Thursday/Friday March 26 and 27 - Lexington KY to Erie PA to home driving days, trip wrapup
We headed out of Lexington pretty early in the day with a pick-up order from Panera Bread. The trip started on US-68 and then went across a giant swath of Ohio on OH-32/OH-124 then OH-7/11 all the way up to I-90 which we were on for just 30 miles or so to get into Erie. Some of the minor roads in the Appalachian part of OH were amazingly fun and twisty. We also saw but sadly didn't photograph a frighteningly swollen raging part of a river we crossed. The entirety of the drive was very quiet with the only section that had anything resembling a modest amount of traffic was OH-11 around Youngstown area. It was about 4 PM and there were relatively a lot of people headed North for a few miles in that stretch.
The hotel in Erie (Best Western) has a nice modern design. We had Chick-Fil-A (their Drive Thru was banging out many orders and a long but impressively fast line of cars) in bed and watched some more British Baking Challenge before falling asleep.
I was very pleased to find out that New York Bagel & Deli in Erie was still open. I stopped there on my solo road trip this past fall and the bagel and locally sourced sausage were delicious again. From there we took Alternate PA-5 and later PA-5 and NY-5 up into New York along Lake Erie. The scenery along the lake was beautiful and I'm glad I went that way but there wasn't any energy for a hike or anything, our minds were on getting home. So when US-20 intersected NY-5, I got on it and ground my way East on the outskirts of Buffalo before being on more familiar ground East of Buffalo all the way East to Avon NY where I took the also familiar East River road and oddly named Honeyoye Falls Road 6 through Honeyoye and then a tiny piece of NY-65 and a good sized chunk of Boughtom Hills road to finally arrive at East Victor road which took us up to NY-96 barely a mile from home.
The trip was certainly worth doing. We had one of most successful fitness trips ever. Over 40 miles on hiking trails and at least 20 miles of other more urban walks plus whatever amount of incidental walking we did just going between things. We saw family in North Carolina, friends in TN and beautiful scenery in every state we traversed. Other than some tedious slow drivers in Virginia the first night, we experienced absolutely zero traffic delays of any kind, in towns or rural places. This isn't surprising for a COVID-19 timed trip but what is surprising is that most of our week or 2 week long road trips are marred at most by a single stretch of annoying traffic. It used to be getting across the NYC area that was a pain. Now living near Rochester, it's more likely to be Philly or DC that are slightly painful since so many destinations going South would take us that way.
It feels good but also numbing to be home. It's a lot harder to gloss over the restrictions from social distancing etc and though pleasant, even these first 2 full days (weekend days) at home seem kind of long and slow. We tried out a new to us place to walk yesterday (Boughton Park, only open to residents of Bloomfield/East Bloomfield and Victor NY) and then today we tried the very Southern most part of the Genessee Riverway Trail near the airport.
Tomorrow, work and the new normal begin from home for me. Brian will work some at the office and some from home.
The hotel in Erie (Best Western) has a nice modern design. We had Chick-Fil-A (their Drive Thru was banging out many orders and a long but impressively fast line of cars) in bed and watched some more British Baking Challenge before falling asleep.
I was very pleased to find out that New York Bagel & Deli in Erie was still open. I stopped there on my solo road trip this past fall and the bagel and locally sourced sausage were delicious again. From there we took Alternate PA-5 and later PA-5 and NY-5 up into New York along Lake Erie. The scenery along the lake was beautiful and I'm glad I went that way but there wasn't any energy for a hike or anything, our minds were on getting home. So when US-20 intersected NY-5, I got on it and ground my way East on the outskirts of Buffalo before being on more familiar ground East of Buffalo all the way East to Avon NY where I took the also familiar East River road and oddly named Honeyoye Falls Road 6 through Honeyoye and then a tiny piece of NY-65 and a good sized chunk of Boughtom Hills road to finally arrive at East Victor road which took us up to NY-96 barely a mile from home.
The trip was certainly worth doing. We had one of most successful fitness trips ever. Over 40 miles on hiking trails and at least 20 miles of other more urban walks plus whatever amount of incidental walking we did just going between things. We saw family in North Carolina, friends in TN and beautiful scenery in every state we traversed. Other than some tedious slow drivers in Virginia the first night, we experienced absolutely zero traffic delays of any kind, in towns or rural places. This isn't surprising for a COVID-19 timed trip but what is surprising is that most of our week or 2 week long road trips are marred at most by a single stretch of annoying traffic. It used to be getting across the NYC area that was a pain. Now living near Rochester, it's more likely to be Philly or DC that are slightly painful since so many destinations going South would take us that way.
It feels good but also numbing to be home. It's a lot harder to gloss over the restrictions from social distancing etc and though pleasant, even these first 2 full days (weekend days) at home seem kind of long and slow. We tried out a new to us place to walk yesterday (Boughton Park, only open to residents of Bloomfield/East Bloomfield and Victor NY) and then today we tried the very Southern most part of the Genessee Riverway Trail near the airport.
Tomorrow, work and the new normal begin from home for me. Brian will work some at the office and some from home.
Comments
Post a Comment