Just passing through. Heading northeast. New England bound. Fall by the side of Interstate 90, a.k.a. the New York State Thruway/the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway/AMVETS Memorial Highway, Syracuse, Upstate New York. Day 25. October 21, 2017.

Knives, amo, smokes, kerosene and, em, free coffee. We ventured into the neighbouring shop to use the toilet. While here we attempted to buy a few coffees. We tried to pay but were given them for free. I’ve still no idea why. The Irish charm working its charm on charming small town USA maybe. Sneedville, Hancock County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.

DR CARR OFFICE || The historic Dr. John H. Carr office building in Maynardville, Union County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.
I wish I knew what & who this was all about (insights were not forthcoming), the very small, very yellow and very old (= historic) office of a Dr. John Harvey Carr (1888–1936). Quaintness personified, I believe it’s still in use today as an art gallery cum workshop, a very small one.

FALL FANATICS || Maynardville, Union County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.
If last year’s trip thought me anything it is that the Yanks, especially those in the sticks, love Halloween. And they prepare for it well in advance; we’ve been looking at pumpkins since landing 3+ weeks ago now.

BE BACK SOON || Maynardville, Union County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.
A mid-morning ‘Be Back Soon’ (if at all) in sleepy Maynardville.

COUPE DEVILLE || For sale by the side of US 32 outside Maynardville, Union County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.
I loved this. As always in rural USA, today we saw plenty of abandoned, rusting & has-seen-better-days transport options by the side of the road. However, this, an immaculate 1989 Cadillac Coupe deVille with 74,000 miles (119,00 kilometres) on the clock, has obviously seen some TLC of late and is now for sale. I can’t imagine it reaches a wide audience sitting by the side of a road in rural northeastern Tennessee.

JIMMY MARTIN || Sneedville, Hancock County, Tennessee. October 18, 2017.
The only reference we could find to Sneedville’s favourite son, Jimmy ‘The King Of Bluegrass’ Martin (1927-2005), was this sign on the fringe of the town. Instrumental in developing the bluegrass ‘high lonesome’ sound as a member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, Martin was, by all accounts, a volatile, high-strung character both on and off stage, traits which kept him from realising his lifelong dream of becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

Crossing briefly back into Virginia. On the Tennessee/Virginia State Line, US 33, Hancock County. October 18, 2017.

RURAL SIGHTS & ABANDONMENT || By US 33 just beyond the Tennessee/Virginia State Line, Hancock County. October 18, 2017.
Show-off Halloween displays fronting whitewashed houses amid impeccable display lawns that contrast starkly with unkempt, detritus-plagued surrounds of tumbledown houses & sagging barns; flags (both the Star & Stripes & the Stars & Bars); mile after mile of rusting roadside farm machinery, cars, trucks & tractors; rolling fields, forests & roller-coaster-esque roads. You see & experience them all in rural USA this time of year. They are all eye-catching, but it’s the abundant abode abandonment that’s most striking, most photogenic.

CHARMING COEBURN || Coeburn, Virginia. October 18, 2017.
A right little charmer was Coeburn, its beautiful redbrick-heavy downtown a showcase of antique lamps, brick sidewalks, pedestrian bridges &, this time of year, tasteful fall decorations. Yep, a right little charmer indeed.

FRIENDLY LOVE || Coeburn, Virginia. October 18, 2017.
There weren’t many of the 2,000 or so souls that call Coeburn home out and about on the charming streets of the town on this particular October Wednesday afternoon, but there was plenty of love; we could feel it. After all, the town does have the motto ‘The Home Of Friendly People’.

COUNTRY MUSIC HIGHWAY || US 23, southwest Virginia. October 18, 2017.

KENTUCKY THE RETURN || On the Virginia/Kentucky State Line, US 23, Pound Gap, Virginia. October 18, 2017.
It’s good to be back in Kentucky. I loved it last time.

Burdine/East Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky. October 18, 2017.

Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky. October 18, 2017.

KENNY BAKER || Sam Bentley Cemetery, Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky. October 18, 2017.
We were pretty sure, and still are convinced, that Kenny Baker is buried on the very steep slopes of the Jenkins Sam Bentley Cemetery, we just failed to located the grave. Born in 1926 and buried here somewhere after his death in 2011, Baker is considered one of the most influential fiddlers of the bluegrass genre and is best known for his 25-year tenure with the ‘Father of Bluegrass’ Bill Monroe and his group The Blue Grass Boys.

