Saturday September 22, 2012

 

            Scranton PA to Danville PA 107km 545m vertical climb

The strong smell of mothballs nearly choked us so we were glad to get out of our motel room this morning. The motel breakfast was in the room price but what looked like second hand donuts and coffee was not enough for us so we walked up the road to a diner and had a classic breakfast of fried eggs, bacon and potato pancakes with toast and jam. That was a much better start to the day. We had a clear blue sky and the heat, while stood loading the bikes outside the motel, led TimB to decide on a short sleeve shirt for the ride. The air, despite the sun, was actually quite cool so the high speed downhill immediately after leaving the car park left TimB with jaw ache after trying to stop his teeth chattering so it wasn’t long before he put a second shirt on.

           

Main Street - Avoca

            The first couple of hours were spent riding through the suburbs of Scranton and Wilkes Barre on rough roads past a lot of rough looking properties. Things looked more cheerful as we left Wilkes Barre and cycled on Route 11 paralleling the Lackawanna River. We stopped for lunch in Shickshinny and on entering the restaurant saw a plaque on the wall showing a line 55 inches off the floor, which was the level that the Lackawanna River had reached on Sept. 8^th last year as a result of the tropical storm Lee. The restaurant was about 300yds from and several yards higher than the river so it must have been an impressive sight to see. It had taken the owners until May this year to rebuild the place and reopen for business.

The afternoon was pleasantly warm and we had a nice steady ride through flat terrain until we decided to stop at about 70km for cold drinks when we saw the Bandits Roadhouse. The place was buzzing, being surrounded by Harley motorbikes and full of leather clad bikers. Despite not fulfilling the apparent dress code we felt qualified to enter having arrived on two wheels. After tanking up on two (US) pints of ginger ale on the rocks we easily managed the remaining 37km to the Red Roof Motel 4km north of Danville. 

Bandit Roadhouse - Berwick