Day 3

States covered: 2 (NJ, PA)

Despite not-so-great weather, we had a very full and fun day today! It began very early, when Chris woke us up, as we requested, at 7AM. After saying goodbye to Chris and Bernedette and thanking them for the wonderful visit, we got on the road by about 8:15AM.

From North Plainfield we headed to Princeton to visit Colleen, one of Todd's friends from college, and her husband, Rick. We got there a bit early since there was no traffic en route, so we were able to spend a few minutes walking around the Princeton campus. Stephanie really liked it and likened it to a happy medium between Harvard-type architecture (red brick everywhere) and Yale-type archetecture (stone and gothic everywhere).

We met Colleen and Rick at Small World Coffee, a very good and very popular establishment next to the Princeton campus. We had plenty of good coffee and good conversation! :-)

Colleen and Rick gave us directions to the Princeton U-Store, where we purchased some Princeton souveneir gear, and then we got on the road toward Scranton, PA. En route, we stopped for a quick lunch at Arby's in Wind Gap, PA.

We arrived in Scranton at the Steamtown National Historic Site (earlier than we expected) by about 2:15PM. The museum and trains were amazing. Stephanie was quite excited to actually see a 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" engine in person. It was tremendous! We took a lot of photos of trains. A very friendly National Parks guide told us about some of the details of the things we were looking at since we were some of the only people there!

After spending two hours at Steamtown (and getting Stephanie a "Big Boy" t-shirt!), we got back on the road heading towards Ohio. We wanted to get a few hours of driving behind us so that our drive to Ohio the next day wouldn't be as long. We found that the state of Pennsylvania really likes to warn you about icy bridges. At each and every bridge along the interstate there was a "BRIDGE MAY BE ICY" sign. Talk about overkill!

The weather conspired against us, and we stopped a bit earlier than we had planned due to heavy fog. We found a nice EconoLodge in Pine Grove, PA in our AAA book, so we checked in for the evening. A fine buffet dinner greeted us at the American Family Restaurant, where they had so many delicous side dishes that we hardly made it to the main courses!

That is about it for today. Another fun day behind us, and tomorrow it is on to Columbus, OH. We're hoping for better weather!