US 6: Trip 5: Day 10 (Meadville, Cambridge Springs, East Cleveland)

I started in Warren this morning, leaving early enough to catch the ice on my windows. The benefit of renting a car in the Mid-Atlantic is that they come with ice scrapers. But it just makes you thankful for living where you do.

I spent about two hours in a coffee shop in Downtown Warren, finishing a blog post. These things take a lot of time, with most of it devoted to messing with the HTML to get the pictures to line up correctly. This morning, I have a set time that I need to leave as my host has an appointment, so I'm going to put together some captions below and talk a little about the towns through which I passed.

The day started really clear and nice, but went to a nice, thick layer of clouds that made the dusk very pretty, but then devolved into rain by about 9pm. I went out walking too, and came back wet. It's still raining this morning, so I think today will be mostly driving and not a lot of stopping.

Warren, PA

Warren, PA historic district

US 6 takes a detour here to reach the newer bypass. The original route continues straight.

This is the current end of the original routing west of Warren. The road turns is a public street, but is mostly used by a company to move palettes around.

West of Warren a few miles is another original US 6 section. This one dead-ends almost immediately into private property (you can see their redneck pool on the right), but you can clearly see where the road once went.
This is accessed via Scott Run Road. Mapquest shows it continuing on quite a ways. It may have been closed and turned over to private ownership.

Another old section of US 6 west of Youngsville. It's likely that most of these houses were not there when the route was bypassed, and only came in once it became more of a neighborhood street.

This isn't the Allegheny, but a tributary of it. I thought it was crazy how close the road got.

Just east of Corry, telling trucks to slow down for an "S" curve.

Downtown Corry. The town was supposed to be "Cory" but the post office misspelled it when the application was put in.

Corry is most well-known for inventing the "climax locomotive"

Abandoned Corry Memorial Hospital. I'll have to research this more, but I saw a billboard for the hospital just a few miles down the road, so it may have just moved to a newer facility.

Smith Street in Corry is where US 6 took a bit of a jog to get closer to town. Now, it bypasses the town and eliminates those turns.

Between Corry and Union City

Union City

West of Union City

West of Union City (so pretty)

US 6/US 6N split. US 6N continues directly west to meet up with Interstate 90. This is a much, much more direct way to Cleveland than the way I took.

Suddenly you're on this "Washington Trail," which is likely a US 19 designation, as you're on US 6 west and US 19 south here.

Cambridge Springs

I stopped for lunch in Cambridge Springs, deciding on a small pizza place. I got a meatball sub and watched segments of Fox News, which always troubles me a bit. There always seems to be one black person, one terrible-looking woman, and one older white man moderating the yelling. The store also had a police scanner on, periodically broadcasting random locations.

Meadville is a larger, former industrial town. Though it's still very much a blue-collar city, Allegheny College, a private liberal arts school and the second-oldest college west of the Allegheny Mountains, is a sizeble employer. Though there are only 1,500 students at the college, it felt larger as I walked around, though it may have been the nicer, warmer day that brought everyone out. There are a number of older buildings mixed with mid-century buildings and a spattering of newer buildings. There's a beautiful old church and a park-like atmosphere on much of the campus. I'll post pictures in a couple of days.
I had a bit too much time in Meadville, as I wanted to go to a brewery there, but they did not open until 3pm, so I had to kill a few hours. I drove out to Conneaut Lake Park first, which is a very old amusement along the shores of the lake just west of Meadville. Since it's a ways off of US 6, I thought I would get that out of the way so that I could just drive on after the brewery.

North of Meadville

US 6/I-79 interchange

West of Meadville, the road drops to reach Conneaut Lake

Just west of Downtown Meadville, at the Penn Dot (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) office is this mural/sculpture garden, made from old highway signs. It's one of the more well-known attractions in Meadville and, after spending time in the city, speaks to its eclectic nature.

Meadville was a really strange city with quite a few characters living there. I needed cash, so went looking for one of my network ATMs. One of two in town was addressed "Water Street" with no further details. Water Street wasn't really that long, and the business area along it was even shorter in length, so I parked there and walked down it to see if I could find where this ATM was. After reaching the end of the occupied businesses strip, I figured there was one place left: the Downtown Mall. Downtown Mall in Meadville is anchored by Big Lots and Dollar General. Inside are a couple of small restaurants, a nails place, a tax place and what appeared to be some small offices. It's an indoor, L-shaped mall, and it was fairly busy with people sitting in the halls chatting with one another, or going in and out of the stores. It serves as both the public transit hub and the Greyhound station, so that may partially explain the activity.

Cash in hand, I went to a little local bakery, Creative Crust. The girl there was either apprehensive or awkward, but they had some nice looking items, and I ended up with a coconut custard, which was pretty delicious and gave me something in my stomach to prepare for beer.

Just as I was about to leave, a guy came in and began talking to the girl there, telling her some wild story about drug use. I was only partially listening. Once she was done with him, he came over to me, and told me about life in Austin in the 70's as the maintenance man for a presbyterian seminary. The story was pretty out there, but he was a genuinely nice guy; not just some nut spouting off unbelievable bullshit and filling the room with apprehension.
The brewery was awesome in that their beer was very, very good, the atmosphere was cool, and they had an excellent menu. I found out that Creative Crust, the local bakery a block away, provides the bread here. I didn't get any food though, because I had decided to limit my budget to just beer for this stop, then get food in Cleveland (which I did, at Melt, my must-stop there). I chatted with a guy about the beer, then another older couple about Florida and tried to get some area info. I guess there was a fire at Conneaut Lake this past summer, and they weren't sure of the status of the park, as to whether or not it would open. I'll post pictures of Conneaut Lake Park soon, but it definitely had that sort of Scooby Doo amusement park vibe to it.

West of Meadville and Conneaut Lake, US 6 takes an unbelievable jog around the region. There's a road that can be used as a cut-off, State Highway 285, but I stayed on US 6 for the sake of continuity.