Day 66

5. July 2000, Niagara Falls to Binghamton

Leaving Canada and entering the United States again. We mostly drive through the state of New York, but also through the state of Pennsylvania. The America here is very different from that of the Midwest, but many things are of course common to the whole of the U.S. The main difference is probably in the architecture of the houses and design in general. The East Coast is the starting point of the colonization of modern America, so it not surprising to find more elements of 18th-century and older history here, whereas in the west it was mainly 19th-century. Streets have Dutch or French names, villages and towns can claim to have a certain age, New York is the Empire State.
The old-style houses and farms provide a very nice scenery and the weather is beautiful so it is a pity that today is quite rigidly timed and we have to make sure that we move on without stopping.

TC 260: Niagara Falls OUT
9:
17  
TC 260A: Border IN
9:
47 14 km
TC 260B: Border OUT
10:
07  
TC 261: Wyoming IN
12:
07 126.36 km
TC 262: Wyoming OUT
12:
34  
PC Towanda, PC Route 167 Citgo      
TC 267: Binghamton IN
18:
14 395.77 km

Overall 1 hour 47 minutes penalty

The official results can be looked up on this website

Another day with lots of navigation commands and passage-checks with unknown location. Some cars just resort to following others.

The Cannonball Pub in Wyoming, New York. If I understood the story correctly, this pub is owned by the person who won the first Cannonball race coast-to-coast with a Ferrari in something like 37 hours (impressive feat!). Cannonball was an unofficial road rally in the Seventies - Hollywood later made some movies about this event. Team Busch does not endorse either of them - the first being illegal and probably dangerous for third-parties and the second not particularly good.

All these photographs of famous racers and car spare parts hanging everywhere! Wonderful - we decided to leave, though, when we saw the sandwiches. So we would recommend stopping by for a drink.

The area is reasonably hilly.

Binghamton. This building has Justitia with her scales and blindfold on top, so I presume it is a courthouse. The mid-sized city of Binghamton is quite a contrast to the rural areas of New York we drove through before. The inner city appears run-down, although there are some nice buildings from the Twenties.

 

 

The locals show off their own classic cars.

The Pub has all kind of memorabilia inside and a nice atmosphere.

We are driving through the state of Pennsylvania for a few hours.

Other than some suburban areas around Niagara Falls, we mostly see farmland and some rural settlements. Houses are mostly colonial or other old-style and quite nice to watch. The houses are difficult to photograph though, as they can only be fully viewed orthogonally from the street and today is a pretty hectic day concerning timing. (Most of the photographs you see on this website are taken out of the car's co-driver seat at about 80-130 km/h)