Your surprise is of an entirely different nature. You're very familiar with the area, you know the Waffle House wasn't there all that long ago. "PopAlongKid"'s surprise arises from a total lack of familiarity. He looked at a map and thought to himself that Pennsylvania doesn't "fit the profile" of a Waffle House area.
I am somewhat familiar with Ohio; I have relatives living there, one of my parents is from there, and I have driven across Ohio border to border several times already this century, and I grew up just one state over from Ohio. My surprise was not from lack of familiarity, it was because Waffle House is clearly based in the Southeast, not the Great Lakes and upper Appalachia region.
Sorry, not buying it. If you were genuinely surprised solely by the geographical diversity, you would have also mentioned Texas or Arizona or Colorado. But you didn't.