Day 8 – US Appalachia ’24

Holy sleep in!!! We were in the bunk until 8:00 AM this morning. Can’t keep up with the night owls anymore. Morning agenda included pack up, coffee, and a visit to the Andy Warhol Museum. So, after taking a small load to the car, we sauntered down the street to Convive Coffee Roaster. It was a one lady barista show, as she slung Java to customers all by her lonesome. Janie described it as unflappable! Coffee / latte were just what the Dr ordered… solid pick for a good coffee! ☕️

Warhol has been a favorite of Janie’s on our travels at home and abroad. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol (born in Pittsburgh) is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, the museum was closed Tuesday, so it wasn’t possible for us to tour. Thus, we decided to delay departure in order to fit in a visit… as they say “You may only pass this way once”!

This skillfully renovated space, with 7 floors of exhibits, was well worth the stop for us. It carefully curates Warhol’s broad interpretation, whether considering visual arts, film and even his personal collections. His ability to blur the line of “fine” and “commercial” art is front and centre… exploring themes of politics, economics and experimentation through the lens of his creativity. Moments for us were the chuckle at Taylor Mead’s Ass film, the Vote McGovern works that prompted annual IRS audits, his life threatening June ‘68 shooting and video clips of the screen printing / painting processes he used. All in, we were thoroughly entertained for an hour and a half and it was well worth the admission.

With Ms L at the helm, we expertly navigated out of Pittsburgh with eyes on New York State. Pittsburgh did us proper… it was an excellent stay. I’m not sure, in fact, that things could have rolled out any better! However, the reality of a travel day was soon upon us with an estimated 6.5 hrs to our evening accommodation. It was “go east” with a full tank of gas, some planning while on the move, and an audio book!

Other than a gas stop ⛽️, we stuck to the highways and byways until stopping in Horseheads, NY. We saw both interstate and rural route, lots of hilly, turny terrain mixed in with broad, divided hillside highway through northern Pennsylvania. We chose Horseheads in order to visit “On a Roll”, an eatery in town that came up highly rated in Google. That hasn’t steered us wrong yet, so we followed the GPS to the back doorstep. We had done some research and were ordering a “spiedie” (pr. speedy), consisting of marinated meat threaded onto skewers before being grilled and served on a long bread roll. They are local to Binghamton in the central Southern Tier of NY State. They got a huge thumbs up from the Lumsden’s, along with the Salad special we had with it. Overall… awesome stop at a very unassuming business. They put all the “dress-up” in service and product!

When selecting our accommodations for Wednesday, we basically took the driving to Maine from Pittsburgh (almost 14 hrs) and divided it by two. Roughly 7 hrs out on our route was Bainbridge, NY, and the first place we saw that jumped at us was The Bainbridge House B&B. After some jockeying online/phone to nail down a reservation (Janie actually accomplished this during the Pirates rain delay on Tuesday), we arrived to find we not only had a room, but actually run of the whole place. After a great introduction to the owners, I talked wood with Jeff and Janie collected the particulars. We were treated to a beautiful room upstairs, with its own washroom/shower and any kind of snack / drink one could imagine! However, we really didn’t last long… a lot of miles after a late night in Pittsburgh. Happy, though, to be tucked away in this special little space on a bend in the Susquehanna River.

… Day 9 – US Appalachia ’24