Day 1 - Meet Me Tonight in Electric City.

Day 1 - 12/22/2008
18:00
Red Carpet Inn (sans red carpet), Route 11, Scranton, PA

As planned, I took off from Boston at 03:00, and arrived in Rouses Point, NY, right around 07:30. Not counting about 15 minutes of wind and snow in Vermont, the drive was smooth. I can probably count on two hands the number of cars I saw on the highways from Boston to Burlington VT. There were two shooting stars. That's probably not a big deal for most people, but I spend 99% of my time in a city, so it's something I've never seen before.

Anyhow, I got to Rouse's Point, checked out Lake Champlain, and headed west alongside the border before the road slowly curved to the south. Not much action in New York's north country. Incredibly cold, and a lot of old mills & mill towns. On two occasions I saw people traveling in horse and buggies.



In one of my Route 1 entries, I commented on what I thought was a southern phenomenon of dogs running around on major roadways and getting hit by cars. Clearly this does not only happen in the south, and much like shooting stars is just another thing that I've never seen. First, there was a puppy with a pink collar lying on the side of the road, then a couple of hours later I had to swerve at the top of a hill when I saw two dogs hanging around nonchalantly in the lane I was in.



I always took it for being one big college town, and once again I was wrong. A lot of people around. Most areas I saw were depressed and had building boarded up. It reminded me of Albany a little bit, but then there's a certain something about all cities in New York state and southern Connecticut. It's that really cool no bullshit attitude people carry themselves with. I get that from everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, dress, or social status, and I haven't seen it anywhere else in the country. You can tell by their demeanor that they don't give a fuck what anyone thinks, they're going to do what they're going to do, and they could care less what it is you do. Love that.




After the PA border, Route 11 travels along a nice looking creek, then turns into a freeway. As the sun went down, the freeway ended and turned into one of the main streets in downton Scranton. I saw a Red Carpet Inn, which advertised cheap rates and internet access. Sold. $50 in the heart of downtown isn't bad.
I'll go chek out the city now and report back in a few hours.


22:30
Walked all around downtown Scranton. Most of the stores were closed, which was too bad because there was a cool looking record store I would love to have visited. I saw some of the historic sites, and read up on what was written next to them. They call themselves the electric city because they were the first city in the US to have a trolley system. There were a fair number of cars on the road, but as far as pedestrians go, the sidewalks were pretty much empty, making it look like somewhat of a ghost town. Not sure if that was because of the freezing cold, or the holidays, or what, but I shrugged it off and kept going, checking out what I could.



I looked for a place to get a drink, and maybe a bite to eat. A number of decent looking places, but none of them had more than a couple people inside, and I wasn't feeling it. I was on the way back to the room, and noticed a sports bar called Whistle's close to the hotel. I ordered a Yuengling and chicken wings, smoked, talked with the bartender who had nothing interesting to say, ate the wings, stared at some college football game I didn't give a shit about, had another Yuengling, and left. $9.80, not bad.

Tomorrow, my guess is I'll write from somewhere in the western Virginia.