An early start and Sunday morning meant that the roads were fairly quiet as we crossed over to Manhattan via the Midtown Tunnel to drive the one mile of the Lincoln Highway that is in New York before we cross into New Jersey by the Lincoln Tunnel. Despite it being quiet, there were still quite a few aggressive drivers about and two taxis had the misfortune to collide right in front of the police who were directing traffic around some barriers that they were setting up for an event. It’s hard to believe that New Jersey is the Garden State at first given the industrial landscape and all the concrete surrounding the roads emerging from the tunnel. The Highway has had various routes here over the years on different streets, Routes 1 and 9 so navigation can be quite tricky.
After Newark it takes R27 and passes through Kingston which was settled in 1675 and is near Rockingham Historic Site; George Washington’s headquarters in 1783. It did not open until later on Sunday so we could not see inside the house but wandered around the grounds.
Kingston is also close to a lock on the Delaware & Raritan Canal. It was dug by Irish labourers between 1830 and 1834. It is now used for walking, cycling fishing and other leisure pursuits. Here are some flowers beside it.
Our lunch stop was Princeton which is roughly halfway between New York and Philadelphia. It has a lake, some gothic buildings and was pretty busy with people enjoying the good weather (the car thermometer was now reading 90 degrees). The place we ate our picnic was next to a memorial and had a few sculptures. A Chinese family were taking numerous photographs of each other standing next to a bust of Einstein. Labyrinth Books sells new, used, remainder and a few antiquarian books and the Princeton Record Exchange is a great place for music lovers. However, unless I want to incur excess baggage charges, I am having to be very strict about purchases.
Further on we crossed the Calhoun St Bridge built in 1884, crossing the Delaware River with a 15 mph speed limit and entering our third state of the day, Pennsylvania.
So far, the best road-side sign of the day was for ‘Payless Memorials’. Perhaps cut-price gravestones are in less demand in the UK as cremation is more popular? We arrived in Philadelphia early afternoon and wandered around the Old City and down to the river before a relaxing evening. At least I will only need one state map not three, tomorrow. We have given up on the SatNav as it persists in trying to send us to the turnpikes and interstates.
