Day 34 – Homeward Bound

Arrival in Philadelphia

Bethesda, MD to Chicopee, MA

Our final real travel day!  (After all this, the 2 ½ hours from my mom’s house to ours will seem like nothing.)  We’d been planning to get a somewhat earlier start, but we all were having too much fun spending time with our friends to be too efficient in the morning.  After Kathleen headed off to work we finally got everything packed up and on the road again.

The Liberty Torch in the Please Touch museum

When we’re looking for a break-up-the-long-drive destination, children’s museums are generally our go-to option.  Kathleen suggested the Please Touch! Museum in Philadelphia, and that seemed to fit the bill perfectly.  On the way we pretty much managed to eat up the last contents of our snack box – beef jerky, peanuts, granola bars, fruit leather – and call it lunch.  (I think that after this trip all of us will be ready for a break from these items.  Which is rather inconvenient with school starting so soon, as peanut-butter sandwiches are also a very popular school-lunch choice.)

The museum turned out to be quite stunning.  The setting was a large city park, and the building had once been the art gallery for the centennial World’s Fair in 1876.  It was ornate and beautiful, with a huge glass domed roof, and immaculately maintained.  (The other stunning part was the price.  It was very fortunate that we had our handy Children’s Museum Reciprocal Membership card with us, which covered four members of the family.  The price for the remaining ticket for one child was $16!)

Actual walking piano used in the movie Big

In fitting with their environment, the exhibits were beautiful too.  The kids had a great time playing in all the exhibits, but the part Bob and I liked best was a section on the 1876 World’s Fair.  There was a very large model of the fairgrounds with lots of information, and some replicas of exhibits that were seen there. We also took in a show called “Eat Like a Pirate” (with an extremely heavy-handed message about healthy eating that I doubt took in even the two-year-olds).We got through the museum in about three hours, which was just right for our planned time for hitting the road. 

Remember that Simpsons episode about the monorail?
I hear that song ("Monorail!") in my head every
time I see the word.

Things did not go quite so smoothly for the remainder of the day.  We figured that leaving Philadelphia at 3:30 we might have some issues getting through New York near rush hour, so we called our friend Justin, New Yorker extraordinaire, for guidance.  He gave us some advice that I’m sure would have been very useful if we managed to follow it, but we ended up taking a wrong turn and going a substantial distance northWEST rather than northeast (though this certainly did help us avoid traffic, since apparently not too many people were interested in going to western New Jersey). 

Dinner was a surprising problem too, given that we spent a large amount of time on a road covered in strip malls, with restaurants everywhere.  The problem was that the restaurant we wanted always seemed to pop up at the last minute on the wrong side of the road with no break in the traffic to get to it, and an opportunity to turn around wouldn’t appear for so long that we couldn’t face the thought of going all the way back.  Or, in one instance, we happily saw a billboard for a place “ahead on the left” and managed to get into the left lane, only to find that it was one of those stupid “jug handle” turns where you have to go right to go left that New Jersey seems unaccountably fond of.  Eventually we made it into a Panera – which was fine until after we’d finished and the kids were crushed to discover an Olive Garden literally 100 feet down the road.  (Luckily the box of frosted scones we’d bought on the way out seemed to help ease the pain.)

Kids in space

Lastly, we had to contend with rude, Type-A drivers.  Usually we don’t have this problem unless we go to Boston.  (If, say, a lane is closed in New Hampshire and traffic has built up, you will see the cars from each line politely taking turns, and everyone gets through as efficiently and calmly as possible.  Connecticut drivers, on the other hand, seem to view this situation as some sort of contest for dominance, where their pride hangs on never allowing another driver in front of them, no matter the cost.  At one point Bob and I were actually annoyed enough that we both opened our windows and yelled at this particular woman simultaneously, which is probably something neither of us have ever done before.)  But eventually we made it to Grandma’s and comfortable beds.

On the positive side, our last few days of car rides have been made very pleasant by the two forms of CD entertainment we’ve been alternating – the radio drama version of the original three Star Wars movies (given to us by Bob’s sister Kris) and the four Melendy Quartet books loaned to us by our friend Katie, which were written way back in the forties but which everyone in the family loved.  (This not that easy when kids’ ages range from 4 to 10.  The other all-star in this department was Beverly Cleary – Ramona and Henry Huggins have stood the test of time well.)  Much thanks to Kris and Katie.

***

From Bob:

Many people are asking us: “What is the worst state you’ve visited on this trip?”  Until today we might have said Kansas, although that wasn’t that bad, or maybe mentioned our Great Salt Lake misadventure, though even that should not tarnish the whole state of Utah.

                Now, we have a clear winner, and we had to wait until our last new state to find it.  Connecticut stinks.

Having spent the first 23 years of my life there, I maybe should have known this.  The 90s-era tourism posters that said, “Connecticut: It’s between Boston and New York,” may have given me some idea there really wasn’t much going on in my native state to crow about.  In retrospect, is seems clear.

But I used to like Connecticut, and our drive through there today was filled with more than a tinge of nostalgia.  The corridor between NYC and New Haven is pretty well known to me, and once you get near Bridgeport, you’re right up near my points of origin.   It was a great place to grow up, largely because we took back roads everywhere.

Now I know that if you drive the highways in Connecticut, particularly after dark, you’re asking for congestion.  The already smooth and comfortable roads need belt sanding or something.  On 95 and 91 they’ve cut three lanes down to one in multiple places, and the population density of the lower half of the state can’t take it, even at 9 pm. 

That wouldn’t be that bad of the Nutmeg Staters were not in some competition with Massachusetts and New York drivers for the mantle of rudest in the US.  The captain of the Connecticut team drives a brown CRV and staunchly refused to let me merge at construction near the North Haven Costco.  There was no reason for her not to let me in.  Jen leaned out the window, arms spread wide in a “what’s your problem?” gesture but she squeezed on by.  What we should have done was taken her picture and posted it on the blog where this person could live in ignominy.  The best I can do it relay Nadia’s comment, “I can’t believe she was so rude; she was an old lady.”  Take that, CRV woman.

This is all included not because I needed a rant – I’ve calmed down in the soothing environment of Grandma’s house (Grandma is never rude) – but because many readers of this blog are from Connecticut.   We’ve been all across this great country and the Costco conflict was the only such effrontery we experienced. Just this one lady in five weeks of driving.  I want all our Connecticut readers to know that there are other places you can go to get away from this lady and her ilk – an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, for instance.

Sunset over the George Washington Bridge