For the York to Gettysburg leg of the journey, I take a shortcut and jump off the York bypass at the Gettysburg exit and head west. For most of my PA journey, all the way out to Pittsburgh, I will actually be following Rt 30 which was built from 1953-1960 as a bypass to both the Lincoln Highway and the William Penn Highway ( US Route 22). But while the starting point of the Lincoln Highway is in Trenton, NJ, Rt 30 actually starts in West Virginia. But for my purposes today they are one and the same.
Typical of my travels, I am already hungry for lunch. So I stop in Lee’s diner. My son and I stop in about 1:30pm on a Thursday, and there are not many other customers around. Joyce serves up a delicious meal, giant omelet for my son and a great tasting bacon provolone hamburger with cup of soup for me. Joyce has been at Lee’s for about 18 years and although business has been decent, it has been increasingly fierce with all the nearby competition. Which is too bad. Lee’s is clean, has great character and heritage and great food.
I am pretty sure McDonalds does not list the previous 8 owners right on the menu, starting with the founders Elmer and Grace Paxton back in 1951. Somewhere in there they used to be open all night, but those days are long gone. All this diner talk reminds me of one of my favorite novels—Nickel Mountain, by John Gardner. Highly recommended.
And who needs an I-pod when you have one of these sitting on the table. The one on our table was turned to Al Martino. Who is Al Martino? I didn’t know either until I heard Volare and thought he might have appeared one of the Godfather films, which I googled and later confirmed he had been the wedding singer in the first film.
On to Abbotstown
Crossing over into Adams County, we enter the first roundabout we have encountered on our westward journey (though I think the correct American term is traffic circle). The Altland House dominates the far side of the square, which is a good place to eat (my favorite is their Underside) and has some great history. But for this trip I was thinking more of my friend and co-worker Bob Kliner who loves those German restaurants. So we had to stop by Hofbrauhaus Restaurant and Pub for a quick look, thinking about that big plate of Zigeunerschinitzel.
After that we zipped out of town passing through the “cheap side,” and on our way toward New Oxford.
New Oxford
Just ten miles from the historic Gettysburg National Battlefield, New Oxford is a pretty little round-about way station of a town with some good antiquing and a couple of great small restaurants and coffee shops. New Oxford sits on the tracks of the old Philadelphia-Baltimore-Central Railroad, a booming enterprise in the late 1800’s, and is also located on the Naticoke Trail, which was used by native tribes to travel between the Pocanos and Chesapeake Bay. For now, it is just a great little town to take a break.
Lincoln Highway Travels 