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Scranton, Pennsylvania
Hotel room in Houston with the shades against the sunshine, or maybe still in Scranton like it's 1999
In the entirety of my life, I have been to Scranton, Pennsylvania many, many times, almost always because of family- both of my parents have roots there. However, if you were to look only at the last ten years or so, the number of visits has precipitously dropped to, I don’t know, maybe once, maybe twice. I doubled (or matched) that this year with two separate trips to Scranton, both for different reasons and neither family related.
In all those many, many times I have been there, it was rarely to see anything interesting (sorry, relatives). In fact, this past Summer brought me and my father to Steamtown for only the second time. Steamtown is the big downtown attraction, a US National Historic Park and it’s actually quite impressive. It is on the site of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad’s yards and includes all of the restored trains and exhibits all about trains that you could ever want to see.
In addition to Steamtown (which is free) there is another ticketed rail related museum on the far side of the parking lot. The Electric City Trolley Museum doesn’t have all that much inside (compared to almost too much to see at Steamtown), but it does offer regular tours on a historic trolley on the old Laurel Line, a long abandoned route between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. The ride is actually quite nice- it goes past an old mine, by a waterfall, along a brook, through lots of forests and through an (almost) mile long tunnel.
Meanwhile the museum might not have all that much inside, but it does have this. An old relocated television prop from John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” one of the few tv shows that I actually watch (I need to watch more tv). Like most props made for tv, it looks better from a distance, close up its hard to ignore the edges and the bad cutting job around John Oliver’s head.
If the leaves look a little off season for a summer visit, that’s because it’s now Fall and we’re back in Scranton. When we went to Steamtown in the Summer, I learned about Fall rail excursions between Scranton and the Delaware Water Gap and, as Fall approached, booked tickets for my father and me. It’s about an hour drive between the two, but the rail excursion was scheduled for like six or seven hours as it slowly made its way across the Poconos. A few days before the trip, a park ranger called and told me that due to some expected track work, the trip was going to take closer to ten hours. Then, the next day, he called and told me that the trip was cancelled. So much for that slow ride through the Poconos. Maybe next year.
Of course, by then I had already booked a non refundable hotel so damn it, we were headed back to Scranton. But instead of riding on a historic train for (possibly) ever, we went to Nay Aug Park and the interesting enough Everhart Museum, where we were (literally) the only people inside on a Saturday afternoon. Outside in the park, on the trails past the abandoned mine, past the abandoned zoo and past the (relatively) new treehouse, a few people wandered about admiring the trees and leaves and holding on to Fall for every moment they could.
Since we booked a non refundable hotel anyway, we were at least in luck to find ourselves at the home opener for the local minor league hockey team. The Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins are named because they are an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Penguins, which makes sense since there are literally no penguins anywhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania. And that includes the Penguins’ mascot Tux (pictured below) who looks nothing like a penguin and more like a generic bird with furry skin, opposable thumbs, bulging lidless eyeballs and a person hiding inside.
The arena is nothing special, but still pretty good for a minor league hockey arena. And they do serve local Old Forge pizza, which isn’t really pizza but still surprisingly good. The game was ok too, although the home team lost 4-3 to the visiting Utica Comets, because, apparently, Utica, New York is infested with comets.
Just like Paris, London, New York and Hong Kong, the best seafood restaurant (and arguably the best overall restaurant) in town has a giant lighthouse and octopus outside. This is Coopers and the giant lighthouse and octopus are actually a new addition, they are covering over the old entrance which was a pirate ship, which is still kind of visible inside.
We’re finally out of Scranton and have made it as far as Binghamton, New York, a miserable hour (or so) drive north of Scranton on I-81. Binghamton feels a lot like Scranton but somehow with less going on, a claim which, on its face, almost sounds impossible. Luckily Binghamton does have a quite nice minor league stadium to watch their baseball team, the Rumble Ponies, a double A affiliate of your New York Mets. So in a way, I guess the road to Queens really does run through Rumbletown, even though the actual route (I-81 South to I-380 South to I-80 East to I-95 North to I-678 South) feels a bit convoluted at best.
As for the name, it was chosen from a fan contest and is supposed to pay tribute to Binghamton’s one time carousel production industry. And it’s not the best name, but it was the best name in the contest. Actual runner up names included the Binghamton Bullheads, the Binghamton Gobblers, the Binghamton Stud Muffins and the Binghamton Timber Jockeys.
The road to Queens might not (really) go through Binghamton, but the road to Niagara Falls does, albeit in the other direction.
After pictures this page from Summer, then Fall, then Summer, we’re going back in time to early Spring and a few pictures from one of the wonders of the world, although for some reason it never seems to actually make any of those top seven lists, although it did make Charles Dickens’ top three list, along with Five Points and Eastern State. Niagara Falls in early April doesn’t have all that much to do- the boats are all still frozen in and there are still chunks of ice to be seen, but it does still have all those falls to see which, in all honesty, is the real reason you came that far to begin with.
We’re now headed to a rather toasty Washington, DC for some quick pictures from the summer 2019 installation at the National Building Museum. It’s actually pretty good this year. Called “Lawn” it’s, well, a (great big fake) lawn by David Rockwell.
What’s really interesting about the Lawn (or possibly just Lawn with no “the” attached) isn’t its hammocks or its lawn chairs or its annoying kids but instead the way that the space consumes the atrium. It starts with a steep slopes roll down hill that leads to a large flat section with an above ground pool structure hiding a mirrored enclosure around the building’s fountain. There’s also a lookout right next to it that brings you almost too close to the giant Corinthian column capitals. A really interesting way to experience the space, even though the visible movement of all that scaffolding structure underneath isn’t especially comforting.
