The Indiana family visit was its own thing and took longer to write.
It’s in the previous post.
Monday Oct 2 Indy – Dayton – Columbus – Buckeye Lake
Remembering Mark Twain’s oh so true dictum that guests and fish start to smell after three days, I’m getting out Doug’s hair just in the nick of time!
Sweet guy that he is, Doug gave me a CSX Railroad hat and a very cool railroad lantern to take with me. Over the last 30-ish years all the traditional rail companies with evocative names like Monon, Southern, Baltimore and Ohio, … have all, one by one merged into a single behemoth with the un-romantic name of CSX. Doug has worked for CSX for 32 years. His dad and our uncle Temple also worked for the railroad, I think they all worked for Southern Railway before the merger. It was all very convenient, what with the railroad tracks 300 yards away. His day Omer went to work by walking over to the tracks and waiting for the train to come by!
On the road again
I-70 is truck after truck after truck after …….
An interesting phenomenon to me is the proliferation and variety of Christian rock stations out here in the hinterlands. It used to be it would take about three bars for me to recognize that dreck and hit the scan button again. But on the this trip I’ve noticed that the music is a lot more polished. I caught a Christian rock station in Columbus OH today that was much better at the teenage rebellion thing than lame-o’s such as Live 105 back home. I would actually assign it a radio button if I spent time in Columbus!
The coolest song was a catchy little rap number called ‘God is Big’ that was killa! (really!) The strangest thing was a kid talking about tearing her ACL, and then instead of being an ad for Dr Bob’s Sports Medicine Clinic, she went on to say that she went to a party and someone prayed over her leg and it got better.
Tuesday Oct 3 Buckeye Lake – Wheeling – Pittsburgh – Kane, PA
It’s starting to feel like a vacation today!
First more I-70.
Then whizzing through Wheeling WV, which from the road is funky looking 2-3 story clapboard houses with big front porches clustered on the steep hillsides, all with a thick layer of grime. Not an appealing place from the highway.
Then picking my way through the Pittsburgh freeway maze. The main bridge was closed, so I took something called the West End Bridge. This gave a sparkling view of downtown, which is built in the crotch of the Y formed when the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers meet to form the Ohio River. It’s a very pretty city and looked like it would be fun to spent time in.
Now I’m on two lane roads heading to US 6 which runs along the top of Pennsylvania. My AAA map says it’s very scenic.
Since leaving Indy, the leaves have been slowly turning. Since I hit the wilds of western PA, they’ve gone crazy! I guess I’ve forgotten how cool a real eastern USA autumn is compared to the pale yellow western USA autumn. It’s really very pleasant over here. The temp is still wife-beater warm today!
Pulled in for the night at Kane NY.
The Black Cherry Capitol of the World and Home of Chuck Daly!
I’m off the clock and in tourist mode now. No longer in ‘getting somewhere’ mode. I actually stopped well before dark today! I had time to take a little hike in the woods, which rocked my world after all that driving.
Wed 10/4 Kane, PA – Binghamton, NY
Got woke up about dawn by a raging thunderstorm. I’d left the window open and it was cool to listen to the thunder echoing through the hills. I had more good weather luck, as the second line of severe thunderstorms (certified as such by the Weather Channel 🙂 passed through about 9 AM, leaving leaving me a mostly overcast day, but dry roads.
More proof that I’m on vacation now, I visited my first site! A place called Kinzua State Park, starring an old railroad bridge that was built across the Kinzua River valley in the 1880’s to haul coal to Buffalo. It’s 300 feet high in the middle and you can walk across it, balancing on the tracks, looking down between the railroad ties and your feet straight down and getting giddy on acrophobia and just having a fine time.
Oh yeah, there was a covey (herd, flock, coven?) of wild turkeys on the little road to the park. Would’ve been the national bird if Ben Franklin had his way!
The reds in the maple trees around here are amazing.
Even though Binghamton (shouldn’t it be Binghampton?) is about 120 miles inland, I’m getting that gritty, surly Eastern seaboard feeling already — yeech.
Thursday Oct 5 Binghamton – Albany …
The day looked bright and sunny from the few rays that snuck around my Motel 8 curtains into my room, but when I peeked outside it was dreary and wet 🙁
So I drove 200 feet down the NY Turnpike for an uninspired breakfast served by an uninspired waitress amid a groggy bunch of sniffing, coughing, smoking denizens of the east coast megapolis. I’m not the only one bummed about the rain. Oh well, time to put on my game face and head for Boston.
Good punk station in Troy that lasted about 50 miles — bonus!!
Now it’s raining heavily. Immediately after I merged onto I-88 a WIDE LOAD trailer carrying half a house to somewhere in too much of a damned hurry crawled up my ass and made for some pretty uncomfortable driving for the next few miles. I’d forgotten what a sweaty tense experience freeway driving in the rain can be. Those double semis throw up a helluva lot of water. But soon the traffic thinned out and the rain slacked off and the driving became quite pleasant, headed northeast up a beautiful wide river valley, with the proverbial riot of fall colors fading into the misty distance. Not bad!
I drove through suburban Albany to avoid a few miles of NY Thruway tolls (cheep, cheep :), then I headed up about 8 miles of the beautiful Hudson River valley to catch SR 2 at Troy, NY. I had a flashback of spending a couple of days with some hippie freaks (hey wait a minute, I was a hippy freak too back then!) on a farm outside of Troy back in the late 60’s, but have not been able to dredge up who they were, why I knew them or anything other than that it happened. The saying goes that if you think you remember the 60’s then you weren’t there . I guess it’s true! 🙂
Then it was back to pleasant two lane roads through quaint little towns all the way until I entered the greater Boston force field. It got dark, the roads got crowded, and the rain got heavy again, more or less all at once.
… the rest of Thursday is in the next post …