Rte. 6

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Bill Seward

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A couple weeks ago Kathy & I took a quick overnighter out Rte. 6 to Towanda PA. Towanda is about 50 miles East of Wellsboro. It's a cool town and well worth checking out. We're planning on going back next summer, for a week. There's lots of good roads and sights to see in the area. It's an easy ride from where we live, and 6 is a great riding road...

Maybe we can get a few of us together for a few days next summer, and head out there.
 
Someplace not too-far away that I found to be of-interest is Eckley Miner's Village, south of Pennsylvania I-80 and east of I-81. http://eckleyminersvillage.com/history/

It's in the general vicinity of Scranton/Wilkes Barre PA, south of Wilkes Barre, and not far from US Route 6. http://eckleyminersvillage.com/location/

Years ago, I toured Eckley with my uncle who was a civil engineer and a WW II veteran. Eckley is anthracite coal country, and the stories about the hard life of a miner happened here, for one place. There's a trip into a mine you can take, and a preserved village of plain buildings where the 'company life' of a miner was lived. If you like history, it's very interesting. Don't go on the mine trip if you're claustrophobic. Update: I looked for more information on the mine tour, and I'm not sure it is in operation now. I found one close-by: http://no9minemuseum.wixsite.com/museum

After Sean Connery had played a few of the James Bond movies, which made him arguably one of the most-recognized movie stars in the world, he decided to go 'against the grain,' and made a movie about the life of a PA coal miner in the late 1800's. It was "The Molly Maguires," and was named after a group of actual miners who today would probably be referred to as domestic terrorists because of the actions they took against the coal mining company that they worked for. Richard Harris plays the Pinkerton Detective Agency spy who infiltrates the Molly Maguires, and helps to put them in jail, and after that it's a trip to...well, watch the movie. It's a very sobering movie, and the start sets the tone for the movie, when it shows the children being used to cull small pieces of slate out of the coal chute conveyor, passing below them. Alongside the children are the 'broken' miners, who have suffered injuries or sicknesses which prevent them from working in the mines. Now they are working next-to the children, doing what they can to survive, until they die.

The movie was filmed in Eckley.

There are lots of topographical changes in that part of PA, fun on a bike.
 
That's very interesting fire medic, I'll have to find that movie. I grew up in Odessa, NY. Small town outside of Watkins Glen. Pretty much the epicenter of Watkins, Ithaca, and Elmira. Route 6 was a road to let out allot of aggravation on a bike. I had a naked 78 goldwing I'd run 90 to 100 mph, grinding the floor boards, between the towns. Very fun road. 70a going from bath to Hornell is a fun road as all, very scenic, but short.

54a from branchport, to Hammondsport is very scenic as well, and twisty, speed limit is only 35, cagers slow you down. Any riding around the finger lakes, and northern pa is scenic, and fun. But short riding season if your a fair weather rider.
 
Rte 6 is one of my favorite PA roads, last time I rode it was on my way to Kinzua Bridge.
 
rebaltaz83, I agree the Finger Lakes are a wonderful place to spend time on a bike. I grew up north of there, by Lake Ontario. In the winter, when all the trees were bare, from the hill we lived on, you could see all the way to Lake Ontario, and the ice formed on it. The vantage point was so-good, that during WW II there was an aerial observation tower a few house lots from us. Neighbors would take turns staffing it. There was a phone line that had a direct link to a Niagara Falls USAAF airfield to report sightings. Our town had a munitions plant in it, a prime target for Tojo's or Goering's flyboys. There was a chart inside of the Axis planes' silhouettes, for ID, and one of the Allies' aviation stock, for reference. The tower's long-gone, of course, replaced by a home that has probably seen four generations of schoolchildren walking across the street to the local secondary school complex, which incidentally, was often covered in knee-deep snow, several months of the year, and was uphill, both coming, and going.

As an adolescent, my father took me to Watkins Glen for the Formula 1 Grand Prix, where I saw the likes of Jim Clark and Graham Hill win. I also saw John Surtees, the only person ever to win both the world championship roadracing on motorcycles, and the Formula 1 world championship for drivers. Bruce Mclaren was also racing F1 at the time. Honda was campaigning a V-12, and BRM had two flat-8 cylinder engines, one on-top of the other, forming an H-16. Those engines made unique sounds unlike anything else. Another popular engine of the time was a DOHC 4 cylinder Coventry-Climax, which was developed from a London Fire Brigade stationary powerplant used in firefighting.

Yes, lots of great roads to ride on the Southern Tier of western NY. People unfamiliar with the terrain of NY think that it's all like Manhattan. They need to take a ride through the rural parts, like the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and of course, the Southern Tier.
 
6 is great. Watch out around Smethport. They take the speed limit seriously

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
There are some great roads near Smethport. One of my favorites is Taking 46 south of Smethport down to the 120. The 120 is really nice to ride also. I like to ride it down to Hyner PA where they do some hand gliding over the valley and do the run from there north up to Coudersport on the 44. So many good roads running through that area. Once you get off of the mains like 6 you will discover some amazing sites and riding roads.
 

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