Saturday 7/20

We got breakfast at the hotel restaurant: expensive, bad service, but decent food at least. It was a cool hotel with a lot of historical detail. Finally we got an audio book downloaded (World War Z) after lots of confusion about which version to get (the unabridged version is not available in the US, I guess).

Erie, PA was our first destination. We took the MLK out of Cleveland which is a nice road with beautiful old bridges and many garden areas. Stopped at Target in Erie for supplies since it was close to the highway, but Erie has some serious traffic issues so it was not a quick task. I was surprised with how nice Ohio and the small bit of Pennsylvania we saw were - lots of trees.

Leaving Erie, a deer hopped out and the person in front of us missed it but then it crossed to the other side of the highway and got smucked by a semi. We both happened to look back and see it happen – good thing a semi hit it because it probably did very little damage while it would have really messed up a car. We actually could hear the loud crack of it getting hit across the freeway. Poor thing!  

Although Google maps told us to go up to Buffalo NY through Rochester and Syracuse on 90, we decided to take 86 across New York through Jamestown and Corning over to Binghamton. I’m pondering whether it is pronounced bing hampton or bingamton. [Later I learned that this is called the Southern Tier of New York. Also, David Sedaris pronounced bingamton in "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls."]  It was a nice casual drive with no tolls and very little traffic. Rolling hills just covered with trees. 

We ate an early dinner at the Market Street Brewing Company in Corning. Yeah, Corning, where the glass place is. If we had time I totally would have gone to the museum of glass. The meal was just ok. Wouldn’t eat there again. We debated about whether to go down to Scranton and over to Hartford CT but decided to go up to Albany and took 90 over to stay at a Comfort Inn in Auburn, outside of Worcester, MA. 

It smelled like this was happening in the hotel.

I think the hotel was hosting a cigarette smokeathon or something. Good lesson to never stay at a hotel that allows smoking at all. Our room was supposedly non smoking but it just reeked of cigarettes and air freshener. Bad ventilation I guess. Trip advisor heard about it. I was disappointed because it wasn’t cheap and the reviews were pretty decent. Thankfully we brought our suitcases back out to the van that night because the clothes we had in the room continued to smell like cigarettes a few days later.

So today, Saturday 7/20, the second day of our trip, we were on the road for 12 hours (11 am to 11 pm, almost exactly). We finished the first half of World War Z. Definitely didn’t need completely unabridged – it is good but got a bit slow in some parts and the accents of the readers were kind of hard to understand. I was a little bored in the beginning segments about the outbreak. Rebuilding is more interesting. Google maps said it would take 9 hours to make it from Cleveland to Auburn MA, taking the upper route through Albany. We may have added a half hour taking 86 instead (which was worth it - we took the upper route home and it was kind of bleghy). Then we stopped in Corning for at least an hour and in Erie for probably 45 minutes. That would make another 45 mins for random bathroom breaks.

I stole the smoking picture from http://howmanyarethere.net/how-many-ways-are-there-to-quit-smoking/ but they probably stole it from somewhere else.