.

More people fall through the door, stamping their feet and shaking their clothes. They come to shop for souvenirs, to eat, and to ask for the key to the rest rooms. The rain eases a bit so we dart back to the car and resume our journey.

Now steam is rising in great plumes from the wooded hillsides. How ethereally glorious.

We pass New Albany and French Creek. We pause to buy Dandy petrol in a flag-proud little town called Monroeton . It seems like a calm old town in the rain. Bikers and truckers have paused here, too. More towns. Towanda. Athens.

More rain. Relentless rain.

Corn crops in the rain.

We cross a big bridge over the Chemung River. Its a tributary of the Susquehanna.

A big roadside sign says: "It can wait. Text Stop”

A little further along another sign declares: “State Law. 3 Text violations, lose licence”.

We wonder if this indicates that we are now in New York state.

There has been no “Welcome” sign. That would be typical for New York, we laugh.

Oh, yes, the road is suddenly utterly crappy.

This must be New York.

A sign to a Text Stop appears. Then the Text Stop itself. They are serious. They are exhorting drivers to wait and pull off the road into designated areas to text on their phones. I wonder if they do.

It is still raining. We can see industry across walls of trees. Big towns. Not pretty from the road. But we must concentrate on the rain.

Bingham, Union. Signs to Syracuse and Scranton. Roadworks.

The bad road gets worse. It hammers our trusty olive green Rogue. And us.

The sight of a cornfield stippled with yellow raises our spirits.

At last we reach Oneonta. I am insisting it is “one onta”. Bruce thinks this is hilarious. They say it “oh-nee-onta” , he corrects.

It is known as The City of Hills. Its Clarion Hotel is our destination for the night. What a dear, grand old hotel it is, too. Just a little bit classy. I love it immediately - and yet more when we move into an upstairs room which looks out eye level, across a sunken courtyard, onto a characterful street behind.

Oneonta is home to one of the State University of New York branches so it is rich in students and student digs. There would seem to be some of those in the upper floors of the wonderful old Victorian buildings on that street. It turns out that

we have a passage from the hotel right out to a square on that street. In this wet weather, it’s a boon. And the rain has taken mercy on us. It is only spitting now.

We explore the street.

Some seems down at heel and some seems thriving.

It is Saturday night and not much is open but the exotic scent of Egyptian incense lures me into a dark cavern of a shop.

Bruce follows reluctantly. He hates shops. But this one interests even him. It is a dense clutter of extraordinary goods. Things hang from the ceiling. They are in high glass cases, on shelves, under glass counters, on hangers…

And they are hippie head things.

I have never seen so many dope pipes and hookahs, even in Portland where marijuana is legal. It is not legal here. But it must be popular. Not only but also, this market has elevated dope paraphernalia to an elite art form. Their specialist glass artists can charge hundreds of dollars for their designer dope pipes. I am shown some.

Then I’m introduced to vape flavours. Heavens, you can vape cheesecake. Who knew!

I buy some incense and we continue our exploration, sighting a Thai restaurant for dinner. I can’t resist peeking into a local arts and crafts shop where we meet an interesting ornithological artist and become so engrossed and impressed by her work that we linger for ages and end up buying one of her arresting limited edition prints for a bird-watcher friend’s wedding gift.

Well, for a short, late-in-the-day Saturday walk, we’re intrigued and rewarded by Oneonta, however the hell you pronounce it.

On the road again

Odd, some of the things

one sees from the window of the olive green Rogue.

We are traveling through eastern Ohio. There, in stately isolation in a break between a vast flat landscape of cornfields, sits a “Gentlemen’s Club”. It is far from any town. Are those gentlemen not so gentlemanly? Have they

been exiled in their pursuits? One can only wonder as more world reels past the window.

We’re tucked in behind a truck, both of us keeping a steady cruise control pace on this pleasant country road called East 250.

It is easy, relaxed driving in a soothing agricultural landscape.

Corn, glorious corn. Low carpets of soy crops. More corn, corn, corn as far as the eye can see.

We are used to it but not sick of it. There is something deeply satisfying about being in the fecundity of the corn bowl. It has not always been good for everyone. We see many failed businesses and tumble-down barns along the way.

We see quaint businesses like Grandpa’s Cheese Barn.

As the landscape begins to undulate, we see tidy little farms with fenced vegetable gardens. Invariably, there are a lot of parked cars on properties. Boats, too.

A town called Savannah, dense with beflagged two-storey clapboard houses, has a handsome Presbyterian church and a “Cattleman’s Restaurant”.

Fields, barns, silos..,

A sign to Ashland, population 20,362, ethanol factories and an amazing claim to fame: The World’s HQ of Nice People. Perversely, we skip the townsfolk and drop in on Walmart.

A great, big, cavernous box of a place it is!

Is that an Amish woman shopping in

this devil’s world of cheap foreign-made products?

I wonder what she is seeking.

Not what we are after, I’m sure.

