Day 18: New York to Pennsylvania via New Jersey

Thursday, April 23

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Our first move as we left New York was to get lost in Harlem. Well, not lost so much, but … well just not knowing where we were or how to get out. We finally figured out how to get to the George Washington Bridge, and crossed it and passed into New Jersey.

Our next goal was to find the beginning of I-80. We wanted to start from the beginning of that freeway since it goes all the way from New Jersey to San Francisco (via Sacramento) and Sandy had been on much of the road already. So we drove around Teaneck trying to figure out where it started. 

New Jersey

Once we found the start of I-80, we followed it through New Jersey. We saw a billboard for the Land of Make Believe so we took a side trip to see what we thought must be a magical attraction. Well, kids, the “Land of Make Believe” is closed until late spring—and it didn’t look magical enough to take a picture of the park, but we did get a picture of the sign! Sorry.

NJ thinks it has the Land of Make Believe.  

(In actuality, an amusement park that was closed for the season.)

Pennsylvania

We passed into Pennsylvania soon after that. We loved the scenery along I-80 in Pennsylvania. We stopped for an early dinner in Dubois, driving by the still-smoking remains of a Perkins Restaurant that had just burned down before happening upon the Italian Oven. Our meal there was pretty good, marred slightly by Zahid’s salad swimming in red wine vinaigrette, but still overall good.

We took I-80 to I-79 (not the fastest route to Pittsburgh, but again, we wanted to stay on I-80 as much as possible), and then took I-79 south to the house of Zahid’s cousin, Ahmed. We made it safe and sound, despite Zahid’s misreading the directions, thanks to Sandy, “the human GPS.” We visited with Shabana and Sabreen and Sameena—Ahmed was out of town on business. We’d intended to visit with Zahid’s brother Selmaan, as well as his aunt (“phuppu”) and uncle (“phuppa”), but we arrived too late at night. Instead, we chatted with Shabana, got a tour of the house (including the newly remodeled basement), and went to bed.