Scenic detour!

My next 'gotta be there' destination is Springfield, Virginia, to meet up with an old pal and then head to Florida for a Caribbean cruise. But I'm not due there, 484 miles from Niagara Falls, until early November. So rather than taking it easy for a month, I'm going to take the scenic route to get there! 3524 miles of scenic route! Dumb, maybe, especially considering the time of year, but I'm trusting that the weather will hold for a couple more weeks, and am going to see some more sights. I probably won't head back up this way again, so I want to make the most of it!

That said:

Friday, October 5th, 2007

Niagara Falls, NY to Avery, OH

275.3 miles

Very hazy, and record warm temperatures

Stuck to more traveled roads today, with my prior luck at finding low hanging overpasses! Even so, I was able to skirt Niagara River into Buffalo and enjoy the small villages and farmland along the way. I was back on the Seaway Trail again!

Lots of water means, of course, lots of bridges, so my camera was happy today!

Was surprised to see several BIG windmills along the river in Buffalo - guess that indicates some serious winds blow through here often - not today, thankfully!!

Since I had a lot of miles to cover today, I drove I-90 for much of the way. As most RVers have discovered, days and dates have a tendency to get away from you. When I started trying to book campsites along my route, I found many to be fully booked. One fellow finally reminded me that this is a holiday weekend! Hello! Columbus Day. Oh. So I had to take what I could get. Luckily, my evenings destination turned out to be quite nice!

After leaving Buffalo, following close to Lake Erie all the way, I noticed that the trees are in a much earlier stage of color that further East. And I started seeing acres and acres of vineyards! Ah, so this is where the New York grapes are grown! Even being on the highway, the air was sweet smelling, with the unmistakable scent of wine-making! The vines were still covered with grapes - several varieties! Mingled with the vineyards were cows and hayfields, and the occasional old cemetery.

This must be a sunbelt, to grow this lovely grapes, and it extended for miles, into Pennsylvania for a short ways.

I had to laugh at silly me - I caught myself hunkering down into my seat every time I passed under an overpass. Didn't matter that it claimed to be plenty high for me to pass safely! I still flinched! Having an accurate measurement of my coach now helps, but can I trust the highway departments to correctly label their roads? I started traveling close to big trucks, figuring it they can do it, so can I! Silly!

I was just in Pennsylvania for a short distance, but long enough to spot a small bar & grill advertising live entertainment nightly - the "Loud Mouth Soup" band. Not sure I'd want to go out of my way to hear them!

What I did get to see too, was more flags and steeples - my kinda day!

My plan today was probably not my best - I had to pass thru Cleveland at the beginning of rush hour on Friday of a long weekend. Not very bright! But I was moving slow enough to get to look around a little!

I'm back in the flatlands again - still plenty of trees, and farmlands, but flat. None of the rolling hills and valleys that were so pretty a little further east!

A quick BTW here - if you like to check the weather here, you may have noticed that things were a little messed up for a couple days. Took me several hours, but I found that weather.com somehow changed its formatting, making my particular weather picture too big for its location. Hence the different weather block than you might be used to. I don't like it as much, but for the moment, it's the best option.