The eighth day of my drive is about to break me out of a solo experience and start a shared one when, by mid-afternoon, I pick up Caroline at the Buffalo Airport. At that moment, our vacation together officially begins. This morning, the day starts similarly to previous days with writing, but only some of it because I should have time up north to sit and finish my thoughts as I wait for her flight. When I woke, the rain was coming down, leaving me hesitant to take my stuff to the car, so I wrote a little longer until 9:30, a late start. This first note of Saturday was written where I had breakfast at the Allen Street Diner in Jamestown, New York, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in business. Regarding the photo, I had just entered the Hamlet of Randolph on New York’s Amish Trail and did not want not to forget the charming name.
The same reasoning motivated this photo, also in the Randolph, this is the Little Conewango Creek.
Passing through Little Valley on Route 242, I couldn’t help but stop for this barn, knowing it would trigger Caroline’s pareidolia.
The names of places are wonderful in this part of New York: I’m at the corners of Toad Hollow Road and Buelow Road, and the latter is interesting because a friend, Michael Geesmann, lives in Buelow, Germany. I saw a lot of this plant yesterday and today; I just learned it is known as Goldenrod and is a misery at this time of year for allergy sufferers.
There is no cute name for this pond, also on Toad Hollow Road, just a pleasant scene.
The waters seem a bit thin for fishing, but a nearby sign for Mansfield Creek invites just that.
My wishes that it wouldn’t be storming and blustery for Caroline’s arrival seem to be coming true. Once I reach Buffalo, I’ll have completed 2,540 miles since leaving Phoenix. Time behind the wheel is just under 68 hours, meaning I averaged about 37 miles per hour out on these backroads; as for fuel efficiency, the car informs me that I averaged 50.5 miles per gallon.
And here she is, fresh off the flight from Phoenix, Arizona. With four hours in the air, she had enough time to pluck the needles from her desert-toughened exterior, leave the smell of creosote behind, and was able to find a smile after being packed in an absolutely full flight.
This being not our first time visiting the city where I was born, we knew that Bocce Club Pizza had to be the first stop here. Aside from it and coffee, there was no time for any other nostalgia of sightseeing. Okay, that isn’t exactly true. On my way in, I stopped at Schwables, a small restaurant famous for beef on weck, a roast beef sandwich served on a kummelweck roll, a roll topped with kosher salt and caraway seeds. The old men of yore who used to be the servers here are gone, replaced by a new generation (I guess it was a Covid thing), and the cloth napkins are gone, as is free water. Not only do you have to buy a bottle of water, but there was something different about what used to be the best beef on weck I’d ever had, so another chain to nostalgia has been broken. As for the pizza, it’s the same great pizza as always, and it’s almost better the next day when it’s cold out of the refrigerator. That is exactly what I’m eating as I write this the following morning.
I thought I was done sharing images of corn, but when I realized I could enhance the natural beauty of corn by placing my wife in front of it, that was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.
Driving down country roads on our way to Spencerport, New York, where we’d be staying at the Sleeping Bear Inn, you can’t know our surprise when we spotted a plane flying an acrobatic routine out towards the Genesee Airport. Initially, I thought it might be a crop duster, but then the pilot started doing some quite interesting maneuvers. Our first vantage point wasn’t that great, but not knowing how long the pilot would be in the area, we figured a poor view was better than nothing at all. When we realized he wasn’t going away in a minute, we tried getting closer further down the road and found some others who’d set up chairs at the edge of a small cemetery, so we joined them.
We later learned this was the Wings Over Batavia Air Show at the Genesee County Airport.
If watching this kind of flying wasn’t enough, Caroline received a message on Whatsapp while we stood out here: she’d won something.
A month ago, Caroline sent some money to San Cristobal, Mexico, specifically Colectiva Malacate, a women’s coop that supports local weavers. This wasn’t her first time joining a raffle to win a huipil, but it was the first time she WON! Later, when we watched the video of the raffle, two women were seen holding this piece up; it was as wide as the two of them. This thing is big, and now it belongs to Caroline. Naturally dyed and handwoven, it’s an expensive piece that will probably be donated to a museum at some point in our future, but after vacation, it will be sent to Caroline to enjoy. This was an incredible surprise that topped an already amazing day.
Yet another surprise for us was crossing the Erie Canal here in Spencerport, where we stayed the night.