The Not Dayton Trip, Part Five: Hershey, Pennsylvania to Valhalla, New York

 This is the fifth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 I was parked on the street in front of my hotel in Hershey, Pennsylvania, overnight, and when I started the car to leave Friday morning, the "Engine Coolant" warning light came on. I figured that it was because I was facing downhill, but as the engine was still cool I figured I'd go ahead and check the reservoir. Glad I did: it was almost completely empty! This has never happened before. But ever since the sensor started malfunctioning I've carried the coolant mix in the trunk, so I was able to refill the reservoir. The warning light never came back on after that. (I just checked the reservoir again -- noon Saturday -- and it was down slightly, so I definitely have a leak now.)

 I had breakfast at a local chain restaurant called Funke's, a few miles up the road in the next town: eggs benedict and coffee, all pretty good. The one server was a little overstretched but made up for any delay with a level of cheeriness that I have never expressed. At the next table, an 8-top, were two old guys sitting side by side and keeping an eye on the entrance, apparently waiting for the rest of their party. I thought of them as the Welcoming Committee, as they seemed to know almost everyone who came in. Eventually one more old guy joined them, but by the time I left there were still only three men at that table. 

 The route to Valhalla took me through Allentown. There's a car museum there that I plan to go to on the return trip, but it wasn't open when I passed through. I did, though, stop at a Chase Bank ATM to replenish my cash supply; it was only a few miles out of the way. Someone had left a comment on Google Maps saying that it was "scary" in that area of town, but I don't know why. It's downtown, but there are nice-looking apartments in the area, some small shops, and a convenience store (or ice-house). Maybe the other people were there at night, when it probably has a different vibe.

 It only took a few hours to cover the distance to Valhalla, where Steve lives. He's buying a condo outside Cleveland and planning to move around the end of the year, so I'll probably never be back in Valhalla again. (I was thinking the last time I was here was about five years ago, but I checked my photo albums and find that it was 2013, when I was coming back from Canada. How time flies.) 

photo by SteveStrummer

 The highway coming here is, at one point, part of the New York State Throughway; it used to cross the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge, an impressive looking cantilever structure opened in 1955, but a few years ago they had to tear it down and replace it. The replacement, called the Mario Cuomo Bridge, is a sad ugly modern cable-stayed thing. The proportions are all wrong, the angles of the towers are off. It's designed to last long enough that people will forget the inappropriate behaviour that forced its namesake out of office.

 Steve got home soon after I arrived, and after picking up sandwiches from the deli at the bottom of the street, we spent the afternoon swapping family histories. As part of his preparations for relocating, he's going through all his old family photo albums and culling many duplicate pictures, and those of people and places he can't identify. I rescued a few photos, mainly of his family members that I knew slightly. After a few hours of that, we went off to meet up with Steve's Friday Bar Crowd at a place in Armonk called The Beehive. The group consisted of the survivors of a group of friends that have been going there for upteen decades on Friday evenings. It sounds to me like about half the membership has died, but those who remain are a fairly lively crowd: it includes a contractor, a realtor, a fireman (Steve) and one person, the one seated farthest from me, whose background I didn't ascertain. It was a very Noo Yawk Suburban crowd, with the edges sanded off all the accents. 

 We had gone there just to have drinks with Steve's friends, but ended up staying for supper at the bar. I just had a grilled cheese with bacon, served with a baked potato, while Steven had mussels marinara. Both were really too much food.

Kensico Reservoir at sunset

 The rest of the evening was passed at Steve's house, with the TV tuned to PBS while we ignored it and resumed swapping stories.

 Saturday was supposed to be rainy, but the morning was dry enough that we went out to breakfast at a place called the Townhouse Diner. I ordered lox and bagel with cream cheese, and coffee. The food was very good -- lots and lots of lox, and I could only use about half the cream cheese they served with it. The coffee, though, bordered on the execrable. I needed two packets of sweetener and a dose of salt to make it drinkable. I will not be returning to that place. 

 Steve had the Irish Breakfast plate, which included eggs, breakfast sausage, potatoes, and something called Irish bacon (which turned out to be, basically, ham) and "black and white pudding." Neither of us knew what that was, and honestly I think it's the reason he decided to order the dish. Turns out it's yet another kind of sausage; four sliced portions, two black, two much lighter in colour (hence the "white"). They both had some kind of seasoning in them that made them pretty deplorable to me. The scent of them, whatever it was, stuck in my nose all morning. Another reason not to go back to that diner.