HYDEN || Main Street, Hyden, Leslie County, Kentucky. October 18, 2017.
‘In The Heart of The Mountains’ & the county seat of dry Leslie County, which bills itself as ‘The Redbud Capital of the World’, Hyden was established in 1878 and had since had two moments in the national spotlight – in December 1970 as the nearest settlement to the Hurricane Creek mine disaster (which killed 38 miners and was immortalised in the Tom T. Hall’s song ‘Trip to Hyden’) & in 1978 when ex-president Nixon made his first public speech here after his resignation following the Watergate scandal.

A quilting pattern adorning a barn in Rural Elliott County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.

KENTUCKY QUILTING PATTERNS || A quilting pattern on a barn in rural Elliott County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.
We noticed them on our back county Kentucky drives last year but never fully grasped until now the whole quilting pattern thing the state has going on. Many of the 120 counties that comprise the state of Kentucky have joined the craze, banding together to display a part of their cultural heritage in a statewide art project the aim of which being to brighten up Kentucky’s rural back country roads in an effort to lure tourists away from interstate highways. And for those lured (or lost), eye candy awaits in the form of hundreds of unique & colourful square quilt panels affixed to roadside buildings, flood walls and rustic barns creating a series of quilting trails. It’s just another reason, as if another one were needed, to love Kentucky.

It’s not just quilting patterns. Colourful murals, mostly sprucing up what looks like bedraggled abandonment, adds to the art gallery nature of a back road Kentucky drive. Elliott County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.

HISTORIC MURAL || A portion of the Historical Mural lining W Tom T Hall Blvd in Olive Hill, Carter County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.
Created by Northeast WIA Youth between 2002 & 2006, the wall fronting Olive Hill’s old High School, now home to the Carter County Public Library and Center For Art & Education, charts the history of the town and its immediate surrounds in vivid fashion. There’s quite a lot to take in – stretching for some 150 feet (46 metres) seems to suggest that there’s a lot more history to sleepy Olive Hill than initially meets the eye.

STURGILL’S || Sturgill’s Music Center, 169 Scott Street, Olive Hill, Carter County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.
The talkative & affable old lady keeping shop in Sturgill’s Music Center was only too happy to dust off old pictures to appease our curiosity while proving her connection to Tom T, her late husband having been both a good friend and band member. The shop cum museum has been a cultural mainstay in Olive Hill for over 55 years, forever promoting the pickin’ of Kentucky bluegrass as opposed to the cutting of it.

Abandonment on Railroad Street, Olive Hill, Carter County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.

RAILROAD STREET || Walker’s Family Restaurant, Railroad Street, Olive Hill, Carter County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.
One of the few businesses still to be found on Olive Hill’s largely abandoned Railroad Street, the site of the town’s now restored but unused passenger depot (trains haven’t trundled into Olive Hill since the tracks were pulled up in the mid-1980s), we didn’t need to ‘Sound Horn’ to attract the attention of the owner of Walker’s Family Restaurant; taking pictures out front of his establishment both lured him out & got us talking. He was curious why we were in Olive Hill at all, we were curious as to why this portion of Olive Hill seemed abandoned. ‘Times are not as prosperous as they used to be’, we were told. I can only imagine.

Breaking the rules on Railroad Street, Olive Hill, Carter County, Kentucky. October 19, 2017.

JOHNNY PAYCHECK || On the outskirts of Greenfield, Ohio. October 19, 2017.
Born Donald Eugene Lytle in 1938, Johnny Paycheck was a country music singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Grand Ole Opry member who achieved his greatest success in the 1970s (specifically with 1977’s “Take This Job and Shove It”) before a period of drug, alcohol and legal problems ultimately led to his untimely death in 2003 at the age of 64. One of the genre’s most underrated performers, we visited his grave in Nashville‘s Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery only 3 days’ earlier.

Approaching the end of Day 24. Eastbound on busy Interstate 90, northeastern Ohio. October 20, 2017.

