Exploring Jim Thorpe Area

Today we had a lazy start to the day that consisted of breakfast and finishing reports from the last event. After that, we drove a couple miles back to Jim Thorpe, PA where we rented mountain bikes and checked out a trail that headed up to an overlook on the area. It was a really fun ride with some nice trails and a bit of singletrack that renewed my confidence in my ability to ride a mountain bike.



We got to the overlook point, and it was definitely a nice view.



From there, the trail went straight down the side of the hill along the path of an old tram line. This was probably about a 30 percent grade with lots of rocks, ruts, and old railroad ties. I decided to ride down it anyway, and managed to make it down without incident. Overall, very enjoyable. After a work conference call and some tasty late afternoon lunch/early dinner, we headed south to Allentown, PA hoping that come 9PM we'd find out that the city's Apple store would have iPhones tomorrow morning. However, this is not the case. There appear to be some phones available at the Apple store in King of Prussia just north of Philedephia, so the plan for tomorrow is to head there early, get an iPhone (I have my fingers crossed), go to a truck wash to clean up our truck prior to heading to New York, and if we have time we'll stop by the Deleware River National Recreation Area in the afternoon and possibly do some hiking. It's really kind of nice to have everything so close. From where we're at now, we could easily be in 10 different states within a matter of hours.

A long Drive

Today Molly and I parted ways with Nate who is headed to New Jersey to see some friends. We're going to meander for a couple days through Pennsylvania before eventually meeting up in New York. We set out early from our hotel near Toledo, Ohio and decided to cut north towards Lake Erie and check out the scenic route a bit. We went through Port Clinton and Sandusky, and despite Joey's urgings decided not to go to the Cedar Point Amusement Park. We headed back Southeast towards Cleveland, where the plan was to check out some AT&T stores to see if I could find an iPhone. I had previously picked out 8 different stores to try, but quickly abandoned that plan when the first store that I showed up at told me there weren't any iPhones left in Cleveland, and she was pretty sure that was the same for the entire state. I called ahead to numerous other stores along I-80 into Pennsylvania, and my luck there was no better. Oh well. The wait will only make it more gratifying when I finally do get one.

After a long, flat stretch in Ohio, we hit the Pennsylvania border and I was immediately much more into the countryside. Pennsylvania also seems much more tourist friendly, with an information center providing brochures of all shapes and sizes. They even have road signs alerting you to the fact that there are vending machines at the rest stops. The rolling hills heading into the Appalachians are really pretty, and occasionally the view reminded me a bit of driving between Delta and Fairbanks in Alaska.

We noticed the little snack shacks serving ice cream and burgers all along the drive in the morning, so it was only fitting that we ended up at one for dinner. The food was pretty decent, and the ice cream (I went for something called death by chocolate) was huge - I didn't even finish mine, which NEVER happens.

We've made plans to rent mountain bikes in Jim Jim Thorpe, PA tomorrow and we're going to go ride a trail into a gorge, which sounds like fun. I'm just going to enjoy being on a bike again. We drove the backroads through that area on the way to our hotel, and it's an area that begs to be explored. We're right in the midst of the Pocono Mountains, and while these aren't quite the type of mountains I'm used to, they're spectacular in their own way.