6/22/13: Saturday, June 22: And I Made It to Medifast! Thank goodness.

   I forgot yesterday to mention how grateful I am that Lyons Auto really aligned the van. That awful traffic jam in New York yesterday called for several sudden, hard stops, and Maybelline did not pull to the right at all, just kept on, digging her claws in, straight ahead, thank goodness.

   (Did I mention that I stayed in a motel on Cape Cod because of the rain, and in a hotel in West Hartford because there are no campgrounds at all near West Hartford? And by "near," I mean, "including neighboring towns."

   (It hasn't rained on me for 3 or 4 days in a row! I may be spoiled!)

   Around  9 AM this morning, I was startled by a huge noise that I thought might be the Blue Angels buzzing the campground. I popped my head outside to see a large, open, blue-painted structure that looked like a roller coaster in the adjacent amusement park, Dutch World or something like that. (This was "Pennsylvania Dutch" country.) Sure enough, it was the morning load test of the roller coaster. A little later, there was the jingling of bells, and a horse pulling an Amish-style buggy walked by, possibly with someone peddling hot, soft pretzels or something like that. Either that, or the horse was doing all the business -- try to stiff its absent owner, and it bites you. Luckily for me, I detest pretzels.

   After stops at Medifast and two Rite Aids (the first didn't have the med I needed, so they called another, very nearby Rite Aid and transferred the prescription! Such nice people!), I had a word with the GPS unit about why it was sending me on these crazy routes through tiny towns, such as Clamtown, PA: two narrow, winding lanes; streets very skinny; homes right on the rural highway -- I felt I was a lurching monster on the verge of scraping off all the facades. Clamtown is lucky to still be there. If it is.

   Turns out that I had specified to the GPS unit "no toll roads," and most of the oughta-be-freeways in Pennsylvania ain't. I canceled that setting, and, lo and behold!, beetled through the Pennsylvania countryside for over 100 miles and $17.25 on I76 with nary a Clamtown to scrape through. There were plenty of "work" stretches, though. I think Pennsylvania has the worst road surfaces I've ever been on: potholes, cracks, tar-filled seams that have sagged down -- a real mess. But I76 was better.

   Now I'm off of I70, which really is free, at least for a while. I'm ready to pay whatever they want to stay the hell out of any Clamtowns, but I'll have to hit a BofA ATM to be sure I have enough cash. It's cash or FastPass only at these toll plazas, and today's nearly cleaned me out.

   My route today crossed several rivers, including the immense Susquehanna and the wide Monongohela -- both are probably navigable. The East's huge rivers continue to amaze me! You could count the navigable rivers of California on the fingers of one finger: the Sacramento, and that not very damn far -- to Sacramento or Stockton, I think.

   The rolling countryside I find myself in tonight are part of the Allegheny Plateau, dissected into ridges and valleys. Earlier today, I must have passed through the last gasp westward of the Appalachian Mountains, of which the Allegheny Mountains are a lower, western part (that last gasp westward).

   What I've seen of southern Pennsylvania seems lush, but not nearly as lush as Massachusetts and Connecticut.