12 July 2017
What I didn't mention in yesterday's missive was that it was raining as I was composing it--a check with weather.com showed the storm would mostly be gone by 0930, so I was in no real hurry to leave--I don't mind riding in the rain all that much, but I hate starting out in it.
So again it was after 10 before I was packed up and on my way, heading east on I-76. I'd laid out an optimistic day, but the various GPSs told me it would be after 2000 (8 pm) before I got there. Now, I can usually beat those projections, but not by that much.
And particularly not on the roads I would be traveling--I left the interstate at Rootstown, up SR44 and SR5, northeast toward Pennsylvania, stopping for gas near a Wal*Mart in Howland Township.
Most everything in this part of the country is identified a "Township," although there are actual towns, sometimes with the same name...and although I'd wondered about fuel availability when laying out the route (lots of solid green on the map, with very few 'civilization' dots) it doesn't seem to be a problem.
And it's pretty country, lots of green and trees, following the Allegheny River now and then, up and down and around the hills.
I've been laying out the routes using waypoints, then letting MapSource string them together into a route, and checking that to make sure no surprises are in store. But the GPSs don't always follow the same algorithm as the computer, so at one point there was some confusion--I was heading north on US62 and thought I'd missed a turn, so went back and headed east on SR666, a gnarly road [although not quite as gnarly as the (previously named) one in Arizona]. I'm still not sure what happened with the routing, but it was a happy accident.
I ran into a spate of bridge constructions--there'd be a "One lane road ahead" sign, then a signal, which seemed to always change to green as I was slowing for it; I'd tiptoe past and resume speed; I only had to stop once, and then the wait was less than a minute.
Made my second fuel stop in Galeton...it was after 1600 at this point, and I started wondering where I could stop for the night. Most every town I was rolling through had lodging, so that shouldn't be a problem--but I used the Nuvi, anyway, to look for my lodging / grocery combinations. It found a Comfort Inn up the road a ways, with a Wal*Mart two miles south. I set Wal*Mart as the destination, hoping that there would be lodging near it that the Nuvi didn't know.
Nothing around that I could see, so rather than make another round trip I got the evening groceries, managed to stuff them into my luggage, and headed for the Comfort Inn... "Yes, I do have one single king left, $108..." Yikes! "AAA?" (He wanted to see the card!) "$103" (And that's before taxes...) They seem to be full of some kind of construction crews, lots of work trucks in the parking lot--maybe 'the company' picks up the tab.
Motel: $138.87
Groceries: $9.74
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