DAYTON || Waiting. laundromat. Dayton, Ohio. October 20, 2017.
There’s not a whole lot to say about Dayton, southwest Ohio’s manufacturing centre & home to National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, apart from the fact that we bedded down in what was easily the worst room we’ve frequented in what is now 60 days of US road-trippin’ (between this year and last) – locations are memorable for a myriad of reasons, not all of them good. Oh, and our Dayton daylight hours were spent shared between Cracker Barrel & this laundromat before heading north for Michigan.

TRABBIC PUMPKIN FARM || Tomfoolery. Trabbic Pumpkin Farm off E. Sterns Road, Erie, Michigan. October 20, 2017.
Thumbs-up at state & attraction signage is one thing, but Michigan, as brief as it was, provided something a little different. No doubt there are pumpkins around here somewhere, and lots of them. It’s just that we didn’t see any (although we didn’t look). All we saw were these awesome hay bale characters, too big and way too enticing to ignore. We couldn’t resist. After all, we needed an Epic US Road Trip 2017 Michigan highlight and suffice it to say options were limited.

OHIO TURNPIKE || Toll ticket torment on the Ohio Turnpike, Toledo, Ohio. October 20, 2017.
The main conduit between Pittsburgh & Chicago, the 241-mile (388 kilometre) Ohio Turnpike was built in the early 1950s and opened in 1955, a year before the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorised the construction of the Dwight D. Eisenhower-championed US Interstate Highway System.

LAKE ROAD || As seen from Lake Road skirting the southern shore of Lake Erie, Bay Village, Ohio. October 20, 2017.
We left the Turnpike, preferring a leisurely afternoon drive east to Cleveland via Ohio’s swish Lake Road instead of hurtling there via more dulling Interstate. This shore-hugging stretch of the 3,200-mile, California to Massachusetts US Route 6 has some rather grandiose lakefront property (with some equally grandiose price tags). They were impressive enough to make me pull over more than once.

Lake Road. No doubt a favourite among Realtors. Bay Village, Ohio. October 20, 2017.

HUNTINGTON RESERVATION || The distant city of Cleveland as seen from Huntington Beach of the Huntington Reservation by the shores of Lake Erie, Bay Village, Ohio. October 20, 2017.
Today part of Cleveland Metroparks and once the country estate of wealthy Cleveland industrialist & philanthropist John Huntington (born in England in 1832), the lakefront Huntington Reservation is one of the oldest reservations in the greater Cleveland area and still contains many of the unusual botanical specimens brought from Europe by Huntington himself. As a recreational hub for the Greater Cleveland area, it provides lake access for walking, picnicking, boating, fishing, bird watching and swimming, its beach the first on the shores of Lake Erie and in the state of Ohio to attain Blue Wave certification (2011), a national environmental certification designed to help maintain robust, healthy and vibrant beaches.

Long stretches of New York State Thruway (or US Interstate). Bluegrass Junction just eats ’em up. Heading east today on the New York State Thruway/Interstate 90/AMVETS Memorial Highway, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

NEW YORK STATE THRUWAY|| More toll ticket torment, this time courtesy of the New York State Thruway/Interstate 90/AMVETS Memorial Highway, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.
Just over 300 of the 430 miles we clocked today were spent heading in an eastward direction via the New York State Thruway, known officially as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway for former New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Running for a whopping 496 miles (798 kilometres), from the Pennsylvanian state line in the west to the outskirts of New York City in the east, makes this the longest toll road in the US, not to mention the 5th busiest. The first stretch of the road opened in June of 1954, before the creation of the mid-1950s nationwide Interstate Highway System, & today it comprises 6 different highways. Today we drove a 301-mile stretch of Interstate 90, itself designated within New York State as the AMVETS Memorial Highway, which put a combined $13.60 dent in our coffers via three separate toll payments (E-W: Ripley to Lackawanna, 67 miles, $3.15; Buffalo to Herkimer/Mohawk, 212 miles, $9.45; Canajoharie to Amsterdam, 22 miles, $1).

THURWAY SERVICE AREAS || Tim Horton’s at the DeWitt Service Area, New York State Thruway/Interstate 90/AMVETS Memorial Highway, Syracuse, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.
Things are noticeably different on the New York State Thruway compared to the nationwide Interstate Highway System. The signage, the exits & the services. All different. Seeing a Tim Hortons for the first time today (we’re even seeing signs for Canada) saw us picking up a Timmies & a few donuts to accompany us for the remainder of the drive east to Cooperstown.

