Sun Sep 24 - Greensburg PA to Binghamton NY

 I was not expecting a beautiful ride but I was expecting more traffic and congestion. But..
We lucked out and picked a really smooth, fast, non-congested road with some beautiful valleys full of working farms, a few Amish buggies here and there, and beautiful weather. We rode three solid hours this morning without stopping, probably because the site were great. And the road started weaving and rising and falling again, just like back home. There is a lot of big fields full of corn and even soy! Just like Illinois and Nebraska, but a few hundred acres at a time instead of square miles at a time. We even saw some big combines, just like out west (but not many). Out west they can wear one out in a couple years..

Rt 119  was what we were on yesterday and it is a pretty good road, and we continued on it this morning, but we next got on Rt 22 which was wonderful. No traffic and 50-55 mph for hours. Same with the next road, Rt 45 which goes up one of the "claw marks" in Pennsylvania. If you look at a topo map of Pennsylvania, it looks like a giant bear clawed the countryside from the north east to the south west. These valleys we have been in before, but the one today was the best yet. We think it is called Penn's Valley. This is how we will go west "next time".
The temp climbed and hit 95 mid-day, but we kept finding valleys that were nice and cool in the shade. The leaves seem to be really dry and a few were turning color. I am guessing they are having the same dry weather folks complained about the last few days.

When Rt 45 petered out, we went north through more valleys with more Amish. It is Sunday so they were dressed up with all the kids in the buggies "goin visitin" I suppose. Those kids are really cute with their Sunday clothes on (I doubt they think they are..). We also saw a lot of what I assume are Mennonites out working in farmers markets and another group riding their bicycles (normal bikes with blow up tires, so they were not Amish but "Amish Lite"). They looked very happy riding in the summer afternoon (just like us).
We called it quits at Binghamton. This is the last night out, home tomorrow. We each have about 250 miles to get home and will probably split up mid-day tomorrow.