Silver Spring to Highland, New York

After several good days that included getting new mufflers, I Left Sliver Spring, Maryland with friend Petey headed to Delaware Water gap then across very northwest Massachusetts  and up into Vermont.  ON the Washington beltway, I 495, in heavy traffic on a bright sunny day.  Onto I 95 and through Baltimore, harbor cranes to the east, the sprawl of the city to the west.  Off the Interstate to Hwy 1, suburbs Kingsville and Bel Air then into rolling countryside much corn and soybeans, many farmsteads selling pumpkins and fall vegetables.  Across the Susquehanna River at Conowingo, big dam and reservoir, then into Pennsylvania and up Hwy 10 through a l;and of big barns, big silos, much corn, hay, dairy cattle, some Amish farms not connected to electricity, boys in Amish dress on bikes.

Through Coatesville, east on Hwy 23, then wandering on narrow country roads north of St peters art town, finally ran into 422 and drove back west a few miles then north to where Daniel Boone was raised until he was 16 and his father pulled up stakes and took the family to the Holston and Clinch River valleys in southern Virginia.  His father was a Quaker elder and it seems successful in Pennsylvania, so why he left is somewhat of a mystery, although he did have to keep apologizing for his daughters marrying outside the church.  There you go.   They had a beautiful, mostly level place here, with a stream, mill, etc.  I don't see they did any better in Virginia, or Kentucky for that matter, but I guess the grass is always greener.

Bought a pamphlet aout ho to make a Pennsylvania black powder rifle - you never know - and after luch drove north through Yellowhouse to Boyertown the up 100 to Emmaus, onto the Interstate around Allentown to Easton, home of the Crayola factory and a questionable christmas claim.

 We walked though the art fair going on in booths by the Delaware  River on a lovely sunny day.

then north on 611 along the river, muddy maybe from recent rains, to the Delaware Water Gap.  Cool  place, where the river wore through the mountains as they were rising, and a busy place for canoes, fishing, hiking, a popular area not that far from New York.  Disappointing Visitor center, very little information about the history or geology, and no good places to see the full river and gap.

Getting toward sunset, we drove up Hwy 209 along the river through small towns, finally took I 84 - the road I started on from Portland - to Matamores at the New York border through more rolling farmland

 across into New York over a hill past Newburgh in the last of the day

then north on 9W just before the Hudson River, driving at sunset with a half moon through a strip of motels and restaurants we found a motel in Highland at the end of a long day on the road.