Well Jack Nicholson didn't show up last night but sometime after we crashed, 3 or 4 other groups came in. I think this motel is where the late-night interstate travelers stay ("the next motel no matter what it is"). A young couple was pulling blearily out when we left, obviously having a long way to go again today. We skipped the "continental breakfast" of iffy looking coffee and dodgy (the Kiwis taught us that a few days ago) donut holes (which continent were they talking about). We went north and crossed the Potomac into Maryland. Maryland looked pretty normal, a bit rough around the edges, but not bad.

After a short stint in Maryland we crossed into Pennsylvania and were soon back into big valleys with lots of active farming going on. If you look at a topo map of this area, it looks like someone dragged their fingernails from the north-east toward the south-west. We had a hard time getting north. You have to go north-west over a mountain and then north-east up a valley to go north. There are no north-south roads. So the end result is we ended up going further east than we thought and found ourselves in the same town we were in a week and a half ago.

I love traveling through the rolling farmland again. They built the road so at times we felt like we were on a roller coaster gently going up and down as the road rose and sank beneath us(yipee). And guess who we found. The Amish (I love those guys). They seem to have moved into one of the valleys we rode through and we passed the tell-tale buggies with bearded men with straw hats and women with covered heads, (all the head coverings were green in this valley, humm..) Again they are very hard workers with lots of eggs, cantaloupe, apples, pies, etc for sale at the end of driveways (but not on Sunday). Dave had his eye on the cantaloups..

I noticed the temperature increased slowly throughout the day until in the early afternoon in PA it was steaming. Dave says he saw 94 degrees on his bikes instrument panel (I am having thermometer envy here).. We were also back in Coal country and one woman pointed out that the coal mines we saw in WV was soft coal and up here it is hard coal. We passed a couple pit mines we did not see on the way through before The same road we traveled down 2 Sundays ago was now busy (it's not Sunday). So between been-there-done-that, 94 degrees, and the traffic we wisely turned north-west, lost the temperature, and the temperature dropped a full 10 degrees with the altitude gain. We were headed for the boonies (no motels) so we found the first one we saw in Blakeslee, PA. This is a ski town with no snow so it's pretty quiet. This place is nice enough to bring your wife to, which is a first (maybe second) on this trip.

Found a restaurant open, where the waitress said the police were doing a major DUI inspection, getting people out of their cars to check them, yikes. We slowly rode back to the motel where the cheapskates were charging $5.00 for wi-fi, which we did not pay. We will find some tomorrow (no post tonight).