we went for our annual fall leaf ride today.
drove about 230 miles up state and back. no clouds beautiful sun, warm and the leaves were amazing the farther north we went.

this year tho, i was on a mission. i wanted to see where the obama yard signs were and where the mccain signs were. no surprises. the college town of clarion had 1 obama sign. that was encouraging. IUP had none but not really a lot of mccain signs.


pennsylvania only has 2 really big cities, pittsburgh and philadelphia. the rest is small rural towns, farmland and woods. so , ballpark figures here, 4 obama signs and about 100 mccain signs. odd thing tho around here, places like fox chapel which is big money and usually 90 percent republican has obama signs springing up all over lovely miraculously manicured lawns. aspinwall, where i grew up has ALWAYS been about 98 percent republican, but obama signs out number the mccain signs there and there's an obama headquarters there.



now, on to the weird stuff i saw:


there was a huge professionally done billboard up around one of the state game land areas ,for a funeral home and in BIG letter across the bottom, "WHEN QUALITY COUNTS."


there are hundreds of small and not so small hunting camps thru the state forests and game lands. some of them are little more than 2 rooms. some are homes that i'd dearly love to live in year round.

well, there was this teeny little cabin and beside it, parallel to the road was an old, old school bus painted a faded brown camo,which in and of itself would be no big deal, but the bus door was open and the entire insides were painted a bright, clean lavender. the inside of the doors, the steps, everything. there were white blinds in the windows and it just struck me as very odd. i liked the concept.


there is a state forrest named clear creek and it is just achingly beautiful. golden ferns and those big grey rectanglar or square boulders that jut out of the forrest floor and the wide, shallow creek. the water is so clear as we drove by i could see the bottom of it and the smaller sqare rocks that were all over. then there are the state game lands with these teeny towns dotting the breaks in the trees. there are little villages with names like "home" and "desire" i liked those names.

we were on places like "jack boot" hill and i could see nothing but multicolored trees for a good 10 to 20 miles because there was no haze of clouds or fog today.


all in all it was really relaxing,even with the lack of support for obama.i wasn't too surprised, THEN i saw something in one of those little to midsized places where they had fast food places and a few stores, that just knotted my stomach.


right there parked on the main drag was an older model pickup truck. it was jacked up with the big tires and painted the flat black that a lot of the popular "rat rods" are painted.


it had a big metal or wooden sign where the front licence plate would be, black with yellow lettering and it read,

" SAMBO "

there was only 1 way i could take that. i could be wrong but i doubt it.




oh, i did see 1 pickup truck with a united mine workes for obama sticker!