In a turnpike town, the truck stops here
IEXPECTED to live my entire life without priceshopping for truck-stop showers. Then I spent the night in Breezewood. The adventure began last August when my main squeeze James and I drove to Colorado. We passed through Breezewood, Pennsylvania, as do many drivers heading to the Rust Belt and beyond.
“What do you think about vacationing here for a week,” James asked. I laughed loudly and dismissed the idea.
If you’ve been there, you understand why. Breezewood has been a travel hub for centuries. It was a stagecoach stop in the late 1700s and then became a stop on the Lincoln Highway, America’s first cross-country road. The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, and thousands of World War II veterans exited at Breezewood, stopping at what now is the Gateway Travel Plaza to trade their unit patches for meals. Today, Motorists driving between I-70 and the turnpike are forced off the highway and onto a congested kilometre-long stretch of expensive gas stations, fastfood joints, truck stops and motels. That’s what people do in Breezewood, I thought. Get a quick caffeine fix, then refuel and get back on the road. They don’t sleep there.
“I’m game,” I said last summer, accepting James’s challenge. “But only for one night.”
By the time we finally rolled into town last month, I was excited about our adventure.
I had learned about Pike 2 Bike, a graffiti-covered, crumbling section of the original four-lane turnpike that was abandoned 50 years ago after the two-lane tunnels became bottlenecks. But on our first day, I was determined to walk up and down the Breezewood strip, US Route 30, to better understand this town people love to hate.
In the shadow of prominently placed no-pedestrian signs, we set off single file, along the shoulder and scuttled across intersections between groaning semis.
During our stroll down the strip, where 18-wheelers often outnumber four-wheelers, James and I counted close to a dozen vacant buildings, including a former Wendy’s and KFC.
Among the newest properties was the Holiday Inn Express, which sold in its lobby Hungry Man frozen dinners, build-your-own six packs of beer and a snow globe of Pennsylvania covered bridges. The busiest place (and our lunch spot) was Sheetz, in front of the touch-screen kiosks that facilitate made-to-order food.
Having passed Crawford’s Museum many times, I was hopeful about finding some culture in town. Alas, we discovered that the museum sign is simply a leftover from the building’s days of exhibiting taxidermied animals. Today, it’s a sports souvenir shop – offering a frenzy of Pittsburgh Steelers tchotchkes.
Before dinner, we left town, driving past farms and orchards, and slowing for bunnies scampering across the road. We stopped at a halfdozen covered bridges just long enough for selfies and found Gravity Hill, an optical illusion that makes cars look like they’re rolling uphill.
That night at the Quality Inn Breeze Manor, a tidy hilltop motel, I found a walking path to the truck-service station, which was lit up like a ballfield. One truck carried 10 colourful Mini Coopers, another logs, another FedEx packages. Standing on a knoll, I watched the endless parade of trucks and was enthralled while listening to their strange noises until bed beckoned.
The next morning, we drove to the start of the Pike 2 Bike trail and met Murray Schrotenboer, a grey-bearded entrepreneur who runs Grouseland Tours and has been riding the abandoned section of turnpike for nearly 20 years.
Under overcast skies, our small group set off.We pedalled at a comfortable pace, with gentle climbs and descents, and Schrotenboer narrated a history of the route starting with William Vanderbilt and a failed railroad project. In the old turnpike median, weeds grew to shoulder height and butterflies darted around wildflowers. Nature was repossessing its land. Locals describe it as post-apocalyptic.
We rode single file through two tunnels – dank, foggy, pitch black stretches, one more than a mile long. Condensation made the interior drippy, in some places like a waterfall. Our headlights shone cones of visibility through the dark droplets of water.
“We’re 400 feet underground,” Schrotenboer said, reminding us that we were under a mountain. We pulled over in an empty asphalt lot and he pointed to some trees.
On the return, we passed a dozen other cyclists, including a family of six driving between York and Pittsburgh. Schrotenboer, who stopped us often for stories, pointed out the spots where parts of movies The Road and Zombie eXs were shot. At one of the tunnel entrances, he unlocked a door and led us to the former control, boiler and ventilation rooms for the tunnel. This surreal steampunk hideaway is accessible only on Schrotenboer’s tour, and I considered that alone worth the price. We walked by a fan the size of a jet engine, covered in bright graffiti, and continued about 45 metres into the gritty plenum, or attic, of the tunnel. Echoes bounced eerily back to the entrance.
After our five-hour, 27-kilometre tour, we were mudsplattered and sweaty. Inconveniently, we had checked out of our motel that morning. I bought a shower pass from the cashier at the Flying J, walked to the basement and keyed in a code at the assigned room.
With that, our Breezewood adventure was over. Driving out of town, I saw Bob Evans, Shell, Best Western and a fluttering Stars and Stripes in my rearview mirror. In less than a kilometre, we were driving through green, rolling hills. I thought about the world we’d made and watched trucks across the median speeding toward a momentary stop in a strange yet utterly American town.