We met David Martinez in the Endless Mountains in Northern Pennsylvania.

"Just traveling through," David said. Just traveling through on his way to Philly, where he hoped to land a job. Just traveling through on his 1959 bicycle with his two big American flags waiving in the wind as he rode.

With the flags waving on his bike, David Martinez heads towards Philadelphia, PA from Cleveland, OH in search of work. David logs about 70 miles a day on his bike. He survives on odd jobs and loose change he finds on the roadside.

"Where are you coming from," I asked.

"I was in Cleveland, but there was no work there," he said. Before that, David was in Florida on his latest Odyssey. He bikes from city to city as easily as the rest of us hop in a taxi.

In the past two decades, David's been up and down the East Coast, peddling from town to town, sleeping on the bedroll now tucked between the flags on the rear of this bike. He works when he must and rides when he can.

"I work here and there. I find a dime or a quarter on the street. I make it last," he said.

David's blue eyes and weathered face are a portrait of earnestness and integrity. Even his ponytail looks appropriate, although he'll turn 55 in September.

Decades ago, David left Philadelphia for a job in Cleveland. He returned 10 years later and couldn't find his friends or relatives.

"They were all just gone. I don't know what happened," he said.

He's been riding every since. On his way north from Florida this winter he met some men from Philly who offered him landscaping work if Cleveland didn't pan out. Now he's returning to the city he left so long ago in search of a job and in search of family.

Good luck to you David. I hope you find what you're looking for.


GHOST STORY

George, the ghost who likes women, lives behind a heavy black iron door in the old county jail in Wellsboro, PA.

Yes, this is a ghost story, but the ladies who work on the other side of that big black door swear George is real. They've heard him walking around at night. They've heard him making strange noises. Once, he even asked a visitor what she was doing there.

Gas lamps light up downtown Wellsboro, PA which is one of the last places in the United States that still use these original gas lamps.

The strange thing is that George haunts only women. He never does his spooky deeds when men are around.

"We think that's because the three men who were hung here, were hung for crimes against women," said Ruth Ann Shumway, who works the other side of the door, which is now the Tioga County Visitors Bureau.

The bureau's other women, Sandi Spencer and Lori Copp, said the unsettling noises are as close as they ever want to get to George. But Ruth Ann finds him fascinating.

"The others are afraid, but I'd love to meet him and have a conversation," Ruth Ann said. She said no one knows exactly who George is, but they had to give the ghost a name and George seemed as good as any.

Perhaps George is just a fanciful tale created to explain strange noises in a former jail. But I've been in the back room by myself, looking at the four cells, the metal ceiling, the iron stairway to the second floor and listening to the strange chirping of a cricket. I wouldn't want to spend a night there alone.
The only thing worse, would be finding out that I wasn't alone.


GRAND CANYON

If you're traveling through the Endless Mountains in Northern Pennsylvania, do yourself a favor and spend some time at Pine Creek Gorge.

Pine Creek Gorge also called the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon from an outlook area on the east ridge. Visitors can travel along the river trail by bike, horse wagon or just walking. The other option is to float down the river by raft or canoe.

The travel brochures call it the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, but don't expect a smaller version of that other canyon out west. Pine Creek deserves it's own spotlight, not the reflected glory of a far-away spectacle that, frankly, is incomparable.

The beauty of Pine Creek is that it's so accessible. You can drive to the East Rim, then check out the West Rim and be back in nearby Wellsboro for lunch.
Of course, you wouldn't really want to do that because the gorge deserves more time.

You can stand eye-to-eye with the hawks as they soar 800 feet above the creek. You can hear the muffled roar of Pine Creek in the distance.

Nicknamed "The Little Red Church" this United Methodist church was built in 1897. The original minister Elder George Washington Doane encouraged the congregation to build a replica of an Old Dutch church which he greatly admired. Being that bricks were expensive, the congregation decided to dado cut basswood siding to replicate real brick instead. The church is located near Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, Pa.

"Just look at the mountains, the trees, the birds flying. I didn't think it was going to be this pretty," said Ken Siford who drove from Cleveland with his wife Lanette, see the gorge. "It was well worth the trip," he added.

Lanette said she lived in Pennsylvania for years, but never knew the gorge existed. "I certainly didn't expect it to be this beautiful," she said.

