Continuing our final transcontinental trek in an RV, we pushed on through New York state and into Pennsylvania. As usual, we indulged in some hiking and checking out Mother Nature. And we worked in a reconnaissance mission on behalf of our son.

After beginning the day with laundry in Olean, NY (one of the towns we performed in during our first year of touring the East Coast way back in ’92), we crossed the border into the Keystone State and hit the Allegheny River Trail.

This hiking and biking trail, spanning 32 miles, has some interesting flora and fauna, as well as some interesting historical relics of the oil boom that began here some 150 years ago. The trail passes the old Quaker State Refinery, and takes you near the remnants of a few defunct oil wells, including one that was owned in part by John Wilkes Booth.

At the end of the day we landed in Erie, which was another town we performed in on that first tour. Our first memory of Erie was doing some shows at a school, then we had to leave to get to another gig on the next day. But before we left we stopped to do some shopping. When we came back outside, a blizzard was descending on us, and we hightailed it out of town just in time. This time there was no snow swirling from the sky, but there was smoke, descending on the U.S. From Canada. Fortunately, it was farther away from us than the snow had been.

5 Wits

It was in Erie that we did a little favor for our son. He had been in diapers traveling in an RV the first time he saw Erie, but now he drives there occasionally from Providence on business. He’s an executive with 5 Wits, a company founded in Boston in 2004 that now has outlets in several states – and he supervises them all, having worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder to pretty much the top.

It’s difficult to describe 5 Wits precisely, though you might say it’s somewhat similar to an escape room (just don’t let our son hear you say that). It’s an interactive adventure, what we like to describe as the experience of being inside a video game rather than playing one on a computer. There are a number of different themed adventures, including an espionage theme, a space theme, a medieval theme, a 20,000 Leagues theme, and an Egyptian tomb theme. Each of these “rooms” actually consists of several rooms filled with puzzles and challenges of various kinds. The team of participants have an hour to solve them and complete their mission or else there are dire consequences like the world exploding or something.

We’ve toured all of these rooms at one time or another, in various cities and states – beginning with the former Foxboro, MA site where Zephyr got his start. They’re all great fun, and we keep going back whenever we can to try to improve our scores.

On this occasion, Zephyr wanted us to take a tour of the Erie facility and do some surreptitious quality control – i.e., spying. He arranged passes for us, and we went and had another great fantasy excursion. And we’re happy to report that the staff (who of course did not know who we were) were courteous, efficient, and professional, and we witnessed no glitches or problems at all. At the end, one young lady invited us to return another time at a discount. We thanked her, but we really don’t need a discount, as we’re on pretty good terms with the boss.

Presque Isle State Park

Also in Erie, we dropped in at Presque Isle State Park, on the edge of Lake Erie. The best place to get an overview (literally, as there’s a 75-foot observation tower) was the Tom Ridge Environmental Center, a state-of-the-art visitors’ complex with some really cool exhibits and activities. Not bad for a building named after a politician.

But we realized that exploring the park and doing it justice would require returning another day, and writing about it in another blog post. Which we would do on the next day and will do in the next blog entry. So stay tuned.

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