J. After a short night, the music and chatter downstairs in the bar went on beyond 1:30 in the morning, we woke up at 7:00, for an early start. We wanted to get on the road early, so it would still be cooler to drive, and second because we did not want to arrive too late in the Pitt. And since we did not know what to expect of the traffic on a Sunday, we wanted to leave Milford around 8:00. After getting up and dressed, we packed the limited stuff we took out of the car with us, and walked downstairs. The bar was locked, the dining room was locked… Nothing to do but walk out the door… There was no one there, so all we could do was drop the key to the room on a tray that was laying on a cupboard in the hallway…
We walked over to a Dunkin’ Donuts up the block, to grab some breakfast, which we ate on the parking lot of the local library.
Then we hit the road again! We continued on the I-84 towards the West. Luckily the traffic was light, even though the trucks were still passing us way too fast. But we made good progress – first along Scranton, where The Office was filmed, and then towards the Southwest and Altoona. We had been there before, a number of years ago, when we went to see the Horseshoe Curve, so we decided to make that the location for our lunch break.
So, when we got there, we went off the highway, and followed the signs towards downtown Altoona… It looked nothing like we remembered and the city looked a lot bigger then we remembered… Perhaps we entered from a different exit the time we went to see the Horseshoe Curve, I don’t know… Anyway, downtown Altoona was as dead and deserted as Binghamton… And even a restaurant we thought we could go to for lunch was closed… Bummer… So we drove back to the highway, and took the next exit, and found some restaurants. While in the car, looking at the dashboard, we were already shocked by the high temperatures, but stepping out of the car was terrible, what a heat!
So, after a nice lunch and some rest, we headed for the road again. Still about two hours to go before we would arrive at Chez Bev! We texted to D. to let her know what our ETA was, and AM put her foot down. Slowly, but surely, traffic got a bit heavier the closer we got to Pittsburgh, but not as bad as we had seen in Massachusetts.
And somehow quicker than expected we started to recognise the roads and surroundings, and before we knew it we had to turn onto Bevington Rd, we were there! Whohooo!