And they only saw if from the top. Many visitors take a covered wagon ride along a trail that hugs the river at the base of the canyon.

If you're more adventurous you can cover the trail on horseback or bicycle. You can even rent a raft or kayak for a trip down the creek.

Chuck Dillon of Pine Creek Outfitters said he has up to 400 customers a day on weekends when the water's running high in April or May.

Travis, our photographer, took a bike ride through the canyon. He saw deer, kayakers and a bald eagle. Hmmm. I wonder if kayakers count as wild life.

If you visit the gorge when the leaves are changing, don't come without reservations. Up to 8,000 people visit the gorge in October and lodgings are booked solid.



THE QUIET LIFE

When I started this adventure, I wondered whether Americans had changed over the decades - or whether the media just makes us seem different.

I think I'm beginning to get the picture. Maybe we haven't changed, but our world has changed.

As I walk through the small towns that dot these Pennsylvania Hills, it's like walking back in time. Forget your cell phones, they rarely work here. Forget your laptop, it's hard to find internet access.

Locals will tell you things have changed little over the years, and to an outsider many of towns look a 1950's photograph. The communities are too small to attract the kind of development that has transformed much of the East Coast.
Potter County had 19,000 residents a century ago. Now it has 17,000.
And people like it that way.

"I spent 16 years scrimping and saving to get out of here," said Teri Batterson, who lives in the village of Galeton. "Then I spent the next 16 years scrimping and saving to get back."

Teri lived in Denver, in Athens, Greece and in Virginia Beach, but she missed the hometown feel of Galeton, where everyone knows your name.

"In Virginia, I was shopping in he same supermarket for four years and I realized no one ever called me by name. No one ever said, "Hey Teri, what's shakin'," Teri said.

It's that way all through the northern counties.

"It's quiet here," said John Arzberger as stood outside his home in Mainesburg, which is just big enough to have a general store.

Just a few yards away, his daughter and a friend were playing in a stream that runs under Route 6. Twenty years ago, John swam in the same spot.

"It's a lot better now that the town built a sewer plant. It really cleaned up the water," John said.

John works in construction for one of he town's two big employers. Business isn't as good as it was a few years ago, he said. But he plans to stay in Mainesburg.

In Troy, an innkeeper says it's difficult to keep the young people here because there's little work for them.

Even the farms are having a tough time, he said.

More tourists would mean more business, but he has mixed feelings: too many tourists could change the town he loves.

He likes the small town atmosphere where a little league game is a big deal and three or four cars at a light is a traffic jam.

And that brings us back to where America is today. Something's gained from a modern world with so many choices - but something's lost, too.

As I walked through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, only one person offered me a ride. In two days of the Pennsylvania hills, I had four offers.

It must be nice to live in a place where people will do that - and even nicer to be in a place where they feel safe enough to do it.


FARM COUNTRY

This is farm country. Above Wyalusing, a hill rises above green fields. At the foot of the hill the gray Susquehanna River makes a long, lazy turn south. In the distance, haze covered hills stretch 10 or 20 miles into the horizon.
Farther west - fields of dark and light green stretch beneath Sylvania Mountain unmolested by electric wires. In the moments when there are no cars, you can hear your footsteps or perhaps a distant hum of a tractor. You can use the guardrail as a bench and sit for a spell with the cool breeze washing over you.

Panoramic view at an outlook area off route 6 of the Susquehanna River near Wyalusing, PA. The Susquehanna River starts from Otsego Lake near Cooperstown, NY and flows down into the Chesapeake Bay, MD.

Below, there are 20 horses in a field next to a barn with two white silos. Two of them are necking like lovesick teens. Others stand at attention, like a bull ready to charge, as a stranger walks by. One horse rolls in the grass and another scratches his back on a post.

But most of the horses are content to search for morsels among the young spring grass. It's a nice life.

On a gray drizzly Wednesday morning west of Ansonia, clouds settled in the dales and valleys covering them with a fluffy cotton blanket. Unfortunately, I was outside the blanket, shivering in the rain.

We crossed over into western Pennsylvania as we hit Galeton Wednesday. They tell us we'll hit the really big hills are ahead. Oh joy.

(Copyright: Route 6 Walk)