Thursday April 16

Finally a clear morning. Even though Joe usually gets up around 6:00 and I get up by 7:00, it is usually close to 9:00 before we are on the road. We got back on I-70 and drove eastward through eastern Ohio. The towns started looking older, especially the downtown buildings. We passed through the narrow northern panhandle of West Virginia for a few miles. Wheeling, West Virginia was a very old looking town to our eyes. We crossed into Pennsylvania and pulled of the interstate at the city of Washingon, which is just a few miles southwest of Pittsburgh. This was the first place where we had to pay more than $2.00 per gallon for gas. Here we picked up a takeout dinner for the evening at a Bob Evans restaurant. We stopped in at an old, old hardware store. A persistent four year old boy kept asking us why we were parking in front of his house. When we told him we were going to the hardware store he said, “Well this ain’t it!” You had to be there.

Leaving I-70 we headed southeastward down old US-40 which is also called the National Pike”. On through Uniontown and down to the little town of Farmington where we drove north on state highway 381, through the village of Ohiopyle and on to Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Campground at the village of Mill Run. The place was pretty sleepy. They were just starting to clean things up for their summer business. I think the bears were still hibernating. Trees were not quite ready to leaf out in this northern Appalachian mountain area called the Laurel Highlands.