COOPERSTOWN & THE COOPERSTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT || Main Street, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.
An attraction in its own right, most of the historic pre-1900 core of the village of Cooperstown, including the stretch of Main Street seen here, is part of the Cooperstown Historic District, a grouping of over 220 buildings that collectively achieved listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Facades of Main Street, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM || The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Main Street, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

HALL OF FAME GALLERY || The Hall of Fame Gallery of The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.
Spread over 3 floors, The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a many faceted shrine to the game with permanent & changing exhibits & galleries galore, a theater, a library and an interactive statistical database. Suffice it to say, all of that supplements the main event, the Hall of Fame Gallery. Only the crème de la crème – just over 1% of the ballplayers privileged enough to have gotten the chance to lace ‘em up in the Big Leagues, a monumental achievement in and of itself – make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, those enshrined (on average 4-6 a year since The First Class of 1936) immortalised via small bronze plaques permanently displayed here in Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame Gallery. It’s a who’s who gallery of baseball icons. Household names. The very best of the best to ever play the game.

The Babe. Elected to the Hall of Fame as a member of The First Class of 1936. The Art of baseball exhibition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

BASEBALL ROOTS & THE NATIONAL PASTIME || A display in the museum of The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.
People have played stick & ball games for thousands of years throughout the world, but baseball as we know it today first took hold in and around New York City in the mid-19th Century, a social club devoted to the game, the Knickerbockers, accredited with being the first organised baseball team of its kind. Upon its formation in 1845, the Knickerbockers would pen 20 rules for their version of base ball – then called the ‘New York game’ – which eventually laid the foundations for today’s multi-billion-dollar game (& industry), it evolving over the past century & a half into the nation’s beloved National Pastime, one ingrained in most facets of modern-day American society.

The Final Goodbye. Derek Jeter, eligible for Hall of Fame inclusion in 2020. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

Trevor Hoffman, a 2018 Hall of Fame Inductee. A display in The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

Cubs Win! Finally. A World Series 2016 base on display in The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, Upstate New York. October 21, 2017.

A real New England primer. Fall foliage as seen from New York State Route 9N/Lake Shore Drive, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.

Upkeep on Montcalm Street, Ticonderoga, just one of the quaint & sleepy towns we passed through today en route from Lake George to Essex to catch the ferry across Lake Champlain to Vermont (& New England proper). Ticonderoga, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.

LAKE GEORGE || Boating on Lake George as seen from Fort William Henry, Lake George, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Thank god for the lake is all I say, saving the day despite getting the bum end of the deal; the lake has given the seasonal village its name, while the village in return has given the lake tourists, and lots of them. Long (32 miles/52 kilometres long), narrow, deep and known as the Queen of American Lakes, Lake George shimmers & shines, and it certainly did today on a sunny late October Sunday.

LAKE CRUISING & FRENCH & INDIAN WAR || The Minne-Ha-Ha II & the Lac Du Saint Sacrement moored by the shores of Lake George, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Given the tourist numbers, it’s no surprise that forays out onto the waters of Lake George are de rigueur. In operation since as far back as 1817, making it the oldest company in the Lake George region, The Lake George Steamboat Company claims the lion’s share of the Lake George cruise market, accommodating cruisers in 1 of its 3 vessels, two of which are seen here docked at the company’s base by the shores of the lake. In the foreground is the slender chimney of the sternwheel steamboat Minne-Ha-Ha II, in operation since the late 1960s and today the last steamboat operating on Lake George. In the background is the smoking stack of the 4-deck flagship Lac Du Saint Sacrement, the largest and newest boat in the company fleet. In constant operation since 1989, its name comes from the original name of Lake George – the lake was renamed after King George II of England following the French defeat to England in the 1756-1763 Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in North America), hostilities which resulted in the French ceding all of its North American territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain, regional history which is documented in the reconstructed Fort William Henry overlooking the lake, another Lake George attraction.

BOLTON LANDING – LAKE GEORGE +11 MILES || Chic’s Marina on Lake George’s Huddle Bay as seen from Lake Shore Drive, Bolton Landing, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.

