My last motel stay

31 May, 2011

Before I get into closing comments, I would like to go back and cover the last few days that I missed blogging on because of time constraints.
I arrived in Danbury Saturday around noon. I had previously talked with Tom Green and arrived at his place and met he and Mary. We sat for awhile, had a beer and chatted about high school days and people we knew. Tom and I left to go up to the Ridgewood Country Club for a sandwich. Had a great lunch and ran into Bill and Kathy Durgy, a couple more friends from childhood days. Later in the day I was able to get hold of Pete Ganio. We were friends through high school and college. In 1962 Pete and I drove to Calif. to spend the summer working in Hollywood. Pete worked for Hoss Cartwright and I was a page boy on the Queen for a day show. We had a great time out there and on the way back traveled up the west coast to Seattle and then back through Yellowstone and Dodge Nebraska. The amazing part about the trip was the travel out. We went out on RT. 66 and we traveled 52 hours non-stop to get from Danbury to Hollywood. It was a great experience. Anyway, I rode over to Pete and Bernie's and went out to dinner with them. Pete had invited Nick Scattolini and Eve Kolinchak, two more high school friends, to join us and we had a night reminiscing. The evening was over all too soon and I had to get back to the hotel and prepare for an early morning departure. Sunday was a beautiful day and I had the perfect route for it. From Danbury I headed out on Rt. 202/6 towards Peekskill and Mahopac NY. I crossed the Bear Mountain bridge and traveled through Bear Mountain State park and on through some beautiful small towns and villages of New Jersey and PA to my stop for the night in Lebanon PA.
I was out early the next morning and on the road to Ephrata and Amish country. When the girls were small I used to take them to a really neat bed & breakfast in Ephrata, The Covered Bridge Inn. As has been noted by many more scholarly than I, nothing ever remains the same. The covered bridge is no longer there. It was replaced by a concrete bridge. Now, there could be no covered bridge inn or they would have to change their name to the "Used To Be the Covered Bridge Inn but no longer". Instead, they just closed up and the place was pretty run down. From Ephrata I pressed on to Lititz and Lancaster. I'm still impressed with all the big Amish farms and took pictures of a gent plowing a large field with a big team of horses. On to Gettysburg. It's extremely hot and humid so traveling the back roads through the woods and along creeks and rivers feels so much cooler. My navigator(GPS) is particularly feisty today. She has taken me on some back roads that turned into single lane roads and at one point dirt for about 1/2 mile. Going through downtown Gettysburg I was about five minutes ahead of their memorial day parade and the streets were lined with spectators. I have my American and Marine Corps flags on the back of the bike and veterans were standing up and saluting. It's such a great feeling seeing all the flags and people gathering to honor the veterans. As I proceeded out through the fields of Gettysburgh there was an errie feeling that at any moment Stonewall Jackson was going to ride up to check out my reason for being there. It's too bad the trees and grass couldn't talk, what stories they could tell. From Gettysburg I pressed on to the Woods Resort in Hedgesville WVA to spend the evening at my sister's home.

I'm done for the night. I'll finish this up and add pictures in the next few days Hope y'all HAD A GREAT MEMORIAL DAY.