Roadtrip from Toronto to Cape Cod, stopping in Upstate
New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts
Fri. Aug. 20- Sun. Aug. 29, 2010
Fri. Aug. 20, 2010:
We
decided to head out early so as to beat the traffic at the border and so we
would have ample time to get all the day’s activities in (we had a lot
planned). We headed out at the wonderful hour of 7am, bleary eyed and sleepy.
It wasn’t even 9am and already the Burlington Skyway almost made me upchuck my
breakfast, the irony in the story is I had forewarned Brent about the stench
and I knew it was coming! Crossing the border was fine and all, the line up was
big but it went really fast. The bridge was better organized in terms of
getting across, but then once you did it was so confusing! It was hard to tell
which way to go and the signs did not help. One of the first things I saw when
we crossed into New York was an ad for Cellino & Barnes (lawyers) whose
commercials I used to always see on TV (back when I got American channels) up
until it was a commercial for only one of them, it made me happy to see that
they were back together. There was also an ad featuring a huge syringe that
made me cringe. On the way to the outlet mall we passed a place called “Just
Pizza” but that was clearly a lie, they also advertised chicken and nachos in
the window.
We got
to the mall just before 10am and found that there were a lot of people there
given the fact that the mall wasn’t even open yet, there was even a line up
outside of one store (selling lame figurines at that). The Coach store was
admittedly awesome. It was a different atmosphere to say the least, at the door
they were handing out 20% off coupons and at the back it was 50% off clearance,
there was even a lady with a calculator that would tell you the price after the
discounts! I ended up buying a purse that was originally $180 for $50! It was
great; they actually used the 20% off coupon in addition to the 50% off deal.
Up next on the trip was lunch in Buffalo. On the way there we passed over
Beaver Island. In Buffalo the cops all have the license plate: POLICE. Duh. For
lunch we went to the best place to lunch whilst in Buffalo of course: Anchor
Bar. And of course we ate buffalo wings while there, what else. The hot flavour
was actually not that bad, I could stand it whereas the bleu cheese dip made
the wings taste like bubble gum, no joke. Without the dip, the wings were
delicious! And huge, neither of us could finish our orders. As if our
conversation did not give us away as tourists, charging the GPS in the
restaurant sure sealed that image.
At this
point in the trip I had no idea which way was up, as in north. I was so
disoriented. Every time I thought I knew which way we were going it turned out
I was totally off. Buffalo was not exactly the prettiest place on earth. There
were a lot of abandoned buildings, even an abandoned church for sale! I saw a
bull drinking from a pond on a farm and Brent had missed it so I drew him a
picture. On the New York Thruway there was an oddly worded sign: Headlights must
be on when using wipers. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just say when it’s
raining (snowing?), what if you are just cleaning off your windshield?! A truck
delivering Drake’s Cakes passed us on the highway and I found it odd that a
duck (their mascot) was baking cakes. Having looked it up later I found out
that they are just a knock-off of Hostess. The duck got it wrong. We were on
the highway (sorry, Thruway) because we were headed to Cooperstown, NY. You
might be asking yourself why, why are you going to Nowheresville? (Not the
first Nowheresville and not the last mind you.) We were going to the Baseball
Hall of Fame of all places. For me it was rather uneventful, looked at a bunch
of stuff, and made fun of teams. Cooperstown itself was small and quaint, full
of baseball fans though, all wearing jerseys, I stuck out like a sore thumb. We
walked down to the waterfront and looked at Ostego Lake and saw a cheesey
gimmicky lighthouse. From the shore we also spotted Kingfisher Tower across the
lake (remember this, it’s important for later on). We ate dinner at a place
called The Pit, which only sort of lived up to its name; it was really just
like a small pub. There was more chicken than soup in my chicken soup.
We
walked to the Fennimore Art Museum just to see the building itself because the
museum was closed and it seemed kind of lame anyways. We got in the car and
drove along the lake shore towards Kingfisher Tower. We didn’t have any exact
directions just a general idea and a printed out map. We drove and we drove and
we drove, up and down twisting winding roads, scanning the side of the road…
for nothing. It was gone! We drove back down and I kept scanning and looking,
sometimes through a bunch of trees, so much so that I started seeing weird
flashes of purple between the trees, but all to no avail. That is until: there
was a small turn off and we were going to go ask for directions at what looked
to be a motel but chickened out when we saw that it was a church camp. So we
kept driving until there was a small dirt driveway… to a cemetery. So I hopped
out and walked over to the edge where there were stairs going down, but alas no
sign of the tower. Therefore: the Kingfisher Tower we had seen from the
lighthouse earlier was a ghost! It’s the only reasonable explanation. Or as I just
read on the internet: you can only see it from the highway in the winter months
when the trees lose all their leaves. My story is better.
The hotel we were
staying at was pretty good, it had HBO and a fridge. (Un)fortunately neither of
us remembered to bring the toothpaste so alas we had to run to Price Chopper
down the street to buy some. And while there of course we had to stock up on
snacks! Luckily we found Throwback Pepsi and Throwback Mountain Dew, both of
which do not taste all that different, but the ingredients list is way shorter!
Sadly there was nothing on TV so we resorted to watching Jersey Shore (not the
last time either). We flipped back and forth between that and a David
Hasselhoff roast. Thankfully PBS rescued us with a documentary about hot dogs,
which featured SuperDawg!
Inside My Head 