TICONDEROGA – TO BOLDLY GO – LAKE GEORGE +40 MILES || Montcalm Street, Ticonderoga, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Its position at the crossing between Lakes George & Lake Champlain has given Ticonderoga, from the Mohawk tekontaró:ken, meaning “it is at the junction of two waterways” – its name. Located on a direct navigable water route (via rivers & the two aforementioned lakes) between New York & Montreal means this region has been traversed by natives for centuries, although the settlement of Ticonderoga itself only dates to 1804. That said, with a population of 5,000 this is one of the larger lake-hugging settlements round these rural parts of Upstate New York’s Essex County. Well known in Sci-Fi spheres, one of the town’s biggest draws is its faithful reproduction of Hollywood’s Stage 9 at Desilu Studios (now Paramount Pictures) where the original 1966-1969 Star Trek series was filmed. Meticulously recreated over a 14-year period by superfan James Cawley, the recreated sets have been drawing Trekkies since its 2016 opening at 112 Montcalm Street.

LIBERTY MONUMENT & HANCOCK HOUSE || The Liberty Monument fronting the Hancock House, Ticonderoga, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Another faithful Ticonderoga reproduction here, this one listed on the National Register of Historical Places since 1988. The town’s fetching Georgian Revival-style Hancock House is a mid-1920s replica of the original 1730s Hancock Manor that once stood on Beacon Hill in Boston, the residence of Thomas Hancock, the uncle of John Hancock, American revolutionary patriot and the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. Home today of the Ticonderoga Historical Society, the museum here delves into history of both the town and the greater Adirondacks region via its collection of photographs, manuscripts, artifacts, and books. Out front of the house, sitting in the middle of a traffic junction marking the end of Hague Road & the start of Montcalm Street, is the bronze, somewhat squat-looking Liberty Monument. In situ since 1924 and itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989, it is topped by an interpretation of Liberty while its lower portion is composed of four life-sized figures – a Native American, a Frenchman, a Scottish soldier and an American – symbolising the four groups whose military exploits form a large part of Ticonderoga’s often bloody history, the monument’s plaque stating ‘To Commemorate The Successive Struggles In And About Ticonderoga By The Indian-French-English And American Nations’.

CROWN POINT – LAKE GEORGE +50 MILES || Crown Point, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Only 10 miles north along the southern shores of Lake Champlain, Crown Point‘s location at the narrows of the lake made it a strategic location for combative European powers during the mid-18th Century; both the French, in 1731, and then the English, in 1759, built forts here. Remnants of the forts remain, but today Crown Point, a settlement of some 2,000 that was first settled around 1800 with an influx of settlers from Vermont, is as sleepy as all the other settlements around here, especially on a somber Sunday afternoon in late October.

WESTPORT – SLEEPY HISTORIC SLEEPER – LAKE GEORGE +68 MILES || Ballard Park overlooking Lake Champlain, Westport, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
It would seem the settlements get smaller the further north you go, the closer you get to the Canadian border. Westport, 18 miles north of Crown Point, population of some 1,300, was established in 1815. Small it may be, but rural Westport boasts great lake views and many a beautiful & historic structure, mostly restored or preserved remnants of a time (mid-19th Century) when Westport was a fashionable upstate resort town. It’s also famous as the birthplace of the Adirondack chair, a simple outdoor chair made of wood or man made materials first designed here in 1903, and for being home to Camp Dudley, YMCA, dating to 1885 & the oldest continuously running boys summer camp in the US. So there’s quite a bit to Westport that wouldn’t seem obvious at first. A sleepy historic sleeper indeed.

Main Street, Westport, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.

ESSEX FERRY DOCK – LAKE GEORGE +81 MILES || North, South (via road) or East (via ferry) to New England (Vermont). At the Essex Ferry Dock off Lake Shore Drive, Essex, Adirondacks, Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Thirteen miles north of Westport is the ferry dock in Essex (population 650), our gateway across Lake Champlain to Vermont & New England proper.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN FERRY || New England bound. The Essex, New York to Charlotte, Vermont ferry crossing Lake Champlain in Upstate New York. October 22, 2017.
Operating year-round (although it is susceptible to heavy ice), the no-frills and quick (30 minutes or so) 3-mile (5 kilometre) crossing of Lake Champlain from Essex, New York to and Charlotte, Vermont (or vice versa) has been in operation in one form or another since around 1790 (although it has only been a year-round service since 1998). Until the lake was bridged in the 1920s (further south in Crown Point), this was the primary route for cross-lake travel and still today it ferries some 1 million fare-paying passengers a year.