​I wake at 8am – no kids to disturb me any earlier today – and grab a shower and a shave before checking out of the Clarion Hotel by 8.45am. I skip the hotel breakfast for a hopeful coffee and Danish in Eyrie PA which is just 40 miles down the road. Before heading off, I survey Lake Eyrie from the harbour at Dunkirk. It is pretty bleak, the rain has stopped, but there is still a lot of grey cloud overhead. I head off along route 5, the Seaway Trail, rather than go backwards to the I90. The road is closed ahead but a detour takes me around the obstruction and back onto the route. It weaves past a number of Lake Eyrie wineries but it is a bit early for a tasting – and I am driving. I pass a nice looking harbour at Barcelona NY with a lighthouse and the Westfield fisheries. I realise this is where Julian had picked out a nice Historic Inn for me to stay at last night, the William Seward Inn – oh well.
 
I cross the state line into Pennsylvania – three states down now – and reach Eyrie in under an hour. However, Eyrie is actually quite a big city and there is little hope of finding a nice quiet coffeeshop by a picturesque harbour for breakfast. I drive past the city’s Maritime museum and the Brig Niagara sailing ship but don’t stop. Instead I swing back on to the I90 just as the rain starts again and put my foot down for the 120-mile journey across the state to reach Cleveland OH. Somehow, I manage to slip off the I90 at a confusing junction and find myself heading south towards Akron OH – Devo-land! Luckily, however, I take the first Cleveland-bound exit I see with signs for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame which brings me back onto the I90 and soon after for the turning onto North Lakeside into the city. I easily find somewhere to park near the Hall of Fame by the lake, which costs just $8 for the whole day, not that I can stay as long as that – the road will call me.
 
The Hall of Fame is in an impressive building designed by Louvre pyramid architect IM Pei and is next door to the Great Lakes Science Park - which has a wind turbine outside – and the big stadium of the Cleveland Browns NFL team. Once inside, I spend two hours touring around all the amazing exhibits which include clothes, cars, records and other memorabilia from the plethora of inducted rock stars, as well as visiting the Inductee Theatre for movies of the events. After a quick lunch, of a chicken wrap and an iced tea, I hit the gift shop so I can top up my car CD collection – the four that I bought at the airport having already been almost played to death. I buy five more including albums by Tom Petty, Bob Seger and Bonnie Raitt – perfect US toad trip driving music to put on when the iPod battery fails. I also buy a Hall of Fame t-shirt (set to be the first of many ‘tour’ t-shirts), an exhibition guide, a metal guitar bookmark, and some plastic guitar picks. I then walk over to the Science Park for a quick browse and to grab a coffee before heading to the car park and the Mustang.
 
Driving back to the I90 through the Cleveland rush-hour at around 4.15pm I pass the Cleveland Indian’s baseball stadium, Jacobs Field. Overall it seems a very pleasant American city, with plenty to do and a nice situation on the lake. I reach the Ohio Turnpike, which is what the I90 is called here, just as the heavens open once again. Great forks of lightening streak through the sky accompanied by crashes of thunder. Plumes of spray from the big sixteen-wheeler trucks mean it is very hard to see far ahead and makes it impossible to tell whether the downpour has actually stopped. I also need to make sure I avoid the many sloughed off truck tyres which are strewn by the roadside. Pulling off to get some more gas – 10 gallons at $2.19 each, much cheaper than in NY and MA – I also buy a more up-to-date US road atlas and a car charger for my iPod.
 
Back on the interstate, I pass the Toledo OH exits at around 5.45pm and decide to head north to Ann Arbour MI to stay the night. This is in homage to my old friend Steve McGookin, who spent time as a Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbour. When I told Steve that I was embarking on this mad journey he suggested that I should find a CD for every state I cross. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska will be an easy one for later (we are both big fans of The Boss), but for Michigan songs are harder to come to mind. I am going to go through Kalamazoo later (I know a girl there!!!??), however, and just north of Ann Arbor is Saginaw where Simon & Garfunkel hitchhiked all the way from in America! My stay in Ann Arbor is also a nod to one of my favourite US economic indicators – the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index!
 
The city is a quick 46-mile detour from the I90 and I reach it around 7.15pm. After cruising around the centre to get my bearings and see the University campus, I head back to the outskirts to find accommodation and food. I stop at a Red Roof Inn and check into a standard motel room at $59.99 for the night. Red Roof’s are actually a touch above standard motel fare being owned by French hotels giant Accor. The rooms have been refurbished to a good standard, with tasteful décor, carpets, and bathroom furnishings.
 
Head straight out to find food – I know most Americans eat early and you can often find restaurants closing by 8.30pm-9.00pm. I choose Carson’s America Bistro not far from the motel and have a tasty meal of deep-fried artichoke hearts and a 14-ounce ribeye steak with fries washed down by a pint of local Mad Hatter IPA from New Holland, MH.
 
