A Short Road and Rail Trip

A short road trip found Spence and myself spending a night in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. After spending the day roaming rural Pennsylvania, checking out the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon and the Wellsboro Diner, we headed for an evening of baseball and adventure. In our brief time in the area, we found good food, conversation and interesting things to think about.

A home for the night

Sometimes the adventure of travelling is not limited to where one visits, but often where one lays their head. This trip had us staying in a caboose, constructed by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1941. It is now owned and operated as B&B (without the breakfast) by the Clinton County Historical Society. The caboose rests at the old railroad station in Castanea, a small village just across Bald Eagle Creek from Lock Haven. It had the amenities of a nice self-service hotel room, with a dining area, refrigerator and microwave, plus the added bonus of great nostalgia. Although trains no longer pass through the small village, and most of the tracks have long since disappeared, as you wake up one can still hear a constant stream of train whistles in the distance, punctuating the quiet early morning. At one point I thought to myself, is this what it would be like to ride the rails? 

A minor problem with staying in the caboose was that I did not bring a towel, something not provided by the historical society. Thinking I might like to have a shower the next morning, we stopped by a dollar store to purchase a lime green towel ($2.50) and matching washcloth (.50). The next morning, after taking a shower, it seemed that the towel had left a great deal of itself on the floor of the shower. The rest of the day I felt like I was picking lime green lint out of my hair and off my clothes.

A bed for the night

My travelling partner has a propensity to sleep late, so I took the opportunity to have a short walk to explore Castanea. After a night of rain, clouds hung low over the mountains as I walked. The town has become a bedroom community of working-class people, with older homes and very few businesses. There was one house, at the corner of Logan and Brown, which has been abandoned for some time that made me think of the old mansion in the film, It’s A Wonderful Life. Not that the house necessarily resembled the abandoned film mansion; however, the broken windows and the two stories made me wonder if local people might believe the house was haunted. The streets in the town resemble the lattice-work of a pie top, nestled between Bald Eagle Mountain and Bald Eagle Creek. A small, fast-flowing stream, Harvey’s Run, bisects the town from the mountain to the creek. It was running quite heavy after a night of rain.

After my perambulation I find myself at the Train Station Restaurant, a thriving enterprise. The restaurant occupies what once was a house. Two women ran the breakfast without pretense. The food was simple but good and informal. An egg, toast and a cup of coffee cost me less than $4.00, meanwhile I was privy to many of the conversations between locals. The waitress kindly laughed at my joke that I might be back for a second breakfast when Spencer woke up. Sure enough, about 45 minutes later, we returned to the restaurant and I had yet another cup of coffee and toast while Spence had a hearty breakfast of waffle and bacon.