Sonal was kind enough to pick us up this morning at 6:30 to bring us to Sky Harbor. Our non-stop flight left Phoenix just after 9:00 a.m. and arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at nearly 4:00 p.m. I had booked the flight after looking at the number of stops, car rental rates, and airfares at a dozen airports back east. The cheapest flight was into Newark, New Jersey, but that came with the highest rental car rate; Chicago was almost as bad. Columbus, Ohio, and Pittsburgh had the best combination of prices, but Pittsburgh was closer to Niagara Falls – where we were headed. Airfare was a reasonable $235 each round trip, and the rental car for two weeks was a mere $316 with Budget. Once landed, we picked up the car, which was unfortunately upgraded to a fire-engine red Mustang, and were soon on our way into the city.
Our first stop was at the world-famous Primanti Bros. in downtown Pittsburgh for one of their incredible sandwiches. The Primanti sandwich features your choice of meat, egg, or cheese, which is then stacked high with coleslaw and french fries on thick Italian bread – they are yummy. Caroline opted for the Colossal Fish & Cheese and I the Corned Beef & Cheese, though we did have to ask the waitress why the menu lists a #2 best seller but not the #1. She says, “It’s because beer is the number 1 best seller here!”
The road out of Pittsburgh is littered with roadkill. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the stink that goes along with so many dead and rotting animals. At some point, we start keeping track of the zoo outside our stupid red car, which includes some of the following: badger or raccoon (difficult to identify in its current state), a small furry grey thing, two deer with big stink, another furry thing, skunk, something unseen but its aroma reached us easily, bird, bird, furry things, raccoon, possum, something too flat to identify, more deer.
Leaving the turnpike (at the time, we had no idea why a turnpike is a turnpike), we were leaving the death zone and heading for the beautiful lake at sunset zone. Regarding this road nomenclature, I later learned that back in the day, a “pike” was a stick blocking a path. Upon paying a toll, the pike was “turned” up, thus allowing the person to pass the barrier.
We stayed along Lake Erie on Highway 5 through the rest of Pennsylvania to the New York Stateline. Taking photos is becoming a chore as getting in and out of this horrible Ford Mustang that we are close to hating takes an inordinate amount of work. The seatbelt requires a reach-around that demands contortionist skills. The window frame was not designed to rest your arm on it. The passenger seat sits so low and cannot be raised enough for my 5-foot 4-inch wife to see over the hood, which is difficult for me, too. The emergency brake handle was placed strategically in a spot to ensure you’d never want to rest your leg against the center console.
Passing through Ripley, New York, Caroline recognizes Plummer’s Tavern and points it out, reminding me that we’d eaten there back on our year 2000 cross-country road trip. Our destination tonight is Buffalo.
At the time, we were shocked to see this again as, in our memories, Dolly Dimples the Killer Doll was somewhere back in Pennsylvania, not right here at Valvo’s Candies in Silver Creek, New York.
While it was almost 10:00 p.m. when we pulled up to 109 Delta Road here in Buffalo to spend the night with my aunt Lillian, it wasn’t too late for her to help us get a pizza from Bocce Club Pizza from around the corner on Baily Avenue. Getting our fill of the world’s best pizza and catching up a bit on the intervening seven years since the last visit, we were off to sleep. It’s been a busy travel day after nearly 18 hours of being in motion.