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Published: January 13th 2007
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On 26 December I packed my bags and sadly left Brian, Jacque, Ava and Allegra in Houston, to start the 2,500km 4 day drive to New York City. What a great family - I hope I get the chance to return some of their hospitality soon!
I decided that the first leg of the drive to New York should be the longest. I covered 620 miles, from Houston Texas, through Louisiana and Mississippi to Tuscaloosa Alabama. Four states in a day... but just barely.
The drive itself was unremarkable - the landscape changes, the "attraction 50 miles ahead" signs change, but I didn't have time to go and see many of them. The interstate itself doesn't change at all - four lanes carved clear through.
Briefly, Mississippi was mostly either a 4-lane causeway over the swamp, or a four lane highway through the woods. The interstate bypassed all the towns and I nearly ran out of gas looking for one. Find it I did, along with a clientèle of camouflage-wearing country folk who looked at me as curiously as I them. I have a feeling that Mississippi deserves a few days to really explore and appreciate, if only
to see the fence that Huckleberry Finn never finished painting or to ride the last and largest riverboat.
Next day I drove through Alabama up to Tennessee. I stopped at Chattanooga for lunch (I can now confirm that there is indeed a "Chattanooga choo-choo Museum", which adjoins the Holiday Inn Express). Chattanooga deserves some mention; if only for the fact that I have nothing to say about it... It's a city with 475,000 people in the metro area - and big by any NZ standards, but as far as my drive was concerned it, was a dot on the US map. I had this feeling a few times on the drive - the sheer expanse of the USA and the spread of it's population and development is pretty incredible.
Chattanooga turned into Knoxville turned into I-81 over the Appalachian Mountains, turned into Shenandoah national park and the skyline drive, turned to Washington D.C. Shenandoah was a pretty place. It's a long narrow ridge in the Appalachians that is about 2,000 metres up with alot of native forest and wildlife. It was one of the first parks, and the skyline drive along the ridge was built in the depression
as an economic crutch for the whole region. The Shenandoah region and valley is interesting. It has a very liberal feel to it for some reason.
By this time I'd covered about 4,700 miles. I read the Washington D.C address of my hostel once and exited the interstate into the grid city straight to the hostel without even checking the map - almost on autopilot.
D.C marked the end of the what were for me the defining features of the long-haul drive section of the trip. That's the holy trinity of interstates, cracker barrel restaurants, and cheap motels. "Cracker Barrel" is a reliable old friend which for me defines the meeting point of the homely south and corporate America. You can get fried catfish with a baked potato and fresh greens for $8, or a ribeye steak for $12. If it's someones birthday you can guarantee that one of the staff will sing "happy birthday to you" in an incredible bluegrass half-yodelled drawl. The waiter/ress always introduce themselves by name and has a little chat even when the restaurant is packed - which it usually is. The service is really, really good. You can also get a "cracker
New York City
Old factory in Brooklyn, Empire State Building. More to come in the next exciting installment. barrel" branded traditional rocking chair off their porch for $125, with the name of the host state painted on the back.
I have attached a picture of George's house in D.C as proof that I went and checked it out.
After mucking around all morning washing the car and getting a black barber-shop haircut, I hit the road for New York City.
This is a 4 hour maze of "turnpikes" (toll roads with very few exits) and seriously big bridges. Because of it's steep approach and size, the Delaware river memorial bridge is the most impressive I have ever driven but I unfortunately have no photo. Two identical 4 lane suspension bridges stand side by side with the road level rising directly from the river's level to about 14 storeys above the water. The bridge towers are 130m high and the span is 700m before you drop straight back down to the river's level again.
The New Jersey turnpike is about 150 miles with only 12 exits, starting at the bottom of New Jersey, bypassing it's 8 million residents, and dropping you at the toll booths for the George Washington Bridge to New York City. he whole drive, from Delaware up, costs about $25 in tolls.
There's little I can say to describe how great this drive was, but I'll try. The sun was setting, I'd lined up accommodation in Manhattan with Martin, there was gridlock, then 85mph average, then three crashes, then Manhattan's skyline to the Northeast, and industrial Newark and all the gritty transport infrastructure that feeds the world's greatest city. The closer you get, the more your impatience builds along with that of everyone else on the road; "GET ME TO NEW YORK CITY, AND OFF THIS CRAPPY TURNPIKE!"
I finally made it over the GW bridge and found Martin's exit to be the third down the west side. I dropped off the freeway into a ridiculously tight spaghetti junction through a maze of steel, meat packing warehouses, graffitti, elevated subway bridges, deli's, rodents, panhandlers, and trendy restaurants to the beautiful decay that you can only find in uptown Manhattan. New York!
I'll post again in the next couple of days - I arrived in NYC on 30/12/06...
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