Heading to Pennsylvania

Our plan today was just to ride from Kingston in NY to Phillipsburg in New Jersey, halfway to Gettysburg - with no particular sights to see or places to visit along the way.

Chris was woken this morning at 4 am by a lot of thumping and banging and yelling in the room next door. It sounded like someone was throwing furniture around, and he was very close to calling 911. The sounds changed to coat hangers scraping along the rail, and a bit later, bags being put in the car. Shortly after 5 am, the car sped off and he eventually got back to sleep after trying in vain to figure out what the hell had been going on.

It was a great surprise when we awoke to find the car back in the park out front of the room. Everything was quiet - they were probably catching up on lost sleep.

Our first job was to find the Post Office in Kingston and mail home some books and CDs. The staff there were very helpful.

The weather was hot and humid, so we had to make lots of stops for drinks. Our GPS found the shortest route which roughly paralled NY 209 to Port Jervis, near the junction of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. It took us along winding roads that had us wondering how that could be a shorter route than taking an Interstate, but hardly caring, because we rolled down shady roads that meandered beneath our wheels, and were almost devoid of other traffic.

We stopped for lunch at the Silver Cup Diner

We reached our destination by mid afternoon, and went straight to a motel to get off the road and cool down - and blog. We seem to be always a day behind, no matter how hard we work to stay on top of it.

About 6 pm we went off to do our laundry, but the instructions on where we would find a laundromat changed every time we thought we were getting close and stopped to ask another person. We eventually found it and while our clothes washed we went down the road to have a beer in a bar. It was a Latino bar, and there were only a few people inside. The barman hardly spoke any english and we felt a little uncomfortable. Ironically, the movie Australia was screening on the TVs in the bar.

When our clothes were dry, headed back to our room for dinner. It was after 7 pm and still stinking hot. We were both very tired and crashed for the night.