DAY FIVE: Tuesday September 12th, Boxford MA to Dunkirk NY

​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.