Sunday, July 23, 2006
Pennsylvania: Rules and Roller Coasters
I'm about a week behind in posting, which mostly has to do with having spent 8 days or so in a locale where telephone service is intermittent, and internet service is something they have in other countries. Which is pretty heavenly. More about that if and when I get around to posting it.
Anyway: Pennsylvania. The problem with this leg of the trip, in light of Rule #1, is that my parents and sister and brother have gathered in Southwestern Michigan, where not only have we been spending part of the summer my entire life but my mom has been spending part or all of the summer just about her entire life. They've been there for a week already, and I've been telling them for five days that I'm just about to leave, as soon as I wrap a few Falconworks things up. Which the more I keep wrapping, the more I keep seeing to wrap. In brief, I'm running behind.
So I suspend Rule #1 and cross the Delaware on I-80, and keep on pressing through the eastern Poconos, 'til Rand McNally shows me a route that doesn't diverge too wildly from my general east-to-west itinerary. For an hour or so I leave the main road and travel through Nescopeck and Mifflinville and Danville, crossing the broad Susquehanna a couple of times on the way, and taking in some lovely views of countryside where red starts turning to blue and everything, in the gloaming, is tinged purple.
At Danville, I realize, I'm right around the corner from Elysburg, and so I decide to squander all the valuable time I've picked up on the interstate by heading to a sweet and unlikely place called Knoebels Amusement Park. Sweet, because it's a truly old-fashioned place in the middle of nowhere, carved out of pine forests and cut in half by a creek that, signs around the park show, put it a couple of feet underwater during the floods last month. Unlikely, because this sort of place just doesn't exist anymore. And because, no matter what the website may say, being located halfway between Catawissa and Elysburg doesn't constitute "conveniently located" for more than the few thousand folks. And because not many family lumber companies have ever decided that the cleared land would make a great place for an amusement park.
But it does. You travel there through valleys so steep and thickly forested that they would turn any day dark (although, in my case, it's now fully night). And suddenly here's a carousel where riders still try to catch a brass ring, and a log ride that disappears into the woods, and two really good wooden roller coasters, which are all I have time to ride before the place closes for the night.
They're really good roller coasters. This was worth breaking Rule #1 for. Which is a good thing, because now I really have to haul ass to make up time. Back to I-80, which I take for a few hours 'til I find a Super 8 motel in one of those towns of motels and fast food that are just about your only option on this stretch of road.
Anyway: Pennsylvania. The problem with this leg of the trip, in light of Rule #1, is that my parents and sister and brother have gathered in Southwestern Michigan, where not only have we been spending part of the summer my entire life but my mom has been spending part or all of the summer just about her entire life. They've been there for a week already, and I've been telling them for five days that I'm just about to leave, as soon as I wrap a few Falconworks things up. Which the more I keep wrapping, the more I keep seeing to wrap. In brief, I'm running behind.
So I suspend Rule #1 and cross the Delaware on I-80, and keep on pressing through the eastern Poconos, 'til Rand McNally shows me a route that doesn't diverge too wildly from my general east-to-west itinerary. For an hour or so I leave the main road and travel through Nescopeck and Mifflinville and Danville, crossing the broad Susquehanna a couple of times on the way, and taking in some lovely views of countryside where red starts turning to blue and everything, in the gloaming, is tinged purple.At Danville, I realize, I'm right around the corner from Elysburg, and so I decide to squander all the valuable time I've picked up on the interstate by heading to a sweet and unlikely place called Knoebels Amusement Park. Sweet, because it's a truly old-fashioned place in the middle of nowhere, carved out of pine forests and cut in half by a creek that, signs around the park show, put it a couple of feet underwater during the floods last month. Unlikely, because this sort of place just doesn't exist anymore. And because, no matter what the website may say, being located halfway between Catawissa and Elysburg doesn't constitute "conveniently located" for more than the few thousand folks. And because not many family lumber companies have ever decided that the cleared land would make a great place for an amusement park.
But it does. You travel there through valleys so steep and thickly forested that they would turn any day dark (although, in my case, it's now fully night). And suddenly here's a carousel where riders still try to catch a brass ring, and a log ride that disappears into the woods, and two really good wooden roller coasters, which are all I have time to ride before the place closes for the night.They're really good roller coasters. This was worth breaking Rule #1 for. Which is a good thing, because now I really have to haul ass to make up time. Back to I-80, which I take for a few hours 'til I find a Super 8 motel in one of those towns of motels and fast food that are just about your only option on this stretch of road.
