Day
7 - Thursday, June 29It was New York or bust today! Goodbye PA, hello New Jersey. Oooops, blinked. Missed it. Now we're in New York state. And there's the famous Manhattan skyline. And that's where Max intends to try driving! They told me that I was insane to try and drive there, but you can't come all this way and not try. Now if we can just figure out how to get there...
The Lincoln tunnel! That sounds historic. Let's try that. It's not like there are a whole lot of options to get to Manhattan island anyway. Well, about two and a half hours later we were almost at the mouth of the tunnel! The traffic inches along. Of course it didn't help that it was rush hour (now there's an oxymoron if ever I heard one) Worse, we were stuck behind a stinky garbage truck for about an hour of that line. No wonder it is so expensive in Manhattan; it would take forever to get supplies there! Once you pay the tunnel toll, the approximately 20 lanes of vehicles try to converge onto the two lanes through the tunnel. This was just a taste of what it would be like driving in Manhattan! I came to the conclusion that this process was pure anarchy and that people who drive there do not care if they scrape the vehicle beside them. You better be VERY familiar with the corners of your vehicle. I kept saying prayers for my Jeep and pushed ahead. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.....
Once in the tunnel, things started to move. But then at the other end, downtown Manhattan. Oh no. Chaos! Don't even THINK of trying to drive around there without a preplanned route and an experienced navigator. Darrel tried to help, but it was just too difficult for him. The Manhattan city map is about the size of the entire US map. A loaded down Jeep with bikes on the back and little visibility out the rear window didn't help things either, not to mention looking completely out of place in the business traffic. The streets were packed with crazy drivers, wall to wall people and towering skyscrapers. Ahhhhhh Happiness :) I can finally say that I've driven in the most congested place on earth. I wear my badge with honor :) Due to numerous detours, the navigation and preplanned routes went totally out the window. It was everyone for themselves :) And of course you can't stop anywhere to get your bearings or the cab drivers curse and honk until you move.... or they push you out of the way :) We decided to get out of there and headed through Midtown Tunnel to get off the Island and over to Long Island....
Now we were in Queens. Hey, this looks a little different... It says the street is Broadway, but we don't see any flashy theatres. In fact, there's a lot of graffiti, trains overhead, steel shuttered windows, cool stares and very dilapidated buildings. Oh oh. Best to just keep driving! Won't be asking for any directions here. "Don't look at anybody you guys!" Then all of a sudden the scenery changes and we see what appears to be people in gothic dress. And now there are families. And they're all dressing like this. Very interesting! Is this the Jewish community?? It seemed safe enough to eat here so we stopped at a McDonalds. Very expensive. It was about twice the price as compared to the Mid West.
At this point, it was clear that we weren't going to be camping :) But then, it was also clear that we weren't going to be staying anywhere around here either. So, let's just do some sightseeing and maybe eventually head back over to Jersey. We drove through Queens and down around the bottom of Long Island (Brooklyn). It would have been nice to stop at Coney Island's amusement park, but it was far too late for that today. Over another bridge (another $7 toll - that's about $30 total for the last few hours if you're keeping track) and onto Staten Island. From there we just kept driving south (about 20 miles to Edison) until we found a reasonable motel for the night. And that brings to a close another day's adventure :)
Day 5 - Tuesday, June 27
Day
7 - Thursday, June 29