I vacationed at Pennsylvania's quintessential rest stop. It’s more inviting than it looks
I expected to live my entire life without price-shopping for truck-stop showers. Then I spent the night in Breezewood.
The adventure began last August when my main squeeze James and I drove to Colorado. We passed through Breezewood, Pennsylvania, as do many drivers heading to the Rust Belt and beyond.
"What do you think about vacationing here for a week," James asked. I laughed loudly and dismissed the idea.
If you've been there, you understand why. Breezewood has been a travel hub for centuries. It was a stagecoach stop in the late 1700s and then became a stop on the Lincoln Highway, America's first cross-country road. The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, and thousands of World War II veterans exited at Breezewood, stopping at what now is the Gateway Travel Plaza to trade their unit patches for meals. Today, Motorists driving between I-70 and the turnpike are forced off the highway and onto a congested half-mile stretch of expensive gas s...
