I chose a slightly non-standard route, essentially Route 18 through Beaver Falls. It's a series of funny juxtapositions because there's Beaver Falls, which has its share of drugs, violence, and prostitution and then you go up the hill to Geneva College which is quite different, and then the Route18 - Turnpike interchange area is mostly a porn and "lifestyle"-hotel zone. It's just an incongruous set of neighbors. Continued up to Ellwood City, another classic Main Street USA ex-steel town.
From Ellwood City I took 65 North which had kind of a big hill, then 388 North until I got to cross 422 (Sheetz rest stop ftw!). After Sheetz I took 388 and 168 North and got to see the tiny hamlet of Volant, PA which has a great flyfishing shop and a bunch of niche boutiques - but my main reason for wanting to see Volant is that there's a aviation navigation fix (roughly) overhead named VOLAN that I've known about for quite a while, I thought it would be interesting to see the town behind the Intersection.
Volant is a tiny little place with a lot of stores. It seems like the economy is based on giving people who are at the Grove City Outlet Mall an option to go somewhere else. Nice little town, but bring money.
Departed Volant via Route 208 East which I was surprised to see is also State Bike Route V. Passed through the Outlet Mall Megaplex and rode into Grove City proper, had 49 miles on the GPS so took a loop around the campus to get to 50 miles.
A very nice ride on country roads, and all the car drivers were very cooperative.
Hello again, I never knew about that state route V, but when I opened your link I saw that it passes right through Danville where we lived all those years ago (click on #20). I have ridden part of that route many many times over the past twenty five or so years. Thanks again for the interesting posts.
ReplyDelete