Kensico Dam Plaza

 Following breakfast, we drove up to the Kensico Dam. I've passed it I don't know how many times in my life, but this was the first time I got out of the car. First we went to the top, which is just behind the village shops, and walked across. On one side, of course, is the reservoir, which is part of the water supply for New York City; the other side is a park-like plaza. It's very popular with the locals. On a pleasant day like today, they were out in force, playing with kids and dogs in the lawns, walking the measured-distance routes around the plaza, and generally just taking the air. In winter, they fill the concrete basins with a foot or two of water and have ice-skating. There are fountains on either side, but they were dry right now, and a 9/11 memorial off to one side to commemorate the many Westchester residents who died in that attack. 

spotted lantern fly

 There are also a lot of lantern flies on top of the dam. (I don't know why they're only up there and not in the plaza below.) I saw one walking briskly along the top of the dam and got my camera out to take a picture, when Steve started saying very excitedly, "Kill it! Kill it!" and he started slapping at it with his shoe. My shoe was much more accessible, so I took a swing at it, but they're quick little things. It got away.

 So, according to Steve, lantern flies, which are so named for the bright colours underneath their outer wings, are an invasive species from down south, the only natural predator of which is a type of parachuting spider that doesn't live up north ... yet. So there's a concerted effort to kill lantern flies before the predators show up and make life in the Big City even worse. Wikipedia, though, says the species is from East Asia -- ain't that typical of a Yankee, to blame the South? -- and the predator is a wasp. Not sure that's any better than spiders. (I did see what looked like a yellow jacket eating a dead lantern fly, so there is hope.)

 By the time we left the dam I was experiencing about a 55% kill rate. 

 Now it's Saturday afternoon. Steve had to go on a fire call, which turned out to be for some woman who called the police to come scare her son straight, but when you call for emergency services from a car on one of the Parkways, all the emergency services show up. Then he had some errands to run, so I've been here alone for a while; long enough to write this post, shave, take a shower, call in a prescription to the drugstore in Chappaqua, deal with gmail's security protocols (which I find so frustrating at times that I'm seriously considering changing to Duck Duck Go's email service), walk down to the sandwich shop at the bottom of the street for lunch (because I couldn't identify anything edible in Steve's fridge). Now that I'm about done I'm going to drive up to Chappaqua and pick up my prescription.

 The rain has just started.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Four: Beckley, West Virginia to Hershey, Pennsylvania

 This is the fourth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 When I went outside this morning it was cold. I went back in and put on long sleeves, though I still am wearing shorts. It's not that cold.

 I started off the morning with a brief exploration of Beckley. I lived there forty years ago, but I've so completely forgotten the place that I couldn't recall the name of the street where I lived. I drove through downtown, but absolutely nothing looked familiar. So after filling up the tank I headed out.

 The cold didn't really matter, because it was to be a day on the freeway. The sun was just up and I was headed due east, so I was blinded for the first half hour or so, until I got into the fog that I always expect in the hollows of West Virginia. I wasn't disappointed.

 The car has been going through a rotating series of electrical issues. (1) The little motor that drives the radio antenna up and down stopped working last year; I think it's the mechanical connection, because I can hear the motor turning but nothing happens. It's not worth worrying about. (2) I hit a hard pothole in New Mexico last year, and ever since then I sometimes get a warning light and the messages "cruise control not available" and "check rear lights." I've checked the rear lights and found no issue, and I generally don't need cruise control. Today, when I wanted it, it worked; yesterday it didn't. And (3) I get a red warning light and the message "Engine coolant low." I started getting that a couple of years ago and the reservoir is always full. I did some on-line research and learned that the sensor for coolant level is defectively designed. I had it replaced last year and it's been fine until this trip. This morning the warning light came on every time I went down a steep hill, and went off when I went up hill. Plus the temperature gauge didn't move, so I'm sure it's just the defective sensor. Once I got to the flatlands it stopped coming on. The repair is still in warranty so maybe I'll have it replaced again when I get home.

 I made four unsuccessful attempts to get breakfast this morning. First I pulled off the freeway at Lewisburg, West Virginia, "the coolest town in the USA" according to somebody. The traffic into town was so bad it was backed up onto the freeway exit ramp and the main highway inbound, so I said the Hell with it and got back on the freeway. It looked to be a long wait to get into the town proper. Next I took an exit where there was supposedly a Waffle House, which is good enough for me. It wasn't there. A few miles farther on I took an exit where there was supposed to be an IHOP. It, too, was nowhere in sight. You can't trust those blue highway amenity signs. I took another exit where there were supposed to be restaurants, but the only one actually there was a McDonalds, which is too far down the list of tolerable options, so I just got coffee at a convenience store and made do. (There was a sign advertising what looked like a Mom-&-Pop diner at one exit, but I missed the exit because of trucks in the right lane.) I just cruised along, listening to my audiobook, and skipped breakfast. I may have skipped lunch, too, because I can't remember stopping except at a TransAmerica after crossing into Pennsylvania, where I took a nap. 

