Day 8 - Sixty-Six the Hard Way at DennyGibson.com

Day 8: April 27, 2012
Two Bridges, Two Termini

I returned to US-44 at the point I'd left it and was soon crossing the Hudson River on the 1930 Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge.

A bridge is an important part of most pop songs and Simon & Garfunkel sang about a couple of them. One was over troubled water and the other, on 59th street, apparently crossed over waters that weren't troubled in the slightest. But Joseph Bertolozzi goes even further and has used this very bridge as an instrument. Give a listen here. Reportedly, the man plays a mean Eiffel Tower, too.

Then, keeping with the bridge theme, I crossed back over the Hudson on what is being called the World's Highest and Longest Pedestrian Bridge. I've seen that "longest" claim applied to the Chain of Rocks Bridge in Saint Louis and the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga. Maybe each has enough qualifiers in their claims to make them the longest something of maybe the Poughkeepsie-Highland Bridge really did take the title when it opened in 2009. I've now walked over all three just to be sure.

If you would rather dance than walk, Walkway Over The Hudson is organizing what they hope will be the world's longest Hokey Pokey line on June 9.

There are only about forty miles of US-44 west of Poughkeepsie but they're some really good miles and today the weather cooperated. There is a dandy hairpin turn and at least one waterfall that is visible from the road. The beauty and semi-isolation continues right up to the road's end.

At this point I have completed a half (1/2 routes), two-thirds (44/66 route numbers), or 27% (237/884 miles) of the assignment.

I had thought I would be finishing US-44 later in the day and would bed down somewhere before starting off on US-22. But, even though I stretched the time by walking back and forth across the Hudson River, starting from Poughkeepsie meant I was done fairly early. I meandered a bit but in the end decided to go ahead and tackle Newark, get started on Twenty-Two, and then find a motel. The eastern end of US-22 is pretty much right in the middle of an expressway tangle. The first picture was taken a bit beyond that point and after I have even passed a sign with a 22 on it. There is a 22 on the sign in the picture and I swear the cars look a lot more numerous and faster when you're trying to get over a lane.

Modern Twenty-Two is rather uninteresting expressway all the way to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I ended the day. The traffic thinned out some but remained fairly heavy all the way. I think it was the traffic as much as the uninviting roadside that kept me moving. I've included the over-the-shoulder shot of the diner as a representative of the most interesting things I noticed. There were about three of these large modern pre-fab diners between Newark and Easton and one smaller and older one. The big shiny ones aren't all that appealing but I wouldn't have minded visiting the older one. I also saw what I believe was a Stewart's Root Beer stand and I thought about it. It was on the other side, as were all but one of the diners, and no opportunity to turn back appeared soon enough to trigger me making a move. (I've since learned that there is a Stewart's Restaurant in Marion, Ohio.)

[Prev] [Site Home] [Trip Home] [Contact] [Next]