Looking at "freeway fast" travel, I'm OFF the two lanes and ON the Pennsylvania Turnpike for Week 6, making a tour of rest stops east of Harrisburg - both east and westbound.
I sometimes feel snobbish for stressing the journey - usually on back roads - over the destination, but I'm the first to admit If covering great distances in the least amount of time is your goal, you can't beat the interstate highway system. But they ARE boring. Well, at least not as visually interesting as the slower routes.
So as long as I'm on the freeway going fast, I decide to slow down as I visit a few of Pennsylvania's "multi-concept service plazas" (rest stops to you and me). As East Coast drivers, with all of our toll roads, we take our rest stops for granted. In most of the rest of the country easy-on, easy-off means vending machines. Ours have video games, clean and spacious restrooms, pay-phones, travelers maps, CNN on television, as well a smörgåsbord of eats. Some even have outdoor Farmers Markets.
The westbound Peter J. Camiel rest stop at mile post 304.8 - "46 miles to next Service Area" - offers Cinnabon, Brioche Doree, Roy Rogers, Sbarros, Starbucks, Hershey's Ice Cream, a gift Shop, plus an APlus convenience store at the Sunoco gas station.
Among the morning commuters stopping for coffee, that's where I meet Alice Gray sitting in the passenger seat of her King Ranch F-350 Ford pickup, attached to a 28 foot trailer. They stopped to walk Sparkie, and so husband Jim could take a little nap at the start of a three week cross country road trip. They planned to leave at 4am, but got a late start from home in Browns Mills, NJ. They're going to South Dakota's Black Hills, Yellowstone and Colorado before coming back via Branson and Nashville (besides the Great Outdoors, they like music).
As I run back to my car to retrieve my pen, Alice wakes Jim up. The couple "started with a tent in the mid-80's," he says. "Then we got a pop-up camper, a travel trailer, and now this. It's called a fifth wheel." Jim figures the next step, which he's in no hurry to take, would be an RV. With the trailer, they can leave it in the campground, and still take day trips with the pickup.