Julian calls on my cellphone to check on my progress and is amazed by the distance I have covered so far. Not quite as many miles travelled as yesterday, only around 330 – but then I spent a lot of time at the Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Best sign I saw driving through Michigan, on route 23, said: Prison Area: Do not pick up hitchhikers! Car mileage at end of day: 3,348.

​The proper journey starts today! Once again the kids' banging and crashing downstairs awakens me at 7.30am but I get up and grab a quick shower and shave. I make it downstairs for a coffee in time to say farewell to Henry before he heads off to school and I hit the road. I read him the start of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island but he has a fit because he must leave for school before I could finish the concise Readers Digest version (as Karen called it). So no real goodbye for Henry.
 
Karen takes the young chap to school as Julian has a 9am work conference call, so I decide to delay my departure until around 9.45am. Pack my things back up and load the Mustang on the drive by 9.10am when Julian comes skipping out of the garage doors happy because the conference call has been postponed. So, we share a pot of tea and he gets a map to outline to me the quickest way from Boxford to reach the I495 highway to get on to the I90 interstate – basically the road I will be mostly following all the way across America. Karen arrives back from dropping Henry off with Caroline and it is time for me to make my fond farewells. Julian has a solo trip over to London in ten days’ time, ironically, and I tell him to say ‘Hi’ to those there who don’t know where I have gone. I will see the Troake family again in the UK at Christmas when all of them will be going over to stay with this family in Coney Hall.
 
I climb into the Mustang, fire up the V8 beast and waving goodbye to all head through the town of Boxford to North Andover and the 495 junction. It is an easy drive around the 495 to the I90 junction just outside Worcester MA. It only took 55 minutes to do the around 60-mile stretch, even having avoided Julian’s shortcut using the 280 because of road works. Aside from further occasional road construction, I manage to get up a good speed on the interstate, utilising the Mustang’s cruise control to a steady 70-ish mph speed – the speed limit varies between 65 or 55 mph. Handy little buttons on the cruise control steering wheel stalk allow you to incrementally raise or cut your speed level, which is very useful for overtaking. My feet spend their time tapping out the rhythm being played by my new airport-bought CDs on the car stereo as they have little else to do.
 
I reach almost the end of the state of Massachusetts around 12.15pm, just in time to stop for lunch – with around 150 miles completed. Julian suggested stopping at Lennox for lunch, home of the world-famous Tanglewood Music festival. But though I head that way having turned off the interstate, I twice miss the turning for the town centre and end up heading instead for Stockbridge, a town I know fondly having stayed at the Red Lion Inn there a number of times. So it is there that I stop for lunch at around 12.45pm, having a cup of chowder and a Steak Bomb sandwich at the Main Street Restaurant. Stockbridge is a pretty New England town that was immortalised by illustrator Norman Rockwell in a number of paintings – his studio is close to the town together with a very good museum dedicated to him.
 
I head back towards the I90, filling up with gas for the first time on the way. It costs around $35 for 12 gallons. I also buy a bottle of water and some Sour Rancher sweets (which turn out to be horrible!) and with these provisions switch on my iPod with wireless transmitter to provide music as I head towards New York state. The weather is very pleasant, blue skies with some high cloud, and a temperature of around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The miles are just eaten up by the easy and fairly clear interstate driving. I reach the New York state line around 2.15pm and on to the city of Albany by 2.45pm – though I have no desire to visit the state capital having only been back on the road for an hour or so.
 
From Albany, however, it is still a further 300 miles to my first night designated stop-off point around Buffalo. Traffic on the I90 remains fine but the weather deteriorates, slowing my progress. Just past Syracuse at around 4pm the heavens open and don’t stop. Syracuse looks nice from a distance, even in the rain, sitting as it does at the end of one of the region’s many lakes. The iPod battery runs down quickly – after around 3 hours usage – so then it’s a switch to radio (some good old country music) and back to the same four CDs I played earlier!!! Rochester NY passes by and the turn off for Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario and then its onto Buffalo which I reach around 5.45pm. Rather than turn off to stay around the big city I decide to carry on for another hour or so to try and find accommodation around the Lake Eyrie area, which Julian said sounds interesting. I would like to make it to Erie PA but that is still 88 miles and another state away and I would like to find a hotel by 7.30pm-sh, especially given the bad weather.
 
I shun the turn-offs for Angola and Eden but put in some more gas ($38 worth) and take the Silver Creek exit towards the indicated lodging of the Lighthouse Inn. I drive past the said inn, which is shabby and miles from the lake, and carry on into the town but there is nothing else available, so I decide to carry on along Lakeside Road to Dunkirk NY, which a sign says is eight miles distance. A familiar old name, and hopefully welcoming. I finally glimpse Lake Eyrie through the rain as I pass a run-down looking inn on the shoreline. Carrying on to Dunkirk I find that the Lakeside Road ahead is closed – not sure if it is construction or the weather – but the town is busy enough with a big harbour and a modern-ish Clarion Hotel. I pull in there and take a room for the night - $99.95 for a city view and $109.99 for a lake view. I opt for the lake view and have to squint out of the window to see it.
 
