On the Road Again

April 9-10

I may be in the Midwest. I’m not sure.

Right now, I’m stopping for the night at the Clarion Hotel Morgan in Morgantown, W.Va.

This is the second night out on my first road trip in a long time.

Indeed, it has been a long time since I’ve had any travel to brag about.

After we got back from Thailand last fall, we joined Joanna’s family in Phoenix for Thanksgiving. We had a great dinner with my cousin Bill and his wife, Dee, and also sampled some of the local Mexican fare. The mole was terrific. (That’s “mo-lay.” I’ve yet to eat one of those things that undermines the back yard. Some day maybe)

I took a brief trip to the Carolinas to flee the cold at the turn of the year, but spent most of my time in the car and so had little to report. I revisited the Cowpens Battlefield, which I had seen once before, and this time I was better prepared and so found the Swamp Fox’s grave, which I had tried to find last May.

Joanna and I went to New York for a couple of days last week. The Friends of Mozart held the last concert of their season on April 4 at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church on West 69th Street. 

Four vocal students from Juilliard performed works by Mozart and Schubert. They were accompanied by a fifth Juilliard student at the piano. The duet “Pa, Pa, Pa,” from the Magic Flute, alone was worth the trip. It’s a comical back and forth between Papageno and Papagena.

We went to Boite en Bois on 68th for some very good and probably overpriced French food and wine.

We stayed at La Quinta on 71st street, a half block from Central Park.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wandered for a few hours among the Egyptian and medieval exhibits. We had pasta at Polpette on 71st Street.

The following Monday I left for parts not fully known.

I drove as far as Danville, Pa., where I stayed in a Super 8 next to I-80. It’s about two miles from downtown Danville, which is one of those charming 19th century towns made of wooden row houses and stone mansions.

Some of the stonework is phenomenal. Walls are are made of light and dark stones that create an unusual texture. 

The local library has pink marble details by the door. 

One house on a street corner is made entirely of green stone. I’d never seen anything quite like that before and so went up to get a closer look. There was no evidence of paint on it and I don’t think it could be dyed. But what do I know?

One of the stone houses belonged to William Montgomery, a Revolutionary War veteran and all-around leading citizen who set up a trading post in the neighborhood.

The town is named for William’s son, Daniel, who surveyed the area where the town was built. Like Fort Casper in Wyoming, the town is called by someone’s first, instead of last, name.

The next time you’re in Danville, be sure to visit the Old Forge Brewing Co. brewpub on Mill Street. For a small operation it has a broad variety of brews. 

There’s even a proprietary cask ale, which is one of the best I have tasted. That list includes all those drawn for me on my last trip to London.

Cask ales are carbonated in the barrel. Sometimes they can seem a little on the flat side. This one was dead-on perfect.

The bar also has a red ale, which I had with a rare sirloin. According to the Old Forge menu, the beef is raised locally and fed with spent grain from the brewery.

It was tougher than I’d expect of grain-fed beef, but surprisingly tasty.

I brought home a six pack for Old Forge Overbite IPA. I was drinking and watching Netflix on the computer when I fell asleep in the desk chair.

I woke and transferred to the bed around four and made it to breakfast at 8:30. They turned out the dining room lights on me at 9. I was on my second cup of coffee, and the lady said I didn’t have to leave. Even so, I took a refill back to the room.

When I left around 11, it had started to snow. Nothing serious, though: There was little of it and it was melting wherever it landed.

About 40 or 50 miles west on I-80, in the higher hills, some of it was sticking to evergreen branches, but only to evergreens, and to small patches of grass. It looked so strange to see it there, maybe because I didn’t expect it.

The route included I-99, U.S. 22, and U.S. 119, which took me right to the hotel. 

It’s a beautiful ride through mountain gaps, over the rivers and through the woods, (whether your grandmother lives there or not), and past small towns. Yeah, you pass an occasional stretch of strip malls, but mostly though, it’s open country, and very picturesque.

On U.S.119, I passed a sign for Historic Hanna’s Town. So I turned around and went back to take the cut-off. There’s a small reconstruction of log houses and a stockade.

The town started in 1773 and had the first English courthouse west of the Allegheny Mountains. A force British soldiers and Indians attacked the place and burned it in 1782.

According to a web site, Pa-Roots.com, under a heading titled “The Destruction of Hannastown,” the town’s residents kept the attackers at bay from the stockade.

One young woman, Margaret Shaw, was killed.  She was struck by a bullet when she was rescuing a toddler who had wandered into harm’s way.

The town was burned and looted, and never fully recovered. The county seat was moved elsewhere in 1786.

I had an encouraging travel experience shortly after leaving Hanna’s Town. I got lost. 

I must have missed a turn to stay on Route 119 and wound up on U.S. 30. Not bad, but not what I wanted.

I stopped to look at the map in a town called Jeannette. I didn’t have to go all the way back to the missed intersection. A spur of the Pennsylvania Turnpike took me right back to 119 South.

I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line at 4 p.m. to enter West Virginia and checked into the hotel 20 minutes later.

So far, so good.

Love to all.

Harry