 After a couple of scares when I think I actually fell asleep at the wheel, I now make it a point to pull over whenever I feel fatigued, stop the car and count to 300 with my eyes closed. If I get straight through it takes me about five minutes. I don't think I've ever gotten straight through. Today it took me almost 40 minutes, so I must have napped most of that time. Fortunately the weather was excellent and I could put the windows down. After that I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and good to go for the rest of the day. 

 I got to my first destination, the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, at 3pm, which gave me two hours to go through it. That wasn't long enough; I ended up skipping through the last 3 or 4 galleries. At the same time, the overall experience was pretty frustrating because of the noise. Not the noise of the visitors -- there were very few; the noise was coming from the exhibits. Every gallery featured too-loud audio tracks and videos that made it impossible to concentrate on the signboards. Often there were more than one audio track to be heard. 

 Here's an example: I was standing at the bottom of the stairs reading about the first battle in which Union cavalry proved as good as Confederate cavalry. As I read, I could hear (1) the sound of infantry firing by rank, from a television monitor right behind me; orders being shouted, then click, click, boom, click, click, boom; (2) a description of a field hospital, where amputations were being performed, from an exhibit to my right across the room; (3) the sound track of a recreation of an infantry charge, with all the sounds of battle, coming from a loudspeaker on the stairs to my right; and (4) the sound of soldiers singing at night in their camp, from an exhibit at the top of the stairs. I don't remember any of the particulars about the signboard I was trying to read. 

 This experience was repeated throughout the museum. I know there are technologies -- I've seen them at other museums -- that will localize the sounds of exhibits; at the very least, they could use motion-activated devices and turn the volume down some. The distraction was maddening.

 And while I'm bitching about the visit, they could record the audio using people who don't have distracting speech impediments. In one area (just before the singing soldiers) it sound like Virginia's version of Elmer Fudd, somberly intoning that "Wichmond could bweathe again." I'm sorry, but after about seven minutes of this guy descibing various events of the war, it just became laughable.

 And there were the usual museum complaints: duplication of exhibits, specifically having to do with the development of signal flags, first used by the Union in the Civil War; misspellings; and incorrect grammar: they refer to "less men" instead of "fewer men," and they used the word "sunk" when they should have used "sank." You kind of expect educated people to recognize these things and do them right. 

 I suppose it's to be expected that the battle of Gettysburg, which is just down the road from Harrisburg, gets its own full-gallery exhibit, while the equally important capture of Vicksburg, which occurred at the same time, got one signboard and one photo mounted on a wall. This is called chauvinism, I think.

 And finally, after reading several signboards describing various battles, one wonders that the war lasted the full four years, because each Union victory "left no doubt that the Confederacy would be defeated." Well, there must have been some doubt, because they fought on for another year or more. What we have here is a failure of imagination on the part of the signboard writers.

 Like I said, two hours wasn't long enough.

 My next stop was going to be a car museum in Hershey, that RoadTrippers said was open until 9pm. So I picked a good restaurant in Harrisburg, close to a Chase Bank ATM, and went into town for that. At the ATM (which is located next to the county jail) there were three women withdrawing money, over and over. When they finally finished I pulled up and found that the ATM was no longer available; they had drained it of cash. I assume they were getting together bail for somebody. So I went to the restaurant I'd picked out on line, & found there was nowhere remotely close to park. (Also I didn't want to walk very far in that neighbourhood.)  

 I located a nearby place to pull over to get directions to my next destination, the car museum in Hershey ... and learned that it closes at 5pm, not 9. So I just asked for directions to Hershey, which is only like 10 miles away, and figured I'd do what is becoming customary on this trip: go to dinner at a random restaurant, and make a hotel reservation while there. I found a Bob Evans restaurant in Hummelstown and made a reservation for a nice little mom-&-pop motel called the Simmons in Hershey. Very pleasant, not too expensive (they advertise "private bathrooms"!), right on the main drag of this quiet little town which, by the way, no longer smells like chocolate. The lady at the desk says they closed down the big yellow factory in the middle of town, so it only occasionally smells like chocolate. Another disappointment.