silly sunday

When I travel I like to do both serious things, as well as silly things.  I am a firm believer that if you're in the neighborhood, then you must go. Pauxatauny is one of those places. When I heard we were going to Cleveland, I knew we'd come back I-80. If we were going to be on I-80, then we had to stop at the "weather capital of the world". Plus there was a volkssport walk that would get us another county.  Of the 67. we only need 36 more, so we're more than halfway done. (The same cannot be said for our state book. We have 35 of them left as well.)

We stayed in a motel about a half-hour outside of Pauxatauny. There only appeared to be one hotel in town and that was for sale. My guess is that that is the one they "used" in the movie "Groundhog Day". (It was filmed in Illinois.)

We stopped at a Denny's for breakfast and then headed into the town. Phil was everywhere. Remember "Miles of Mules" or "Gallopalooza"? The same type of thing but with groundhogs. The route took us to all of them. There was a lot of in and out and around the block.

The towns hero—Phil—lives in the library's window. The glasses is darkened so you have to be really close to look in. It makes sense, they live under ground. Phil wasn't up yet and the library wasn't open to look thru their window.  I didn't take a photo, I thought Bonnie did, but you can see it behind this statue.

As we wove thru the town we found the Weather Discovery Center. The center's website says that they are "the ultimate destination to learn how the science and folklore of weather prediction collide!" The building is the old post office and online it looks beautiful inside. If we would have had time, we might have gone in.

Our walk started at the supermarket. Again, we were the only non-POC to sign the book. We decided to drive up to Gobbler's Knob. I'm glad we did. That was quite a hill to climb, and it was a mile and a half long.

Then it was back in the car for the 4-hour drive home. We did not take route I-80. We wove our way thru Penn's woods, State College, and ultimately arrived at I-81 near Hershey.

Miles/Steps:        Only about 1.5 miles. We cut off the loop thru the IUP satellite campus.
Weather:             80, sunny, windy

Wildlife:               not even a "live" groundhog

Bathrooms:          Bonnie used the one in the supermarket. I forgot to ask. I used the one in McD's. It was a I-3.5

Money found:       dime