Sunday 12th May – Albany NY
BTW and before I leave it behind, that “death by burger”
was priced at $18.99. However for $26.99, you could have (quoted from their
menu):
“DOUBLE THE DEATH*
Double everything on the Death by Burger. 36 oz. of meat?
Childs play. This is how to find your way onto the wall of fame or the wall of
shame. Includes a t-shirt regardless. Good luck!”
Well, no Tee shirt, but the group next door clapped me when I finished the
smaller one and that’s good enough for me
As we departed Lincoln for Albany we found that Carmen
wanted to take us back down the I-93, which was the way we had come up, so I
had to put up with her nagging “recalculating” for several miles until she
figured out which way I wanted to go and steered us to the I-91 further west which
took us through Vermont and on into upper New York State. We had skipped
breakfast at our motel to get an early start ( and I was still somewhat
burgered out) so at 10.30 we stopped in at a truck stop to pick up a sandwich. However,
when we got to the door of the truck stop shop, we found a queue on around 40
people waiting to get in. It turns out this was also a Diner with a Sunday
brunch buffet and, not only was it Sunday, it was Mothers Day as well and every
mothers son was taking his mum out for brunch at the truck stop. Anyway, we
managed to fight our way through to get our sandwiches (and lemon meringue pie
– with REAL whipped cream) without being torn to shreds by the locals thinking
we were queue-jumping.
As the day wore on, we passed through some interesting
countryside and the Green Mountain National forest and stopped in the early afternoon for a pit
stop at a cutsie little town called Peru. The JJ Hapgood Store and Eatery (est.
1827) there also had a mother’s day
celebration going on there, including a jazz band – well attended but not to
the same degree as the truck stop. They also had NZ wine on the shelves,
amongst other intriguing things, and the footpath and outer dining area (no-one
was out there – it was 46F) were paved with marble
The motel we stayed at in Albany, NY, was being renovated and
they had us in a nice big room that happened to be set up for handicapped folk.
We had done our laundry in the afternoon and while doing so I found that the
laundry area had about 1” of water over the floor that did not appear to be
draining down the floor drains. A cleaner guy came and mopped it all up but,
after I did the laundry, I noticed there was more water back in its place
(although not as much). After dinner, we
were preparing to retire for the night when the toilet bowl began to fill and
overflow after flushing. Shortly after that, water combined with effluent,
began to bubble up through the drain in the shower. Being a handicapped shower
designed for a wheelchair, there was nothing to stop it running across the
bathroom tiles and onto the room carpet and eventually into the hall carpet. I
raced around and told the receptionist, who said there were no maintenance
people around, and she couldn’t contact the owners (being Sunday) so there was
nothing she could do. I raced back to the room, which was well flooded and
managed to turn off the water to the toilet – but stuff was still coming up
through the shower drain and the damage was done. The receptionist turned up a
few minutes later and suggested we might want another room. We suggested we
might, too. We got a smaller room in an adjacent wing of the motel, but felt
quite anxious every time we used the bathroom. There are obviously some serious
plumbing issues that need to be addressed there (and some management ones as
well). You'll be pleased to know I didn't take any pix.
Monday 13th May – Nazareth PA
We got away good and early after a quick brekkie, as I
wanted to get to Nazareth in time to do a tour of the Martin & Co guitar
factory before they stopped for the day at 2.30pm. Our toll road avoidance
route followed the Hudson river south through some pretty picturesque
countryside and quaint towns. Unfortunately it was raining hard and the
temperature remained between 46 and 48F, so not a lot of incentive to get out
of the car and snap pix. One thing that did tickle me was that Rest Stops are
now also labelled as Text Stops and there are signs 5 miles before each one
saying” You can wait – Text stop 5 miles”. There are also signs that say “Caught
texting three times and you lose your licence”. Must be a big problem over
here! We also had a small fox run across the road in one state park area we
were driving through, which is the only undead item of wildlife we have seen on
the entire trip.
