Day 26: November 29, 2020 Congestion Be Gone Comment via blog Check Granny's letters of the day

Breakfast today was at J's Diner. It doesn't look very dinerish but the food and service were great.

Wilson's Bridge was already a century old when Granddad drove the Model T over it. It remained open to traffic until 1972 and was the only bridge here until 1935. One of my fondest memories of my brief "career" in journalism is crossing this bridge while embedded in the National Pike Festival wagon train in 2008. We also stopped at R.H. Wilson's store that day. It is still operating and would be open about two hours after I took this picture.

There are hints that this tollhouse near Hancock, MD, operated into the twentieth century so it's possible that the Robbins had to pay to pass here but there is no mention of it. My guess is they did not.

I didn't do a very good job capturing the hair-pin turn at the top of Sideling Hill on US-40. It is probably the biggest thing engineers sought to avoid when they made the big cut in the north part of the hill that I-68 passes through. I've tried to imagine the Model T hurtling down this slope when the "brakes gave out". Of course, the incident that Granny casually mentions may have occurred on one of the twisty bits lower down and I know Model Ts never actually hurtled. There is a great view from the rest area near the top of the hill, but it's a place where even the guardrails have guardrails.

I doubt one more picture of the LaVale toll house will do any harm even though there is nothing to connect it with the Robbins.

The Casselman River Bridge is even older than Wilson's Bridge (1813 vs. 1819) and Frank would have driven over it, too. Now purely a pedestrian bridge, it was open to vehicles until 1953. The super tall arch was to accommodate C & O Canal boats but it turned out that canal traffic never reached this far west.

This structure a little west of Grantsville looks like it might have been a gas station and looks old enough to imagine that Frank filled up the T here, but I've no reason to believe he did.

I remembered that there was a Mason-Dixon marker near the point that the National Road crosses the MD-PA border but I couldn't remember where. When I went to the internet for help, the most useful hints turned up by a search were in my own 2009 post.

For the first time ever, I drove across the first cast iron bridge in the United States without stopping to attempt to photograph beneath it.

But I couldn't resist stopping for one more photograph of the Madonna of the Trail in Beallsville.

This is where I planned to spend my birthday this year. The last time I was by the Century Inn was in 2017 when a lot of work remained to be done in recovering from the 2015 fire. That construction work has been completed but COVID-19 now stands in the way of a full recovery. When I drove past the back of the building, I encountered someone I took to be owner Megin Harrington. She told me the restaurant is now open a few days each week and overnight lodging is available with some restrictions. Rising from the ashes ain't quick or easy.

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