Pennsylvania

I had a too-quick visit with the soon-to-be Seattle Anderton's, dropped Jon off at the airport, and I was on my way in the early afternoon.

Starting point - Baltimore, Maryland (State #1). Not quite, but nearly as far east as you can get in the United States. Maybe I should drive up to Cape Cod or Maine, so that I can get more miles between me and Washington? Beginning mileage on speedometer: 90120. Kind of a cloudy cold day.

I headed out I-70 westward through Frederick and Hagerstown, and into the hills. Maryland narrows as you head westward, at one point being just a few miles wide, then it widens again into its western panhandle. At the bottleneck sets Hancock, and here I-70 juts north into Pennsylvania, where I crossed into State #2.

I-70 veers east toward Somerset and Pittsburgh. At Somerset, I left the freeway and wandered around some rural roads trying to find the United 93 Memorial. The signage was not the best, but I finally found it around 430pm. I was surprised to find it still sits on private land (I thought it had been purchased by now for the NHS), on what was clearly a fairly recent coal excavation site. It had been strip-mined and after restored to the contours of the surrounding countryside. There is a makeshift parking lot and a small shed, but other than that no improvements. Someone erected a section of fence, where people have placed every manner of personal item - hats, fireman jackets, t-shirts, banners, etc. There are handmade painted signs, rocks, coins, crosses, and almost every conceivable type of artifact scattered about, all with writing of some kind expressing grief or lauding the heroism of the passengers of Flight 93. I talked to the person watching over the site and 1) they have stored over 30,000 more items (other than the ones currently out in the open) for future use in a visitor's center and 2) over 175,000 people visited this spot last year and that number may double this year. It is an eerie place. Quiet. There were many people there with me and no one spoke. The wind was blowing and that is all you could hear. The flight path of the plane was over the memorial and toward the small flag and trees in the distance. The plane came to rest near the hemlocks.

I crossed the Laurel Ridge (crossing paths with one of my earlier trips - F.L. Wright's Fallingwater is near here) and spent the night west of Pittsburgh. The roads in this part of the country do NOT go in straight lines. At every successive mountain ridge (that generally run to the southwest, the road must search out the "notches" created by rivers or some other natural force. That is why the road maps look so unusual in Pennsylvania. I stayed in Latrobe, the home and birthplace of Arnold Palmer.