The road continues east, with long, seemingly endless ridges on both sides. Some of the hillside is natural. Other times you see black rock of massive coal piles, rising as high as the natural mountains. The Traveler reaches Shamokin, a cozy little coal town sandwiched between three hills. Like Sunbury, the town has remained compact with trees all around it.

But a model town it is not . The Traveler stops at a real estate agency and at first he thinks he's not reading the numbers right. Houses for sale for 7,000 dollars? 15... 18,000? Clearly people are leaving this town, and no one is moving in to replace them.

Clearly the town has made efforts to spruce itself up. There are multiple monuments to soldiers of different wars... murals... even a little boulevard with benches in the center. But the problems here run deeper than just a paint job: the Traveler reads later that this town is deeply in debt. Recently it ran out of salt for the roads in the winter, and simply couldn't acquire any more because of its bad credit. In 2014 the town entered "Act 47" status, a state program to help distressed towns dig their way out of a financial hole.

What future can a town like this have? Coal mines are gone. To mountainous for farming. To off the beaten track to attract warehouses and industry. It doesn't look like it will be an easy journey in the years ahead.