The day is sunnier than I could have imagined, making it hard to keep pressing east when, at every stop, I’m told I should get ready to get wet.

I missed a turn, but took a detour through Wayne National Forest. The road winds and turns, but also slopes back and forth over rapidly changing grades. As much as I’d like to speed through, I contented myself with slowly rocking up one side of a curve and back down another while taking the trees and rolling farmlands in.

I learned, stopping at a historical marker while two men stared at me from the table they shared inside a closed diner (long-closed by the look, that the “chew MAIL POUCH tobacco” ads painted on or fading from most barns here are the work of Harvey Warwick, who joined a painting crew when they did his barn and just kept going. In 1965 the Lady Bird Johnson Highway Beautification Act banned such ads from near the roadway. In 1974 Congress amended the act to allow and preserve unique ads like this. The ad work is done; now they’re just part of the scenery.

I’m stopped for lunch of a milkshake with fries and coffee with an apple fritter in Clarington, OH. The river washes the side of the town — and justifies its central River Museum — but the mountains towering over it make for the most commanding view. The dairy bar obstinately offers only one size of everything “EXCEPT ice cream cones!!!” The rest of the town square is made up of two churches, one mini mart built out of the first floor of a home, and a large Masonic lodge.

My detour took a lot longer than I’d expected, and I underestimated the size of Pennsylvania when guessing my itinerary. After much dithering about where to stop, I decided to stay west of the gathering storm and, hopefully, start tomorrow dry. This state park east of pitt is a bit crowded, but I like that so many are optimistic that it won’t rain here tonight.