Punxsutawney, Here We Come!

Yesterday, heading west from Scranton to Punxsutawney (I am most proud that I now know how to

spell Punxsutawney without a Google look-up.) had us travel through some magnificent terrain. The Poconos are beautiful and the Allegheny Mountains are are truly majestic. We ran into a real stroke of luck at a fuel stop in Wilkes Barre. The attendant had failed to re-set the pumps and our receipt for our fill-up appeared to be an error. When Terry questioned the bill, the manager said that they would honor the price of $1.11/ gallon! How great is that?! However, all did not go as well as that. Part of the trip was hampered by construction - a staple along all PA roadways; there was the ever-present challenge of sharing the road with huge trucks, hundreds of them - and bad weather. At one point, I thought we would have to exit the Interstate since visibility was near zero. But super-driver, Terrence, had it under control. The skies cleared enough for us to continue - hooray!.

And so we made our way to Punxsutawney, the area that Terry's ancestors had settled in over a century and a half ago. We checked into a bed and breakfast, the Plantation, owned by a gracious hostess, Julie. And where was our room? The Groundhog Suite - perfect! This was a lovely bedroom with a step-down sitting room-enough modern amenities to be functional with enough quaintness to be charming. We met some other guests who had traveled from Texas for his job and had already been here five weeks. And we thought we had a long journey.



We chose to have a sit-down breakfast each morning and were not disappointed with our decision. From the homemade blueberry pancakes, to the fresh scrambled eggs and bacon, to the fine touches of a silver serving set, a toast rack and hand crocheted sugar and creamer covers, this was not our usual breakfast experience. All here in the middle of Punxy. Could not ask for better.