We have come in for glue and a high-beam defence torch, as recommended by the chap we met in Milwaukee. I adore torches and can't help collecting them. This one has me fiercely intrigued. Want.

We head for the gun department.

It is deserted, apart from lots of guns, of course.

They are behind glass. All sorts of rifles and

shotguns. There are other weapons around us on the shelves. Lots of crossbows and hunting knives and other sorts of guns. There all sorts of holsters.

There are ladies’ guns and heavy-duty guns.

What there is not, is a gun shop assistant. Bruce rings the counter bell over and over and over.

We forage around looking for defence lights and find all sorts of torches, most of which I adore, since I never saw a torch I didn’t want. But not what we seek.

We are on the verge of leaving when the funniest looking woman emerges from a backroom door.

She is rotund and squat, heavily bespectacled

with terrible skin and thin, furry hair tied in a topknot. She is not the smartest but she could not be more willing to be helpful. She suggests the motoring department has gadgets which can break car windows. Interesting. I am after a torch, though.

Back to the passing corn fields. Roadsigns warn us to beware of horse and carriages.

Yes, it’s Amish country.

Rowsburg pops up, settled in 1835. It is serene and sedate with historic old red brick buildings.

Corn, corn. Little farms.

New Pittsburgh? Unlike its old namesake, it is a

tiny town featuring a huge barn and silo - and cornfields.

We turn off 250 onto 30 and find ourselves rolling into a valley.

Wildflowers abound on the verges by the cornfields. A sign encourages us to stop for peaches.

Yes, please.

We buy from girls in a barn beside cornfields. The peaches are not

grown around here, they say. They grow corn hereabouts. The fruit is from South Carolina.

Suddenly the road is lined by trees. A great wall of trees. It is like the eastern-state roads. We are on eastern states time. I guess I’m going to have to get used to this landscape. Bloody trees which steal the light and the horizons. With the horizon removed, one becomes more aware of the clouds - and they are thickening.

Another historic town. East Canton. 1700s. It’s a plain little town.

Mapleton comes along. It’s a bit scrappy and workmanlike. Old beer-bellied blokes in the street. I wonder if they do some of the mowing around here. There are large expanses of immaculate mowing. This is one of the great hallmarks of the USA - mown lawns and parks and fields. However scruffy the property, the mowing is always fastidious. They mow carefully around old car bodies and piles of junk.

Even trailerparks. And there goes one.

Ah, open country again. I’ve missed it. Corn and soy fields stream past the window.

A town called Minerva with a lovely old Lutheran church and a main street dense in old two-storey wooden houses.

What the...? A giant blue cow? We must be in dairy country. Can’t see cows. There are some abandoned farms and Kensington, a run-down darling little town. It has an icecream parlour. Icecream flavour of the day: Cow Tippin’. Some things I just don’t understand.

Hanoverton, population 408. Another down-at-heel town with a lot of American flags. Serious flags. Big flags. Among them a banner saying “By the grace of God, save our nation.”

Bet there’s a lot of guns in those old houses.

And so the roads roll on, winding a bit now as the landscape becomes a mixture of woodlands and fields.

There are ponds and Christmas tree farms.

SKUNK! The unmistakable smell of skunk leaks into the car. There’s no describing it. Pungent. Poor little creature. Did it just spray in self-defence or has it been hurt or killed somewhere.

Motorcyclists thrum past. They are not wearing helmets.

Lisbon, population 2,821, bears signs saying “Live. Love. Grow”. What a lovely town. Cute and touristy. It has a local theatre company. Steel Trolley Diner with the word “Oldies” in the window. I just love it. I want to stop.

But we are on the clock. We swing right to route 30 and, suddenly, there’s a mountain in my face. We’re on a four-laned highway winding into the hills.

It’s steep valleys. There’s a truss bridge over a huge river and East Liverpool, a big, beautiful town.

And look, look! A sign says : "Welcome to West Virginia”.

Yes! A new state.

It is gorgeous. I love it.

And, then, suddenly, it is Welcome to Pennsylvania.

That was just the tip of West Virginia, says Bruce.

Winding roads, scruffy fields. This seems more a suburban world than agricultural.

Look at that. “GOT FAR WOOD”. It is a sign with an accent.

The landscape is drier here. There are crops but they look stunted. There are greenhouses. It looks a bit more like Australia.

It’s 89 deg out there.

Shit. A detour. A sign reveals that a bridge is out.

We pass Clinton, a big development. Gee, there are a lot of towns called Clinton.

And there are a lot of roadworks on the American interstate highways.

The country roads are lovely. The big ones are a mess of red cones, narrowed lanes and work machinery. This detour is a biggie. And the signs are hard to follow. So near and yet so far. Pittsburgh was right there and now we are going away from it.

Stop, start, look for signs, take an exit, swing onto another main road…

It is a 45-minute diversion and then we are finally entering Pittsburgh.

Oh, it is fantastic.

Pittsburgh, I think I love you already.