In Bedford, PA: ups and downs

As I predicted easy driving for today in last night's post a superstitious doubt flitted through my mind: was I jinxing today's leg of the trip? Well, it wasn't that bad but it was certainly not the cakewalk I had predicted.

On the upside, most of the Indiana Toll Road was indeed lightly traveled, though there were a couple of really bad drivers, the kind who tailgate you in the right lane or who rush to trap you behind a slow truck and then s-l-o-w down once they're alongside the truck. Fortunately, eleven weeks' travel has worked the road rage out of me and I just give them lots of room.

Traffic built up in eastern Indiana and through most of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Turnpikes, and there were several road construction sites but on the whole traffic kept moving. The biggest excitement was coming down a mountain in Pennsylvania, when a small truck towing a flatbed trailer with four of those huge round hay bales lost control and jackknifed two cars ahead of me. Amazingly, we all managed to stop without colliding, and the truck, trailer, and cargo seemed to be intact. I didn't hang around to find out if traffic approaching behind us would stop in time, but squeezed past the trailer in the left lane as soon as I could.

My only picture for you today celebrates the Pennsylvania mountains after many days' and states' flat driving. For some reason Chatty Kathy the GPS sent me on a six-mile tour of Pennsylvania farmland to end up at this Best Western three-tenths of a mile from the next turnpike interchange. That gave me the chance to pull over for this shot that includes some of the delights of the last couple of hours' driving: mountains, views over farmland in the valleys, and the clouds that brought cool air and occasional showers once I had passed the first ridge in the state.

I'll end this short post by celebrating the Pennsylvania Turnpike; the video at this link is worth watching. The road is almost 70 years old now and taught America how to build freeways. When I first met the turnpike at age nine it was a magical place to three Hoosier kids: our first sight of mountains, tunnels, gentle slopes created by cuts through mountains and bridges across valleys. The biggest novelty was the absence of intersections; the only way to it then was U.S. 30 through Indiana and Ohio. We bought accordion-fold postcards showing all seven tunnels, and as I crossed the state line today I found I could still name six of them. Today's drive included only the Allegheny Mountain tunnel; three remain for tomorrow and the turnpike no longer uses the remaining three, though Wikipedia says two of them are open to visitors.

In college I rode and drove the turnpike countless times in junker cars and Greyhound buses going to and from home. Since then I've tended to use newer Interstates because of the turnpike's heavy traffic, countless trucks, and often lousy winter driving conditions. Nostalgia brought me back to it today; it's also my quickest route to Sellersville.