Day 16, part 3: On my way "home"

New York is a very large state, yet, they insist on calling everything north or west of New York City "upstate." I lived for the first 18 years of my life in this state, but ventured upstate extremely rarely, and had never been to most o fit, including most of what I drove through today. The names of towns were burned into my psyche, but usually with the prefix SUNY. When you live in New York and apply to state schools, names like Buffalo, Binghamton, Oneonta, Purchase, and Utica recall the terror of SAT tests, essay questions and hormones gone rampant. Now I was able to attach visuals to a few of them. Rolling tree covered hills, brick smoke stacks, and blue collar bars now replaced scantron forms and shaded checkboxes.
I stopped for dinner in Binghamton at a place called Sharkey's

who specialized is something called Spiedies, a local delicacy of heavily marinated pork cubes on a skewer. They were delicious, but didn't photograph well. They also had a steamed clam offer of a dozen for 4 bucks. Those were more photogenic.

And also delicious. Well, anything drowning in clarified butter is delicious.

the trip down through New York actually passed through Pennsylvania and New Jersey before crossing back into New York. The trip actually passed within 10 Miles of my parent's summer home in the Pocono mountains and I considered pulling off the highway and spending the night there, but pushed on to Staten Island.

written by

JRadhirsch on September 16, 2008 from Binghamton, United States

from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip

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Bummer, I'm curious about the Spiedies...want to see photo, now.

written by G-Off on September 17, 2008

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