Road Trip: Days 7, 8, and 9

Day 7

Start: Secaucus, NJ
End: Secaucus, NJ
Miles: 0 driving
States: NJ, NY

When I made the comment about hoping that some wild and only in NY shit would happen, I didn't expect a train to derail and take out a station less than 12 hours later. I suppose that's why they say be careful what you wish for.

With our initial plan of taking the train to Manhattan derailed, we decided to take the bus as it was only $7 round trip. From the bus depot it was an Uber ride (my first) down to the 1 World Trade Center building and 9/11 Museum.

We didn't end up going to the top of the tower as it was an hour wait but the museum was quite interesting and had a ton of things to take in.

The museum was housed in the lower levels of one of the original towers (or both, I don't know) and as you can see above, parts of the original foundation still remain. We probably spent 2 hours in the museum and that could have easily been 10 had we decided to read and look at every exhibit.

On the list of those killed.

From there it was another Uber ride (my 2nd) back to Times Square where we would spend the next few hours tooling around before hitting up a play. Times Square is basically one big advertisement with tons of people trying to sell you useless trash like mix-tapes of which, I bought 3. There were people dressed up as Iron Man, the Statue of Liberty, and chicks making their mothers proud by getting body painted. Definitely a place to just hang out and people watch.

 
After we killed a couple of hours, it was off to Broadway to see The Color Purple. 30 seconds into the play my mom was tearing up as this was an item on her bucket list. The play ran about 2 hours with a break in the middle which was just about my limit as I was too tall for the seating. I would have chosen The Lion King or The Book or Mormon but overall, it was alright. I will say that every cast member could sing better than 90% of the garbage on the radio these days though. After a standing ovation, it was back to the bus and back to New Jersey.

The stage.

Day 8

Start: Secaucus, NJ
End: Somewhere near Cleveland, OH
Miles: 476
States: NJ, PA, OH

The only thing left other than driving was to stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania. If you can picture the COMPLETE opposite of downtown Manhattan, that is what lies in the Allegheny Mountains just north of Shanksville, PA.

The crash site.

One can see why Flight 93 is the "forgotten" piece of 9/11 even though the memorial is countless times more personal as you are able to put a name to a face of all 40 people that were on board. Compared to the thousands that were at or around the 9/11 Museum, I would have guessed that maybe 50 people were there between the visitors center and memorial.

At one exhibit inside the memorial you were even able to pick up a phone and listen to actual phone calls made from passengers to loved ones during the flight. There was not a chance in hell that I was going to pick one of those phones up as reading the quotes were sad enough.

The Wall of Names

Following the memorial, it was a couple of more hours driving the set up the last leg of the trip home in the morning.

Day 9

Start: Somewhere in OH
Finish: Madison, WI
Miles: Too many
States: The shitty, toll scamming states of OH, IN, IL, and also WI

I could describe my hate of tolls to you here but I would rather just end this on a positive note. I hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading, and until next time, PEACE!