The day begins with so much promise.

It is not raining. We can only hope this will be the first time in eight days we won’t be riding in the rain.

It’s dark and overcast in New Paltz, New York, as we pull out of the Super 8 parking lot at 8:15 am. Our spirits are lifted by the absence of precipitation. We cross our fingers that we have a dry day ahead of us: dry roads, dry skies. Seven hours in the saddle are staring us in the face. Tonight, when Sarah tells me how nice it was in La Quinta today and asks me how my weather was, I want to tell her, without stretching the truth, that we had a good day.

***

We think about dropping by the swanky Mohonk Mountain House for a look-see after breakfast. It’s a few miles from New Paltz. But they charge $35 a person just to get inside the gate and look around, so we decide to keep on riding. Yes, we’re cheap.

Notable guests at the Mohonk Mountain House over the years include:

• John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company, whose (inflation-adjusted) wealth today would be worth several hundred billion dollars
• Steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who, like Rockefeller, was one of the most important philanthropists of his time
• Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Rutherford B. Hayes — among others
• Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, a Talmud scholar and official Jewish representative to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s commission on peace.

This place reeks of power, wealth and prestige — the antithesis of me and Ray. Click here to learn more about the Mohonk Mountain House.

From here, we pass through the Minnewaska State Park Preserve, a 21,106-acre park on New York’s Shawangunk Ridge. The area has outstanding views of the nearby Catskill Mountains. Or at least it would have outstanding views if only we could see them through the heavy fog.

Less than an hour into our ride, the weather takes an unfortunate turn for the worse. That’s a nice way of saying it begins to rain hard, making our ride unpleasant for the next four hours.

We pull over in Port Jervis, New York, just before crossing into Pennsylvania. We dry out at a convenience store, waiting for the rain to abate. It lets up a bit, but continues to rain steadily. If we wait for the rain to quit, we could be here till Thanksgiving. So we decide to press on, turning toward some beautiful wooded areas near the Poconos.

We ride south and west on US-209, through the Walpack Fish and Wildlife Management Area, and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. We straddle the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border for miles. Soon, we find ourselves in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, in the Poconos region of the state. As you might expect, Stroudsburg was laid out by Col. Jacob Stroud in 1799. His family founded Stroudsburg in the mid-1700s.

Much of the afternoon, we are traveling west and south on US-209 and PA-443, through Brodheadsville, Weissport, New Ringgold, Schuylkill Haven and Pine Grove. We ride through Swatara State Park, opened in 1987 and still largely undeveloped.

We are in Pennsylvania’s coal country, riding through town with names like Port Carbon, Minersville, and Coaldale. We pass mines, mining museums and all sorts of cultural indicators that this was a coal mining center if the US in its day. Today, this area is very depressed, with high unemployment and its better days in the rear-view mirror.

The new coal capital is in Wyoming, which produces more than 440,000 tons of coal a year — nearly eight times as much as Pennsylvania, and three or four times more than West Virginia and Kentucky. Ray and I visited coal communities in those Appalachian states on our 2011 Harley Hillbilly Holiday, passing through coal towns whose better days were also in the past.

Ray is a good source for learning about coal mining; he grew up in an Eastern Kentucky coal camp and had a bachelors degree in mining engineering. If you ask Ray about bituminous coal, be prepared for a thorough explanation.

***

As we approach Hershey, Pennsylvania, the weather gradually clears. The sun even comes out and I switch to my dark glasses; function, not style. It is so balmy — approaching 70 degrees –that I stop and change my clothes to something that is more summer like. When we get off our bikes, I will be wearing a short-sleeve shirt.

We follow our noses toward Hershey, known as Chocolatetown, USA — for reasons you can smell as you ride into town. On March 2, 1962, NBA player Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a game played at Hershey Sports Arena (now called Hersheypark Arena); his effort remains a single-game NBA record, though Turkish player Erman Kunter scored 153 of his team’s 175 points in a 1988 game!

There’s a plaque in Hershey commemorating Chamberlain’s scoring record. Chamberlain, by the way, is also known for his scoring — off the court. He claims to have bedded 20,000 women — though it’s tough to make the arithmetic work. Someone once calculated Chamberlain would need to have sex with 1.37 women per day from age 15 on to do this. Which, of courses, raises the question: How do you schtupp .37 of a woman? Said one of his conquests, Swedish Olympic high jumper Annette Tannander: “I think Wilt hit on everything that moved.”

***

One tourist attraction we couldn’t pass up was Hershey’s Chocolate World, a sweet tribute to all things chocolate. Hershey is popularly referred to as the Sweetest Place on Earth. To sample some Hershey sweetness, click here. Free chocolate tour ride, and free samples! Woo-hoo. If you’re good to me, maybe some kisses are coming your way when I get home in a week or so.

I did find out from our instructor at Hershey University that chocolate begins to melt at 78 degrees F. Pray for cool (but not cold) weather between now and my return to La Quinta next week.

As you might expect, the most famous person to come from Hershey is Milton Snavely Hershey — confectioner, philanthropist and founder of the Hershey Chocolate Company and the “company town” of Hershey. His education ended at fourth grade, so if you want to feel like a sucker for getting an expensive graduate degree(s) and then toiling in obscurity your entire life, take a number and get in line.

After leaving the city of Hershey, we follow the Susquehanna River, which provides more than half the freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay, and drinking water to millions of people in the region. The Susquehanna is 464 miles long, the lengthiest river on the East Coast. That’s only about 4,000 miles shorter than the world’s longest river — the Amazon, which is named after the Seattle based on-line retail bazaar.

As we ride south on PA-441 along the Susquehanna, we pass alongside the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Want to re-live TMI’s disastrous event from March 1979 ? Then click here to read the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s backgrounder on the accident. Spoiler alert: the accident happened when a cooling malfunction caused part of the reactor core to melt. While there were no injuries on site or to local residents, there’s not a happy ending to this accident. Today, the TMI-2 reactor is permanently shut down and defueled. While TMI-1 continues to operate, its license will expire on April 1, 2014 — at which time both plants will be decommissioned.

In an unfortunate coincidence of timing, the Three Mile Island accident happened 12 days after the opening of the film, “The China Syndrome.” The name of the movie describes a fictional worst-case result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the earth … all the way to China. Well, that’s uplifting!

***

We cross the Susquehanna and continue on to York, Pennsylvania, our destination for the day. In the early 1800s, York ranked among the nation’s top 100 most populous urban areas. With a population today of less than 45,000, safe to say York has fallen off that list. But it still has some interesting history. York was home for more than 100 years to the Pfaltzgraff pottery company, and the Peppermint Pattie was created here in 1940. The York Peppermint Pattie is now produced by the Hershey chocolate company.

One way to amass wealth is to start your own chocolate company. Another is to stay at cheap places while on the road. Which, of course, we do tonight, lodging at the York Motel 6 ($49.99 tax).

***

Day Thirteen Summary: Wilt’s incredible scoring record, Milton Hershey’s legacy, The China Syndrome, Peppermint Pattie. Miles ridden today: 255.

For today’s complete route from New Paltz, New York, to York, Pennsylvania, click here.

What will tomorrow bring?