New York, New York!

Thursday June 2nd

 New York buildings
It was fairly a straightforward trip to New York apart from a couple of pirouettes where we lost our bearings completely in the spaghetti junctions. New York effectively has its own congestion tax as you have to pay around $8 to get into Manhattan, whichever bridge/tunnel you use. Not that it does much for the congestion. It took a little while to familiarise ourselves with the aggressive NY driving techniques which are slightly worse than the LA techniques and then about 30 min to drive 4 miles. Mark assured us this is good going.
After a phone call to tell him we were round the corner Mark came down to meet us with a luggage trolley.

Building where Mark's flat is on the 40th floor

View from Mark's flat.
We parked illegally for 10 min outside Mark's building with David sitting in the car and the boot/trunk open while we took the cases up and then drove to Dollar rental to return the car.  Mark advised us that the fine is over $300 if you get caught parking there, as he knew from experience.

 Son Mark 
It seems hard to believe our journey is over. We’ve enjoyed it tremendously, but are looking forward to catching up with friends and family in Scotland. We leave NY Monday evening and should be back home ar Scurdie Ness on the 7th June.

Our home in Scurdie Ness, Scotland.

Thanks for reading this blog, I've enjoyed writing it  and I'd love to have your feedback if you have the time.
Theresa

Martinsburg to Bethlehem, Philadelphia

Wednesday June 1st

Set off for Bethlehem. Our last stop before New York. It looks like we’re going to make it on time from our coast to coast marathon as we only have 90 miles to go. We need to be in New York by 1:00 tomorrow to return the rental car and we could probably have got there tonight but this way we’re avoiding the nightmare of trying to find somewhere to park in NY overnight.

It was really hot again but thunderstorms are expected which should reduce the temperature. NY seems relatively cool if you can believe the temperature charts.

 A moment of mercy. Sculpture depicting soldier who attended to wounded on the opposing side after a huge battle defeat. His own side started firing at him until they realised what he was doing.

We came through Harrisburg today, an important city in Pennsylvania. (It's the capital of the commonwealth; not sure what that means). While there we visited the Museum of the Civil War as it has a reputation for being the least biased of the civil war museums. They told the story well, by following the lives of several different people most of whom ended up dead, but it was very absorbing and we spent longer than we meant to.  Over 600,000 deaths out of a population of around 27 million!

After familiarising ourselves with the civil war, we cheered ourselves up by visiting Chocolate World in Hershey which is close to Harrisburg.

Entrance to Hershey world

 The cows who are delighted that their high quality milk is being used in Hershey chocolate

We did the circuit on the little train, listened to the singing cows and then, as we were leaving, were approached by someone who wanted to recruit us for some market research into Hershey products. This sounded rather attractive so we agreed eagerly and were taken away to a little kiosk and given some chocolate. We had to take a drink of water, a bite out of a cracker biscuit and when we’d swallowed it, eat the chocolate and answer some questions. I had a tiny little sugar-free chocolate wafer but David was given three big chunky chocolate peanut butter bars. No complaints there! As a reward, we were each given a Hershey bar on the way out but it quickly went soft in the heat so we had to eat those too.

Tuesday May 31st

 

 View from Blue Ridge Parkway near Strasburg, Va

Slept late and woke to a really hot day.  Thanks goodness for air-conditioning.  We went for a walk around Lynchburg but were just hopping from one piece of shade to the next so we set off and headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway again as it runs in the direction we wanted to go and is a lot cooler, being high.  Stopped a few times to listen to the birds tweeting, and enjoyed being away from the traffic but were travelling slowly so rejoined the I85.

 Stone soup cafe

We had left without breakfast as it was too hot to eat but by 2:30 we were getting hungry so pulled off at Waynesboro to find something to eat, but no sign of the Golden arches or our other usual classy dining joints. After circling a few times and ignoring the pleas of the GPS to return to the freeway, we came across the Stone soup café/2nd hand bookshop which sounded pretty good.  The food was excellent and we were encouraged to browse the bookshelves while eating, which was a bit of unusual.

Historical map of Edinburg, Virginia

After that, we thundered along to Martinsburg but when we saw that Edinburg was on the way, we had to stop and investigate.  It was a very small place (pop 813), the temperature was 94oF and one of the main streets was Printz street (Aaargh!). So similar, but so different.

Boone NC to Lynchburg VA

Monday May 30th

 View from Blue Ridge Parkway
We thought we’d try the scenic route today so found the Blue Ridge Parkway which extends 479 miles along the ridge of the Appalachians. It was worth the effort as the views were great (awesome as they say here) and the area around the road was full of flowering shrubs – azaleas and rhododendrons. It was a single carriageway and had a 45 mph limit so we stayed on it for about 30 miles before crossing to the Interstate 81.

We hadn’t travelled more than a few miles when we came across bad congestion – stop start traffic moving very slowly. We saw several vehicles making their escape by reversing up the on-ramp and considered joining them but decided to be law-abiding instead – a big mistake.

There were notices saying that the I85 was closed further down and that the traffic was being guided along a detour. As soon as we could, we escaped down a side road and, using Google maps on my iPod, I found an alternative route along state highway 675. On reflection, I think lower numbers are better for State highways. All went well for the first few miles and it was good to get moving again. But then the road became very narrow and unpaved.

 State highway 645
It was still very scenic but we were a little unnerved when we found we would have to ford a stream that looked quite deep. I paddled across first and found the shallowest route and David followed with the car. On the other side we met a couple in a 4x4 coming the opposite way, so thought we’d better find out what the road was like. They told us it got a lot worse; there were 7 fords altogether and the first was the shallowest. Also, that the pot-holes got so large, a car like ours could disappear. This was not good news so they persuaded us to turn around and invited us to their place for a glass of iced tea before we continued our journey.

