Day 7 Sept. 10. Geneva NY to Keene NH 285 miles

We were out of the minimalist American Value Inn by 8:15, a good start for us. We didn't make a lot of miles today.  It was slow because our route was entirely on secondary roads, eschewing the NY State Thruway aka I-90 that paralleled much of our route.

It's hard to come up with enough superlatives to describe the roads we took today.  About half of the ride was on US 20 between lakes Seneca and Ostego. This road spiraled through heavily wooded glacial valleys that are home to the finger lakes and the Mohawk River. Some of the hills gave our LaSalle's engine and brakes a workout the car relished. We passed through one picturesque lake resort town after another, each delaying us with tourists and tempting points of interest. Places like Seneca Falls, Cayuga Lake, Skaneateles, and Cazenovia can beckon just by their fascinating names. We finally picked Richfield Springs to stop and take a walk through their city park and farmer's market. A small pack of home made Amish oatmeal raisin cookies kept us fueled for most of the day.  Yes, there was an artesian sulfur spring bubbling away right in the center of town.

Nance at the Four Chimneys Inn,
Bennington VT

Our trips are not just for seeing new sights.  Fifty years ago, Bill drove US 20 often when he was a student at Buffalo and his folks lived in Albany.  While much along the route has changed, there is plenty that stayed exactly the same.  Bill thoroughly enjoyed the replays of scenes he had long forgotten.

We left US 20 to take a NE diagonal on NY 80 to skirt the Albany metro area to the north through Schenectady. This took us for miles parallel to the Mohawk River.  The Mohawk now hosts the New York State Barge Canal, the replacement for the original Erie Canal.

Things got a bit slow when we had to stop and go through Schenectady, disrupting a downtown Italian-American festival and the congestion of Union College. Finally, we crossed the mighty Hudson River near Troy NY and began a long climb out of the Hudson Valley and into Vermont following NY 7 which morphed into VT 9.

The first Vermont town we passed was Bennington.  More memories were jogged as we stopped at the Four Chimneys Inn, site of Bill's parents 50th wedding anniversary in 1990.  A brief stop at the Hemmings Motor News gas station gave us another old car fix.

Harleys at the Hogback overlook

VT 9 took on a mountain as it climbed and winded over the Hogback Mountain to view "100 miles of Vermont" and stop at the Gift Shop, a local favorite for motorcyclists and auto tourists.  We ate ice cream and enjoyed LaSalle Q & A with a few Harley buddies.

We continued into Keene NH, the former home of Bill's aunt, uncle and cousins.  Bill spent many enjoyable summers here in the 60's.  It seemed like a good place to stop and put us reasonably close to our final destination in North Conway, now just 130 miles from here.        

We did make a couple of nav errors today, it's easy to do when the scenery is so interesting.  We reprogrammed our GPS and vowed to pay more attention to it.