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| From Day 3 - Philadelphia to Woonsocket, RI |
We grabbed some breakfast and headed out, rain gear and umbrella in hand, to go visit some of the historic sites in Philly. It was a wet 2 kilometer walk to Independence Square, where the Independence National Hall and the Liberty Bell are located. Our walk took longer than expected and they didn't have an available tour of Independence Hall until after lunch. We made the decision to skip the tour which was frustrating at the time, but was incredibly fortunate in hindsight. We went to see the Liberty Bell, then wandered over to see Franklin Court where Ben Franklin had his home, his print shop, and acted as the first US Postmaster. After that, it was getting to be lunch time so we wandered into South Philly to the highly recommended Jim's Steaks for a cheesesteak. We were hoping for the best cheesesteak we'd ever had. We have to say we were a little disappointed. It was okay, but the way it was cooked (cheese just placed on the bun, not cooked in with the meat) made the tastes just all separate and if you didn't take a huge bite, you couldn't taste the whole mix. We'd definitely try some other place next time.
After lunch, we walked back to the parking garage and headed out for what we thought was to be a 5 1/2 hour drive to a campsite in Connecticut. Tropical Storm Andrea had a whole other idea though. As we drove north and entered New Jersey, we hit the New Jersey Turnpike. At first it was moving quite well, but the rain started to pick up and then we entered stop and go traffic for miles and miles. We also started encountering toll after toll after toll. At one point we are convinced we were paying about $1/mile for a 10 mile section. We then started to approach New York City. We were skirting the city proper, but would have to cross the George Washington Bridge. We thought this might be cool and we could see Manhattan, but that didn't really work out the way we wanted.
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| From Day 3 - Philadelphia to Woonsocket, RI |
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| From Day 3 - Philadelphia to Woonsocket, RI |
As you can see, it was raining hard and so foggy that Manhattan is lost in the clouds. We never saw a bit of it! Toll to get across the bridge is $13.50. Seriously?! Megan says, "If it's going to cost $13.50 to go across the bridge and there's this many people crossing, it should be paved with gold dust and angel poop." It was not however, and was in fact rough and poorly paved. At the end of the bridge, we needed to exit and head northeast through Connecticut. Hey surprise, at the end of the bridge there are about 4 exits in the space of a quarter mile and the signage was all at the end. As we started to make our way through the mess of exits and construction that was occurring on those exits, we saw that our exit was coming up like NOW! The entire right lane was filled with traffic beside and behind us, however there was a slow moving semi in the right lane just ahead of us. There was about a 50 to 75 foot gap between front of said semi and the jersey wall marking the left side of the exit. It was either dive for that gap or be re-directed into the middle of the Bronx, so Brett gunned the Edge and squeaked onto the exit. That was our most harrowing part of driving for the entire trip.
As we continued into Connecticut, it became clear that we were not going to be camping that night, at least not without getting completely soaked just trying to set up the tent. We decided to try to make it as far as we could comfortably and hopefully stop in Rhode Island or close'ish to Boston as we wanted to spend as much time the next day as possible sightseeing in Boston. We then ran into more construction and detours. To make a long story short, and as you can see from the map, we detoured up into Massachusetts for a bit then detoured back down to Woonsocket, RI where Megan hoped to get a stamp the next day. After 9 1/2 hours of driving, we finally got to Woonsocket. We found a reasonable hotel, the Woonsocket Motor Inn, for the night. It's not fancy, but it was dry, clean, and reasonably priced. We checked in together but the clerk still gave us a room with two doubles, but we were too tired to go back down to the front office to change it. We ate some snacks for "dinner" and crashed and burned as the rain continued to pound down. Brett remembers very little of this drive, but dreamt of windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth, all night long.
As usual, there's a slideshow below with a few pictures from the day or you can look at the full album.
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