Today's adventure was a productive one. Honestly, it's hard not to be productive when you wake up to a Holiday Inn Express free breakfast on a smoggy day in a state as great as New Jersey. Our first destination was Philadelphia, which is only about an hour drive from Atlantic City. It would be our first experience with ultra urban driving, and, lucky for me, today was my day to drive.
We pretty much took the most sterotypical Philadelphia tour that we possibly could have. Parked in a garage, saw the Liberty Bell, and walked around Independence Hall and took pictures. We also walked about a mile and a half through some questionable neighborhoods to Pat's King of Steaks--the home of the Philly Cheesesteak. The sandwich was great and the meal relatively inexpensive, and Pat's quality was matched only by their unfriendliness. After lunch we figured we had squeezed this town for everything it was worth, so we hopped on the New Jersey turnpike for the 2 hour drive to New York.
After paying $8 to get on to Manhattan, it took me a little while to get used to the driving rules here. Apparently, you don't have to use blinkers, drive within a lane, or stop at red lights in Manhattan. Once I got acclimated to the driving culture I was able to scoot us around pretty effectively...Hayden was in the backseat as my lane-change spotter and Barrett was up front taking (325) pictures. After two hours of high stress driving through south Manhattan in 5
o'clock rush hour traffic, a tour which included a couple of passes through Times Square and past the WTC site, we headed north and got on I-95 to continue our travels.
Still battling Friday evening traffic to get out of the city, it took us longer than expected to reach New Haven, CT. We did get to pay at least one more $8 toll on top of seeing our sixth Dr. MLK Jr. street of the trip so far, though, so it was probably worth it. Also of note is that today marked the 8th cloudy day of the trip...we have not had a sunny one yet...perhaps the "Almighty Smiter" is trying to keep us out of sight and out of mind. Once we got to the hotel, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they had washer/dryer facilities on site. Hayden and I loaded up all of the crew's dirty clothes in the washer...only to find 45 minutes later that the machine's spin cycle didn't work. We then spent an additional 30 minutes hand-wringing everything out before drying...in the dryer that didn't work well either. After numerous attempts to fix the dryer and even rig up our own hairdryer/clothes hanger contraption to dry our stuff, at 2 am we just hung the stuff up all around the room. Definitely not going to be dry in the morning.
Gasoline Purchased Today: 12 gallons
Sleeping Accomodations: Courtyard Marriott- Wallingford
Tomorrow's Destination: Maine, our northernmost stop
Potential Stops en Route: Yale, Providence, Boston, Harvard
Potential Problems: Wet clothes
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