Coastal Dash 2012 Travelogue – Part 1

I’m getting ready to start planning my next summer road trip, but I realized I never got around to posting anything about last summer’s road trip.

The trip started the same as any trip from Chicago must start: Stuck in traffic. I left home around 6pm on Friday, so I caught the tail end of the rush hour as I drove through downtown Chicago to get to Indiana. It was pretty rough going into town, but it got better on the way out.

After crossing the border into Indiana, as is my tradition, I filled up on that cheap non-Illinois, non-Cook-County, non-Chicago gas at the Gas-a-roo.

My first real stop for the evening was meeting my friends George and Rich for dinner at Wagner’s ribs in Porter, Indiana. Wagner’s does really good Chicago-style ribs. I prefer to ask for them “Tim’s Style,” which isn’t on the menu any more but they’ll still make up a batch that way if you ask. I no longer remember what it means, but they’re damned good going down.

After dinner, I drove east to the Indiana-Ohio border. My plan was to stay the night just over the border in Montpelier, Ohio, a town I had picked off the map because it seemed like the right distance.

My wife travels a lot on business, so she has certain standards for a hotel, but when I’m traveling by myself I really don’t care about the amenities, especially when I’m driving, because the only time I’m in my hotel room is when I’m asleep. So I picked the cheapest hotel that had internet, which turned out to be a mom-and-pop motel called the Plaza Motel, which was actually a little down the road in Bryan.

I had told them I’d be a little late, and they promised they’d stay up for me, but I screwed up. I left the restaurant later than I planned to, then I got lost and went a few miles out of my way, so I was running a little late. Or so I thought. I had foolishly forgotten that in driving from Chicago to Ohio I would cross into a new timezone, so I arrived almost an hour and a half later than I’d told them.

The office was dark and shut down, so I was mentally preparing to decide whether to sleep in my car or look for another hotel. That latter was looking like it might be difficult since my iPhone had locked up and gone dark about 5 minutes before I got there. However, when I approached the office I discovered that someone was still waiting up for me, and she checked me in without yelling at me, which I thought was very nice of her.

My room was in what looked like a brand-new second building (or at least it was built more recently than the main building). When I got settled in, I tried to hop on the internet, but the wi-fi asked for a password, and I wasn’t about to bother the poor woman in the office again after making her stay up for me. I eventually figured out how to get my iPhone working again and tried to get on the internet, but it only had Edge service, which might have worked but I lacked the patience to try. I went to sleep.

The next day I woke up, got some breakfast, and took a long and uneventful drive across Ohio and most of Pennsylvania, following I-80 all the way. As evening approached, I estimated that I would be stopping near Scranton, and I asked my wife to find a hotel for me. She picked out a place called the Pocono Inne Town, which had a decent rate and sounded like a nice place to rest up after a long drive.

As it turns out, Stroudsburg is a bit of a college town, and the Pocono Inne Town was the party hotel located right in the middle of downtown Stroudsburg. I could hear a ruckus from the hotel bar while I was checking in, but my room on the fourth floor was quiet enough, although not really up to the standards of the Plaza Motel I had stayed in the night before.

It was a very old building with some odd features. For example, I travel with a lot of gear which I didn’t want to leave in the car, so after getting my key I loaded up a luggage cart in the lobby and took the elevator up to my floor and followed the directions to my room, only to discover that I couldn’t take the cart all the way because there were some stairs in the middle of the hallway.

The next morning I hit the road on the final leg of my outbound trip. The drive through the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania is very beautiful, but it’s hard to find places to pull over to take a picture. But knowing I’d be posting a travelogue, I decided I’d better stop at at least one “scenic overlook” to get a few pictures. This one was pretty decent:

And here’s a panoramic view:

(My gallery plugin doesn’t present that very well, so you might just want to look directly at the image in your browser here.)

I made it through the hills and tunnels into north Jersey in time for a late lunch at someplace called the Six Brothers Diner, which had some pretty decent food.

After that, it was one long trip down the Garden State Parkway to Avalon on the Jersey Shore, where I met up with my wife (she had come out earlier with friends). We had dinner that evening at the Princeton on Ocean drive. Here’s a shot I took looking out at the street.

More to come…

Update: I almost forgot. On my trip out east I stopped in to meet Jeff Gamso and his wife. Here’s a picture of Jeff with his puppydog, looking not too much like a badass capital defense lawyer.

Update: Part 2 is up.