One thing in life is certain – if you are travelling from motel to motel in the USA, then the WiFi quality will vary between slow and intermittent. Hence the delay in sending the next episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lake Harmony. And Pennsylvania. Been here before. One Christmas, years ago. The place was nothing special, but the past few years have brought on a change. What was OK before, has faded into a grey non-entity. Restaurants that close after 3, and restaurants that do not open till 4. The Galleria ( the main resort centre) was dead as mutton. The gift shop was shut, and the only excitement occurred when the fire-alarm went off! When the gift shop opened the next day, the star gift appeared to be a (small) collection of fridge-magnets for anyone called kyle, robert or terence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A visit to Pennsylvania’s prime tourist location – the township of Jim Thorpe – revealed that the shops were shut, or selling arty junk ( they call it “repurposed”). The train ride at the station was only running at the weekend. The excitement was bearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In desperation, we went to the Wyoming Valley Mall, in Wilkes-Barre. A long drive along a twisting, speed-limited with no passing places, boring road. The Mall would be familiar to fans of George Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’. A dozen or so, shambling figures who wandered aimlessly around, pretending to be a crowd! They had a strange, walking-on-their-heels gait. As the News of the World reporters used to say “We made our excuses, and left”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We did visit another Mall in Allentown – just past Bethlehem, near Nazareth ( look it up, if you don’t believe me!). Bought a few books, ate at one of those ‘All you can eat’ places. (didn’t eat a lot).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At last, the week ended. We set off to our next location – Niagara Falls. With the satnav set to ‘avoid toll’, we went on a meandering tour of New York State. We had prepared a mass of documentation for our crossing into Canada. A quick glance at our passports, $4.00 in cash for the toll, a smile, and we drove into Canada. Smoothest Customs and Immigration ever. 10 minutes later, we were at our motel. Would this be a memorable visit, or just another oversized tourist trap?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More to come …<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
One thing in life is certain – if you are travelling from motel to motel in the USA, then the WiFi quality will vary between slow and intermittent. Hence the delay in sending the next episode.<\/p>\n
Lake Harmony. And Pennsylvania. Been here before. One Christmas, years ago. The place was nothing special, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-having-a-say","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1867,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/1867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}