Liberty and Route Seventeen

I’ve done this a few times during the pandemic.  This time I told my daughter it was my last run.  I’ve been happy to support her heading up to see her boyfriend in Toronto.  Vaccinated, she has the right to go there, to visit a significant other, though he cannot do the same heading this way.  And plane rides are ambiguous.  A different border crossing might not be as straightforward as the one she knew.  Ditto for the train.  Alright then.   We’ll drive back up to Buffalo for the fourth or fifth time this year.  But I’ve made it clear, that this is my last trip.  Get your driver’s license.  Get yer fella to come here. Get on a flight.  Do as you like but I’m done with the New Paltz to Buffalo border-run. 

 

At this point, for the first three hours of travel, over to Ellenville, and on Loch Sheldrake and further ahead till where you meet Liberty and Route Seventeen, I certainly don’t need a map. Left, right, left right again.  I’m not usually one for books on tape but I’ve wanted to read Suzanne Simard’s book, “The Mother Tree” for some time now and my wife has it as an audio book.  I like her voice.  I like the story.  The ride goes quickly for a while.  I think the same cop that busted me a few times back is still sitting there outside of Binghamton.  Fortunately, I was only heading seventy miles an hour or so and it wasn’t fast enough to merit his attention this time.

 

Niagara Falls is crowded.  For the last few times, the border crossing on the American side was a ghost town.  You could roll up to street side, double park, use the facilities at the place that otherwise wanted to charge you $10.00 for the use of their parking lot.  Now there’s a line around the corner and they want $25.00.  Slow going but we all manage to relieve ourselves and get my daughter dropped off safely for her trek over the rushing water to Canada. 

I’m not in the mood, but I acquiesce and actually enjoy myself revisiting the Buffalo Botanical Garden, which was closed during our last visit.  Inside they have quite a few tasteful themed rooms, China bamboo and orchids, Central American jungle, desert cactus.  There was a red horse chestnut in full bloom outside that caught both of our attention.  Will our “revival chestnuts” we planted back home look anything like that?  Certainly hope so. 

We’d planned to head to Rochester.  Pittsford is supposed to be a lovely town and there’s a place that had been recommended called the Erie Grill, but they weren’t open for dinner.  Not yet any way.  Just bar food.  “Next time, thanks.”  I tried one and then another place in Rochester.  They wall seemed sold-out.  What about Syracuse?  Here too, the first two places told us we couldn’t be seated for at least four hours.  Finally, I found the Prime Steak House which could accommodate us right away and we parked there and had a fillet minion and strip stake and clams and Yukon potatoes and enjoyed our dinner with a nice young waitress who was a grad student here at “Cuse.”  We didn’t see much of the town.  She wasn’t able to confirm if that big lake we’d passed on the way into town was Lake Onondaga, though I think it was. 

 

We still had three hours of driving left, after the end of the meal.  I drove for a while.  Suzanne Simard was having ever so much trouble and I wanted to hear her through.  But I couldn’t take it.  I hadn’t had so much as a lick of alcohol, but it didn’t matter.  I was grindingly tired.  Tired.  It had been so many interminable hours behind the wheel.  My wife took the wheel from Albany, and we were home by midnight. 

 

 

 

Saturday 5/29/21