The Shortcut Dispute

Today was a short day, uneventful by nearly any measure I can think of.  Weather was mild to warm, skies were partly cloudy to sunny and traffic was light to moderate.  Road surfaces ranged from flawless new asphalt to frost heaved and pot holed concrete.

One bit of diversion, that seemed to annoy KC but charmed me, was a 5 mile "shortcut", recommended by Google Maps as a way to bridge between I-81 and I-88.  We could have stayed on the interstates and taken a longer route, but Goggle said get off...and get off we did.  The shortcut was a straight two lane road through back country that ran over rolling hills, to a limited degree, in their fall colors.  I'll admit it did take us away from any shot of finding a decent lunch break around Binghamton.  We had to drive miles further and finally make do at a DQ.  It was about what you'd expect at a Dirty Queen.

KC remarked that he thought the country looked much like what he would have expected upstate NY and New England to look like.  Some of the towns, often dating back to the 1700's, were very picturesque and historic.  But others were economically depressed and run down and the small villages had the look of places in which folks would grow up and then flee elsewhere for better opportunities.  Occasionally we'd spot small towns with white church steeples jutting above the tree cover.  Farms with weathered red barns, silos standing at slight angles and fields with silage about to be harvested dotted the hillsides.  Yup, it's about how I remember the place.

The terrain alongside the interstate ranged from rolling hills to semi-mountainous (east coast/Appalachian type mountains) covered with hardwoods and eastern Aspens.  While isolated trees proudly announced their full fall bloom,  the overall effect was still very muted fall colors.  It needs a couple more weeks and a good hard frost to reach its full crescendo. However, there was a subtle shift to more pronounced fall colors with each mile driven northward.  Tomorrow we'll drive another couple hundred miles north rising into the cooler temperatures of the Adirondack Mountains, so I'm confident that we'll see more color as the trip proceeds.

Today we finished our book on tape...."The Royal Wulff Murders". The story had more twists and turns than a licorice Twisler.  So it was with some dismay, though little surprise, that KC predicted the end of the story. I LOVED the extent to which the author accurately portrayed fly fishing for trout on the Madison River.  It was such fun to revisit my fishing trips on the Madison going back 25 years and talk to KC about the things I learned there.  This was the very beginning of my love affair with fly fishing and the great state of Montana.  As described in this book, the Madison River presents an excellent spot for one's ashes to be spread.

As we often do, our day has ended at a Hampton Inn...this one appears to either be very new or newly remodeled.   It is VERY nice.

Hampton Inn for tonight and for the night the girls fly back home....Very nice!