Gentlesness corrects whatever is offensive in our manner.

 

This is the finest item I've ever purchased for $3.77. This book contains over 1,300 proverbs and I am already ten times wiser after having skimmed this. It is very hard to resist listing 100 of my top favorites, but I'm going to try to have a 'proverb of the day' on facebook (I know.) to curb this.

So, the beginning of this blog entry is what journalists call burying the lead. That is, I have entirely failed to discuss what is to be the highlight--actually, topic--of this blog entry. One day roadtrip to Scranton, Pennsylvania. There. Second paragraph. Not so buried.

Adam wanted to plan a manageable trip over one of our rare 'free' weekends. After he attempted to plan this without my input, I informed him that I had neglected to put two important events on our google calendar for both Friday and Sunday. Rather than cancel the plan, we just decided to condense it to Saturday.

Why Scranton? Because we're fans of The Office? No. Because it met the following criteria: a) Within 5 hours b) has funny local sites to go to. Okay, so we had countless options if that were our only criteria so I guess it's because we are aware of the town's existence due to The Office....And we didn't want to go to New York.

These pictures came after I missed the sign for "Welcome to Pennsylvania". Scenic, yes?





We left Massachusetts at dawn with snacks, audio books and giggles in tow. First stop (aside from the potty at McDonalds) was the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour. The tour entailed going in a big cart into an actual (non-functioning) coal mine and walking around underneath the ground through some of the 'veins' of the mine. The coal mine opened in 1860 and stopped operation in November 1966 because other sources of energy were much more easily harnessed. Our tour guide, Tony, was very knowledgeable and I think not-so-secretly angry at The Man. He made it a point to stick it to the Federal government for secretly being responsible for pollution, coal miners deaths, child labor, and creating the lazy youth of America that we have today.

 

 

Oh...As a side note, and by that I mean as the highlight: I bought the proverb book and Adam got a sick T-shirt in the gift shop.

Our next attempted stop was at the Houdini Museum...I dare you to go to the website--It will help you understand how insane this place is SLASH why we weren't surprised that the door was locked and had a hand-written note about needing a reservation. Fail. But, a predicted fail.

We had a back-up site because we knew the Houdini Museum was either non-existent or was not going to work out as planned. We went to the Everhart Museum which had natural history (dinos), art (folk, contemporary and local) and STUFFED BIRDS OF EVERY VARIETY.

 

 

Last, and finally not least, we chose a nice restaurant in Moosic, PA that got 4-5 stars across the board on yelp.com: AV. There was no menu online, but the reviews raved of the food and the prices. The other main point that the reviews made was that the outside is a shit hole and to not be discouraged. When we arrived, we noticed that the outside was a shit hole. To be fair that picture isn't the worst ever, but the building looked like a one-story warehouse with a sign that looked like it should belong to a condemned discotech.

The food and price were perfect. We got the bruschetta with olive tapenade, parmesan and tomatoes, the spinach salad with bosc pears and walnuts; I got the roasted chicken with veal and sage stuffing and lyonnaise potatoes and Adam go the pork chop with chive butter and frites. Boom goes the dynamite.

After, we went back to our $77 hotwire.com hotel and rested up for our return-trip at dawn.