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| Not the best pic, but from the top the sign reads "Text Stop, Rest Area, Truck Inspection" |
At 12.30 we arrived at our hotel (which is apparently near the
Crayola factory......... you know, kids crayons) so I dropped Carolyn off and drove the 4.8 miles
further to the CF Martin factory. The 1pm tour was full so waited for the 1.30,
which turned out at first to be only me and 2 tour guides – although another 3
guys turned up about 5 minutes into the tour. Each guitar is built from scratch
and takes 8 – 10 weeks to finish. They make 200 per day, so there would be
around 8-10,000 under construction at any
one time in the 200,000 ft2 (18,500m2) factory. There is
a lot of robotics and laser cutting, but there is also a lot of hand finishing
as well, and in the custom department (where the high end instruments can cost
up to USD150,000), each one is hand built. If you like acoustic guitars, you gotta see
this place. It just reeks perfection and quality control – no wonder they are
such expensive beasts. I have lots of pix, but posting them all will make this a long posting.
 |
| Apparently robots do a better job of final polishing than humans can (on the production models) Custom models are still done by hand. |
There is a gift shop (yes I bought the Tee shirt) and a
museum with guitars right back to the beginning. There was a private tour going
on while I was there and the guide took out the oldest guitar in the collection
(1834) and allowed them to play it – so I got to as well. It was slightly out
of tune, but still sounded awesome for a 185 year old instrument. I also had a
pluck on a new 12 string (Hotel California – what else) and could have bought
it on the “visit the factory special” for USD679 – but just too hard to get it
home. Which was a shame because it was a beautiful sounding guitar, and one of
the new build that uses carbon fibre reinforcing under the bridge that adds 4dB
to the sound output of an already naturally loud instrument
We had an early dinner at a nearby Diner that turned out
to have the best Pecan Pie I have ever tasted (apart from my own).
Tuesday 14th May – Lancaster PA (via
Delaware)
While reviewing our route for the blog a couple of days
ago, I realized that the Tiki tour that Carmen took us on through the
Pennsylvanian countryside to get us from Baltimore to Philadelphia on the 6th
May had completely bypassed the state of Delaware. The Interstate would have
taken us through it, but her “revised” route missed our crossing the border by
7½ miles. Rather than come all the way across here sometime in the future just
to visit that state to tick it off the list, I figured we had better drop in on the way back to
Washington and today was the best day to do it. Although the direct route from
Nazareth to Lancaster took a little over an hour, the diversion to Delaware
added about an hour more – but we had plenty of time today.
So we got away at 8am and headed for 2 Fat Guys
restaurant in Hockessin, Delaware We had
to put a target address in for Carmen, so that was it – and we figured we might
stop for lunch there, too. However, we got there at 10.30 and they didn’t open until
11am, so we toodled back into Pennsylvania and pushed on to Lancaster, which
was about an hour away.
Again, there was some pretty interesting scenery and
townships on the way and we even got to see some animal life, including 2 dead
deer on the side of the road. Most of the livestock is still being kept in
barns, although we began to see more as we neared Lancaster and Amish
territory. There was even a sign proclaimimg “lambs for sale”, but we never saw
any of them. We stopped at a bakery/gift shop that claimed to have “the best
Shoo-Fly Pie” in the USA”, and gave away free tastes. As Carolyn has been
determined to try it, we decided to stop and sample. It was OK – tasted like
pecan pie without the nuts, but the hint of cinnamon put me off (can’t stand
cinnamon). Next door was a traditional Amish restaurant which was serving
Wednesday buffet @$11.95 per person. Naturally we had to go and try it out –
very basic food, but very tasty and hard to criticize the price.
The weather was not conducive to buggy rides around Amish
farms, so we drove around town for a look before booking into our motel. Later
Carolyn did a little shopping at a Target store, and we did a supermarket
dinner again. This was mine – ribs, baked tatie and salad. Its amazing what you
can cook up in a wee microwave in a motel room.
BTW (and you can check on Google maps if you don’t believe
me) our motel is 6 miles from the township of Intercourse, PA, and you have to
drive through the village of Bird in Hand to get there – and Virginville, PA is
50 miles to the north – makes you wonder what these folk were up to round here,
back then?
Footnote to the motel
dunny flood saga of a couple of days ago. When we checked into the motel in
Lancaster, we couldn’t help but notice a pile of used loos stacked up against a
shed by the carpark. We also noticed that the motel had rooms with planked
hardwood floors, instead of the usual carpet. The confirmation that there had
been issues with flooding from their was the sign in each bathroom that stated,
basically, that; ”we have issues with flooding from our toilets”, and what to
do in such a case. I think that the Albany motel is not the only one that has
had problems
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| New loos at reception waiting to be installed! |
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