It's the state being strict, counties themselves aren't involved.

The state requires vehicle owners residing in counties over a certain population threshold to have emissions inspections.

Neither Carbon or Monroe here in the Poconos do either.

To me Blue Mountain serves as a real boundary of sorts. I go through the Lehigh Tunnel from home north of it to work down in Bucks County and the difference really something.

Skunks looking for Japanese beetle grubs?

So that's what future cave archeologists will find regarding our society . . .

No, I wish. There'd be some solitude at least, lol. I think Penn Hills outside East Stroudsburg was one of the last one mostly burned through repeated arsons.

More like redeveloped and updated. It's a 4-county $4 billion a year tourism industry so most of those old-school resorts either burned down or were bulldozed. What replaced them were huge indoor water parks like Kalahari, Great Wolf, Camelback etc. Then there's big casino resorts like Mount Airy. Not sure if it's still planned but we were going to get a Margaritaville resort too. The ski areas have transitioned to four season destinations with glamping, etc.

In any case, being right across the Delaware from NJ and 2 hours to NYC means that we've been swamped since COVID began by WFH move-ins and more vacationers staying close to home. 45% of the housing in my county is owned by out of staters.

It's all so crowded (like every 3rd car has out of state plates) annoying and tacky and EVERYONE ends up here due to I-80 like Bryan Kohberger the Idaho murderer caught in my hometown.

If I could afford it, I'd move to Vermont and keep a low profile fading away into the woods.

I live in the Poconos but really like Vermont as well.

Lifelong Pennsylvanian coming from a similarly touristy resort area that's only 2 hours from NYC I think it might have do with a combo of locals increasingly being priced out of decent housing by out-of-state investors wanting to set up annoying loud party-house airbnbs or their little vacation getaway. It just plain makes life harder to get by for regular folks working service-sextorcjobs.

Then there's the general rudeness of a lot of tourists and recent out-of-state move-ins . The fatigue factor is real dealing with those guys.

I don't think longtime Vermonters are entitled (I always found them to be good people) they're generally nice but perhaps just tired if they feel anything like us here in the Poconos.

Finally, I really don't expect to be treated like royalty when I vacation. I keep in mind that I'm in somebody else's hometown and that I'm the guest. No one owes me anything for that.

Oh, we have our Trump supporters between Philly and Pittsburgh. Trust me living out in that scenic part that we do.

OK, that helps making more sense to me now despite the West End being such a small place.

And yet no one I know who went to PV, NCC, or who live in Indian Mountain Lakes seems to have met or known him. He was like a ghost.

I'm not surprised given his one Reddit post.

Strangely, though he was from my part of Monroe County (township next door to mine in the same school district) and that I know people who went to high school and community college with him plus who lived in the Indian Mountain Lake development with him, yet absolutely no one seems to have known him.

Starting to sound like a creepy, fairly-educated loner.

Hey, that's my local paper.

And it really creeped me out that the Idaho murderer was arrested in the township next door to mine and that he'd been here since Christmas.

In actuality I accidentally omitted them.

And yeah, definitely them too.

It sucks that the dumbass Republicans abused the impeachment process like this.

It also sucks that Krasner keeps being busy 'doing something close to nothing'.

He'll get right on that, lol.

At first the national media was saying "Scranton" and suddenly that changed to Chestnuthill Twp.

Apparently he went to PV H.S. and graduated 2013 I think I heard.

Yeah, I bet.

2 AM this morning or whatever it was must've been interesting.

You really don't want that crap.

We've had that down here in PA for nearly 40 years and I won't eat it.

A halfway decent local pizza shop hands-down represents your better bet.

Seriously.

Our local online paper is now saying he was arrested in the Indian Mountain Lakes development between routes 534 and 115 in Penn Forest/Tunkhannock townships both of which border mine.

Less than 10 miles from where I live.

Yeah, arrested in Albrightsville. Less than 10 miles from me.

I live in Monroe County. Haven't heard anything like that yet.

That would do it.

That would certainly potentially explain it.

That's exactly what I was thinking.