It's been a week, last Wednesday September 19th, that we left for the beginning of Route 20, the Historic highway that connects the East Coast in downtown Boston to Newport Oregon. Our companions for the trip Alice and Barbara chose to do it the real way...heading hopefully into downtown Boston as we packed up to meet them along the highway outside Boston. We had walked to the starting point, the corner of Kenmore Square and Commonwealth Ave. the day before and had decided that pulling a trailer in downtown Boston was not a very good idea. Little did we realize how tough that first day would prove to be....
The first several miles are spent driving through the historic outskirts of Boston..mile after mile of places that have determined the course of history of the United States...the traffic was heavy and the stops were frequent...our first night was spent unwinding near the small community of Brimfield Massachusetts. Alice and Barbara who had previously crossed the continent on Route 66, commiserated with Tom about the poor quality of the road and we all found ourselves wondering if this choice to travel the breadth of the US, was going to prove to be a mistake.
The small private campground we chose was meant to be. Ollie was a hit...the owners of the campground, which had been previously hit by a tornado had a similar Goldendoodle and the evening was spent watching the two dogs play side by side in freedom after a long day of travel.
Back on the road we hit the highest elevation east of the Rockies, of Route 20, in the Berkshire's.
It's not hard to imagine how popular this area is with tourists as every town has an historic vibe and plenty of retail opportunities for those whom shopping is a vacation pasttime...obviously that's many as the stores were abuzz with fall decor in every window... Route 20 is often the "Main St." of the towns we drive through and of course if I had once mentioned I was looking forward to "small town USA"..I was nearing the point of overload as every village slowed our progress to approx. 20 mph and lead to my "sighs' of wishing we were there for longer.
Soon we were in Shaker country...the home of Shaker style furniture where I learned the origin of the name..attributed to the frenetic dancing done when these religious pilgrims left their homeland and celebrated the ability to practice freely in their new found homeland.
The landscape was changing in subtle ways...fall colors seem to be behind us and we were in New York...and the communities took on even a more upscale feel...
One of the largest cities that Route 20 had taken us through on so far was Albany New York...a real juxtaposition of historic and modern...and our trusty Ford which has been so reliable chose to show us that we should not be so smug about our success so far...in the breezeway shown in the photo below, on Madison Ave. just to the left of the skyscraper on the right, The Nelson J. Rockefeller Center, it stopped...stopped cold with the oil pressure warning light on and zero oil pressure.
Luckily I had chosen to extend my BCAA membership to include the RV and Tom's truck and while I called, Tom researched all the information and our friends kept traffic from driving into our back end..long story short...after talking to AAA and being ready to order a tow..the truck was able to be restarted. Tom talked to the local Ford Dealership service center and we made the decision to continue...watching very carefully in case this one off glitch returned.
We found a gem of a campsite for the night on Belvedere Lake and while Tom decompressed by playing 9 holes of golf, I walked Ollie around the lake..thinking wow..this is one of the prettiest campgrounds I've ever seen. Tennis courts, swimmable lake with boats to use and golf..a reason to exist in Roseboom NewYork.
The next day we entered the popular and scenic Finger Lakes region which is northern end of the Catskill mountains, an extension of the Appalachians. Fall is near..and the wind on the lake seemed to be a prompt for all the locals to begin pulling boats before winter is upon them. The reality is that much of the camping and resort sites are in the final days of operation with some set to close at the end of September and others going on til October...we can tell that they are ready to finish.
That night we chose to stay at a KOA campground (I will tell you more about my love/hate affair with this brand of campgrounds later) outside the small town of Canandaigua New York....it proved to be a popular place with many families and locals who use campgrounds like this as a destination.