 Ford in a Ford
Tony and Jennifer have a lovely home, set in 3 acres of grassland and on a housing estate where all the homes have 3 acres of grassland. We had a good chat before we returned to join the traffic detour. It was a very long trip and we eventually arrived at our destination in Lynchburg, VA, at around 9 pm.
Someone told us that the reason the I81 was closed was that one of the local Sheriffs had shot and killed his wife on that road, earlier in the day.

Into the Appalachians

Sunday May 29th

 Some of the previous winners from Nascar races with all the dents knocked out.
Investigated the Nascar meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina where they had a speedway race.It was the Coca cola 600 which I think means that they whizz round the track 600 times.  Luckily we didn't have time for this. so we went to the Nascar Hall of fame which David found very interesting. There was a video about the history of Nascar which appears to be highly regulated stock-car racing. We learnt that impoverished people in the Appalachians took to selling moonshine to make money during the depression. They tended to deliver it at night and the cops would chase them. If they had a fast car, they could get away so they modified their cars to get more power out of them. After a while, they would compare cars by racing them as there wasn’t a lot of entertainment in the mountains and so Nascar was born.

David and some car enthusiast friends at Nascar.  They didn't talk much.
In the late afternoon we headed for the mountains and stayed overnight at Boone, named for Daniel Boone. It was a lot cooler and quite different from the lowlands. There seemed to be a lot of folk from the big cities here – mostly genteel wealthy people and a lot of twee countrified stuff but very picturesque. Hope to take the scenic route to Virginia tomorrow.

We passed through a town called Blowing Rock. Not far from the town is a cliff where you can throw things over and the updraft brings them back. The posters feature a parent throwing a child over but I think the phenomenon is restricted to lighter objects. Tissue handkerchiefs and so on. Unfortunately, the area was closed when we passed through.

 Landscaped gardens at Blowing Rock
Just heard on the news that there was a shooting in uptown Charlotte last night. One guy killed and another wounded. Just near where we were this morning.

The Carolinas

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Saturday May 28^th

Slow to get moving this morning.  We eventually got away about 11 at chucking out time and set off on the road north to Charlotte, North Carolina.  We stopped at Greenville and explored quite a lot of the town while looking for the downtown part.  A problem was that we had keyed in “Main St” to the GPS and as it turned out there were several main streets.  The one we arrived at first was in the country to our surprise.

Park in Greenville Main st.

When we did find the correct Main Street, it turned out to be pedestrianized with a lovely park and waterfall at one end of it.  There were also lots of trees giving shade from the hot sun. (still around 28oC but less humid than the gulf coast).  Being Saturday, there were hordes of people about.  We discovered also that it’s a holiday weekend with Memorial day on Monday which is the equivalent of Remembrance day in the UK, so there is a bit of pressure on the motel rooms.

 Waterfall in Greenville Main St.

Our evening was marred a little by David losing his credit card in a shop.  He was making lots of phone calls about lawn-mower parts and he thinks (but isn't sure) he left it on a counter while he went to get something.  Anyway it has disappeared.  There were other people in the shop so someone could have picked it up.  After spending about an hour retracing steps. we cancelled it  from the shop with the help of the phone and my iPad to get on the internet and get the visa card number.  Luckily we have other credit cards!

Off to the Appalachians tomorrow where the hill-billies live. 

Montgomery, Alabama to Commerce, Georgia

Friday May 27th

 The road to Columbus.  The road is edged with forest just like the day before.

Storms holding off so headed north for Columbus which was a little off our track. We passed through the State line into Georgia on the way, so we are now, finally on East coast time. Columbus had a Space centre financed by Coca Cola Inc. which was very entertaining as it was really set up for kids. There was hardly anyone else there and when it was time for the movies, we were the only people in a huge movie theatre. It seems it is the quiet period in between the school trips and the summer camps.

 Space Centre in sunny Columbus
Unfortunately we spent too much time there so there wasn’t much time to look around Atlanta, home of Martin Luther King and the place that was burnt to the ground by General Sherman in the American Civil war. Margaret Mitchell who wrote “Gone with the Wind” lived in Atlanta and they have made her house into a museum. Unfortunately it was a quarter to five when we arrived in Atlanta so we were a bit too late for most of the museums.

 Unidentified blossom that we see a lot of.
We decided we would visit Railway City, which is a novel redevelopment of the Inner city of Atlanta where a town has been built for railway commuters so that they can live close to the station and not have to travel there. A city within a city they say. It sounded interesting and appealed in that it was unlikely to shut at 5. We programmed the address into the GPS but every time we got close, a street was blocked off or we weren’t allowed to do a right or left turn. We circled round several times getting more and more frustrated, until David saw a solution, and we dived across the road. Unfortunately the solution involved driving on the left side of the road for a bit– not the side that they’re used to here. In his excitement, he’d forgotten that we’re not in the UK. Luckily the road had been momentarily clear, but there were many cars pawing the road at a nearby set of lights. You could almost hear the revs dropping and see the drivers heads raised in astonishment. But we reached our destination, so it was a good thing really.

After that, railway city was an anti-climax and didn’t look too different from the rest of the city. We could have been in the wrong part of course, but we spotted Ikea and being hot and thirsty, called in for a cool glass of Lingon juice and some Swedish meatballs. Just like home really.