Interesting day. Good thing we got the wipers replaced on the truck. We were driving across Pennsylvania and entered a fog area—lots of hills and valleys around. The sky was dark. Before long, it was like night. It was only 10 in the morning, but the sky looked like it was nine at night. The rain started. Then it poured. It was coming down in sheets! We were on this narrow bit of road with two lanes and a very small shoulder area. Bill was getting extremely nervous because he could not see—a minor detail when one is driving! We knew that pulling over would not be safe, so he kept his eyes glued to the lights on the truck in front of him and kept us moving forward, trying to ignore all of the people passing us on the left. It didn't last long, but it was a stressful few minutes! He had those new wipers going as fast as they would go and it still wasn't fast enough. Still, if we'd had the old wipers they would've been flung from the truck and into a valley or something.
We got to our destination and were sorely disappointed. We knew there would be bad weather, so we were looking for a motel room that was along interstate 80.
The night before—in Streetsboro—we watched as more tornado warnings were issued. One was for the county we were in. I had to look at the phone book to find out what county we were in, and sure enough, the funnel cloud or whatever it was passed about 10 miles to the south of us. So we wanted some shelter. We searched and searched with our atlas in hand, but could not find anyplace that would take a reservation. Finally we found a Red Roof Inn in Danville, PA that had a room available, so we booked that. It was a somewhat longer drive than we'd been making in a day and we were somewhat nervous about this because of the clanging and clunking noises the truck is making (Bill did some research and thinks it's the U-joint). Anyway, there seemed to be little choice, so we reached Danville, found the motel and proceeded to check in. The room itself was nice enough—clean and comfortable. But the free coffeehouse style whole bean coffee that they trumpeted all over their website was unavailable because the machine was broken. There was no internet connection available. I was in desperate need of coffee. So after bringing our stuff in and laying down for awhile, Bill asked the woman at the desk where the nearest grocery store was. It was right down the road a couple of miles, she said, so we got into the clanging truck and headed that way. It was there.
I love walking around new grocery stores. You can tell a lot about where you are by observing what kind of food they sell and do not sell. I find it fascinating. On this day, my mind was pretty foggy, though, so I kind of stood there feeling overwhelmed as I tried to figure out what to buy for supper. By this time I had found the coffee and purchased a 20 ounce cup. It wasn't great, but it was good enough, and I was grateful. So while I waited for that to kick in, I kind of wandered around looking at stuff.
Then I spotted the pizza in the hot food case. It looked almost like New Jersey pizza, which seemed reasonable, since I was almost in New Jersey! I had been looking forward to NJ pizza for a long time. There's something about it that's different from west coast pizza. Anyway, I looked up at the sign and saw that they sold whole pies. I knew what I wanted for dinner. So Bill ordered some and we went outside to drink our coffee while we waited. Bill decided he didn't like it, so he gave me most of his 20 ounce cup, too. I was feeling much better. We went back to the room and I tried the pizza. It was almost NJ pizza. The crust was a tad too thick, but it tasted wonderful! And we even have some left over for breakfast tomorrow!
