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We were up around 7, had breakfast and were on the road at 8:30. Eric left his cell phone in the room, and I saw it as I scanned the room one more time before I walked out. I snuck it in my bags, hoping that we would be about 200 miles away when he thought about it. My joke didn't pan out, though. He remembered it at our gas stop, not 100 yards from the hotel, and I had to fess up. This morning we had patchy fog, some dense, and when it finally burned off, the skies stayed overcast most of the day.
We were destined to spend a little more time on the Interstate today. I had wanted to avoid I-79, thinking that it went right through downtown Pittsburg, which I imagined would be an urban mess. However, Eric looked at the map a little closer and determined that 79 skirted just outside of the metro area, and he was right. We passed Pittsburg without a hitch.
| We rode north of I-80 and turned off on US62, which my buddies on the Motorcycle Tourer's Forum had said was very scenic. Boy, were they right! 62 swept through rolling Pennsylvania farmland along the Allegheny River. The first hints of fall color were starting to show. The farms were all postcard-perfect, the houses neat and in good repair, and the towns were just stunning. We couldn't help but draw a comparison with the run-down look of West Virginia. Pennsylvania was another world. |
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At Warren, we got gas. Around lunch time, we usually ask somebody where a good, local, non-franchised diner is, and this one recommended a place called Chido's, just a few blocks up the street. It wasn't so much a diner as a full blown Italian place. Eric had chicken marsala, and I had spaghetti and meatballs. The spaghetti came out on a platter, not a plate, and the two meatballs were each as big as my fist. Try as I did, I could only eat about half of it.
Soon 62 crossed into New York, and Amish country. How do you know you are in Amish country? First sign, this:
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Second sign: there is horse crap all over the roads.
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"Damned tourists" |
We saw a farmhouse with a lot of horse-carts outside, and stopped to make a picture. The local kids seemed as interested in our transportation as we were in theirs.
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As we passed through the little town of Eden, New York, a local cop pulled us over. He didn't like my headlight modulator. "You look like an emergency vehicle", he said. "Whenever people kill a motorcyclist, they always say that they didn't see him. You can SEE me" I replied. He wasn't convinced, and insisted that I should not have a flashing light on the bike. I had documents on the bike proving that it was legal, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I turned it off, and he let us go. I turned it back on as soon as I was out of the city limits.
Once we were in Buffalo, the GPS routed us to 5, right along the shores of Lake Erie. The landscape was urban, covered with long-idle factories and rusting ships that hadn't moved in years. This had been an industrial area for a long, long time.
As we entered Niagara Falls, we saw a visitor's center and stopped in. The desk clerk turned us on to a new Holiday Inn for $70 a night. 3 blocks from the Falls, indoor pool, gym, and a Denny's on site. We took it, and were quite happy. He also set us up for a Gray Line bus tour that would take us around to the major sites in 5 hours, with very little walking. Eric's ankle was still hurting from the crash, so that sounded like just the ticket.
After dinner at Denny's, we walked down to the river. They light up the rapids and the falls at night, and it a spectacular sight.
About 350 miles today.
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