We had read the weather forecasts for thunderstorms and could see that the clouds were building as I prepared dinner... and then just like before, in Bobcaygeon, as the rain started and the lightning and thunder began in the distance with the sky glowing with an eerie orange light, my phone issued the dreaded "TORNADO WARNING", which is a loud pitched alarm. Prior to starting the trip this was one of my worst fears, to be in a tornado in a small, light travel trailer..so as I scrambled to find my purse, money and then as Tom stood still appearing to be in doubt of the seriousness..I found myself saying "well Tom don't just stand there"...as I headed for the nearby washroom building which I noted did not have a lot of windows and was not directly under the biggest trees....well...once again we were lucky as the hour or so of the storm passed by and we spent a relatively sleepless night listening to the wind from within the trailer walls..I am convinced that small trailers, just like small sailboats magnify sounds and make it all seem much worse than it really was.
The next day we parted ways with our friends to head to Canton Ohio, briefly cutting through the far western corner of Pennsylvania. This was one of Tom's bucket list goals set in the early days of planning our trip, to visit the NFL Hall of Fame. We learned we were driving through the largest Amish community in the USA. Farmington Ohio.
Early on Sunday we were almost the first people at the exhibit where Tom added to his experiences of a major sports fan in the place where football is king.
Back on the road to meet up with Alice and Barbara we passed so many farm markets in Ohio celebrating fall and it's garden harvest.
One of the funkiest and coolest stops so far was the Speedtrap Diner just outside of Perrysburg Ohio.
The next day we drove through a short section of the top of Indiana, ending in Gary and the outskirts of Chicago in what is called East Chicago, still in Indiana...and then the day got a whole lot more tricky once again.
Route 20 through Chicago at afternoon rush hour traffic was not fun, as we towed a trailer over rough roads, in the rain and mile after mile of traffic to our destination on the far west side of the city at the nearest campground that Tom had stayed at when he was here 2 years ago. Three hours of tense driving with little visual rewards leave me to recommend to anyone else doing this, just get through Chicago on the modern highways and go back later to see the city.
Luckily the campsite we had booked in advance, although almost 50 kms. outside the city, was pretty and although the mosquitoes limit the outside time we are safe here and it's a good base to explore some of the villages west of Chicago...
Like Woodstock, the historic town with a tremendous history of arts in drama and writing and the home of Orson Welles and Paul Newman for many years. And the American version of Wiarton Willie...Woodstock Willie.
We've tried to eat "local" in each area we've visited so we decided to try a Chicago deepdish pizza and had seen an historic restaurant to have one in a nearby small town. And then the weather threw us another curveball with a tremendously fierce windstorm preceding rain and thunder destroying trees and knocking out power to the small town of Huntley Illinois. But not to be detered and with our friends counting on us bringing one home we achieved the goal. I will NEVER order one again...each of our two pizzas weighed at least 10 lbs. and we were unable to eat more than two pieces before deciding we would never order anchovies and deepdish ever again.
Today, our final day in the Chicago area, we chose to drive in to the city rather than take public transit. Leaving Ollie and the trailer behind, our first stop was the Oak Park area home and studio of one of my heroes, Frank Lloyd Wright. Those who know me, may remember I recreated his famous stained glass window "The Tree of Life" on my last home...so this was one of my "bucket list" stops.
We were guided through his home and studio by a very knowledgeable volunteer and loved every aspect of the home and studio he had created in the early 1900's at a time when his "prairie school of architecture" was not yet formalized....it is beautiful and would be loved by many today.
Then we were off to the city for three hours of seeing as much as we could in a short time...parking downtown and walking to the waterfront and beyond....
Perhaps it is fitting to end with a final shot that includes the distinctly unpopular Trump Tower...we know we only saw a piece of this amazingly huge city with a heart for sports, culture, diversity and art...but that's all for this time. Tomorrow we leave our friends and divert to Madison Wisconsin where I can touch base with my roots of Italian immigrant family at the DiRienzo brothers Monument company...I promise photos to come....
8 states done, 9 by tomorrow night and a whole big piece of rural America still to come on this Route 20...small town America's highway down Main Street.
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