Coal Country

Today was spent almost entirely in Pennsylvania, quite a bit different from yesterday! We left New York State, headed for the ghost town of Centralia. On our way there, we stopped in Hamburg, PA at the Cabela's store. It is apparently the largest store in the chain. The dead animals on display do give rise to a sick sense of curiousity...the elephant was apparently killed by Dick Cabela himself. Jordan found himself a new duffel bag, and Jessica found Jacob. I found myself with an empty wallet! We spent quite a bit of time there, much more than I thought we would.

We took a leisurely drive through the Poconos Mountains into Pennsylvania coal country. It was really interesting driving down the main street of a town named Ashford. The street is a VERY VERY long hill, and the homes and buildings are older. They are all joined together for the entire block, and their foundations are at quite a steep angle, as you can see in the picture (yup, figured out how to upload a picture, but it appears to be limited in placement and number - oh well). We made it to Centralia, but as far as ghost towns go, it was a bit disappointing. All of the abandoned houses and buildings have been torn down, so there were no ruins to explore. We went looking for the portion of highway that was closed due to cracks from the coal fire, which we almost found thanks to Jessica's sharp eyes. I say almost because she wasn't able to get all the way down to the spot where you can apparently see the smoke rising from the road, because we were rather precariously parked on a curve just below the top of a hill - do the words "sitting duck" have any relevance here?

We turned tail and headed for Philadelphia but, having experienced rush hour in Rhode Island, I had NO desire to find out if it was any worse in Philly. So we pulled off early for the night, taking a nice hotel room in Reading, PA (anyone for Monopoly??).

[P.S. For those of you who are curious, Jacob is the cutest Husky stuffy I have ever seen!]