As it is still bucketing down with rain outside, rather than exploring the town, I decide to have dinner in the hotel’s Windjammer restaurant, which is next to the bar and lounge where karaoke is taking place. There is only one couple in the restaurant but the service is OK and the food surprisingly good – I have seafood bisque and sauteed grouper with scallops. The nearby karaoke is excruciating, however. The low point being the mangling of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, an outlier among many murdered country ballads. The highlight is hearing a Rodney Crowell song entitled It’s Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long! I retire to bed without having desert or a coffee to escape the noise.
 
That was my longest day of driving ever, ten hours and over 500 miles – in the UK I would have reached the end of all the roads and fallen into the sea! The only side-affect from the marathon journey is a crick in my neck and left shoulder. Importantly, I am within striking distance of Cleveland OH – two states away - for a trip around the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow. Car mileage at end of day: 3,019.

​Make sure I am up earlier today in order to be on time to accompany Henry to his new school. The three-year old boy has only been going there for one week but seems happy enough. The school, in Boxford Community Hall, is only a seven-minute drive away in Julian’s Jeep Grand Cherokee.
 
The women also dropping kids their kids off at the school all ask Julian how he had enjoyed the game yesterday, mentioning that their husbands were all jealous, just like Karen was. Julian pointed out that his English visitor was his excuse for being able to go, which made them all eye me suspiciously.
 
We drive back to the house to grab some bacon sandwiches and switch from the Jeep to the Camry for a trip into the great city of Boston. Karen needs the Jeep which has the children’s car seats in so see can pick Henry up from school at 1pm.
 
It’s an easy drive into Boston down the I80 which takes you right into the centre of the city and, in fact, can speed you through it and out the other side all underground following the amazing Big Dig construction of the 1990’s, a project Julian’s father-in-law, Dick, helped construct as an engineer. We head for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and park in a lot opposite it, on the roof this time – even Julian would not be able to forget that as his parking space!
 
As Julian and Karen as members of the museum, I get into the exhibition we have come to sees for free – otherwise a ticket cost $23. Entitled ‘Americans in Paris’, the exhibition is very good, although I could have seen it at the National Gallery in London earlier in the year, such turns the world of art. Lots of American women artists are featured; ‘Whistler’s Mother’ is here too; but the heart of the exhibition remains John Singer Sargent’s portraits, notably ‘Madame X’.  Beautiful but controversial, the bare shoulders picture scandalised the Paris Salon crowd – and that was after Sargent had been persuaded to repaint it with dress straps added! Madame X’s features remind me of an unrequited, married love interest in London – same profile and great figure.
 
In the gift shop after I buy the exhibition catalogue and also succumb to a framed print of ‘Madame X’ – just so I can carry it for 4,000 miles! Julian and I then lunch at the Bravo restaurant at the MFA, which is a cut above the café situated below it. Scallops and fettucine for me; Angus beef burger for him; half a bottle of Bordeaux to wash it all down.
 
The journey home is via a Stop & Shop for groceries, which is always fun, eyeing all the amazing things US supermarkets seem to have compared to UK ones. We get back around 3pm for tea with Karen who has picked up Henry, and then en masse we head out again, this time in the Jeep, to go apple-picking at Ingoldsby Farm. Both kids fall asleep on the way there – which was perhaps the aim – and when we reach the farm, we find that PYO apple-picking is only available at the weekends. Julian and I take Caroline into the farm shop anyway to buy some fruit and pies, plus some coffee to drink on the trip home and a Pumpkin Moon cake. Karen looks after sleeping Henry in the car.
 
We get back around 5pm to find dinner cooking on a timer. It is a special occasion as it is my last night in Boxford before my long road trip, so we open some wine to go with the very pleasant meal Karen has made. Henry, however, is overtired and mopes a bit. After dinner and a bath for the young chap, it takes Julian nearly an hour and a half to get him to sleep. Karen and I relax with a sleeping Caroline. Afterwards Julian whips up some cream – his signature food! – to go with a chocolate cake dessert and we eat that with a glass of wine watching TV in the room above the house’s integral triple garage.  It is showing President GW Bush’s address on the actual anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His stand-out line is something like we will turn “the deserts of despotism into the fields of liberty”. Once again, I remember the events and feelings of five years before.
 
Julian and Karen both fall asleep on the sofa by 10pm as Henry has been waking them up early recently – it was 5.15am today. I empty out Julian’s piggybank – which he has said I could do – looking for statehood quarters, a series the US mint started a while back that I have been collecting on my trips to the country. I find four from 2005 and 2006 that I don’t have. The noise of shifting coins causes both Julian to wake and we repair to our beds. Car Mileage at end of day: 2,496.