Day 9: Three States in less than an Hour

After a great night catching up with Lisa but then spending waaaay to much time finishing that book, I decide to completely ignore my alarm and sleep through breakfast!  Lisa had already left for work, but told me that the Residence Inn breakfast was pretty darn good.  Oh well.  Wanted more zzzzzzs instead.  :-)

Finally got up then hit the road.  I will have to admit that the northern part of New Jersey is more aptly referred to as the Garden State.  Drove through Oakland and Franklin Lakes, and really very nice.  I was keeping my eyes out for the NJ cell phone towers because they are camoflauged as pine trees.  Yep!  So here's a picture of one that I took -- and I was way too close when I took it so I've also pulled one of the inter-webs to include so that you can really see what I'm talking about.  The one I took is on the right side of the photo and the "tree" sticking up.  :-)

It was a very quick trip to the Tappan Zee bridge over the Hudson into NY, with NYC on my far, far, far right.  And then noticed --  55-mph speed limit.  Really??????

I was faked out by a motorcycle cop, and so I was very careful to do 62 and no more all the way through.  :-)  I was so very close to Sleepy Hollow, but didn't stop.  Maybe next time.  And it will have to be night.  And a full moon.

I realized that there are lots and lots and lots of country clubs in this neck of the woods, as I headed up 95 N into CT and all the "ports" straight up Long Island Sound.  It was a little odd to be so close to the water, but no real view from the interstate.

I stopped for lunch at a Panera in Westport.  I wanted to just take a break from driving for a while (two long stretches in two days) and also wanted to catch up on email and the blog.  :-)  So I needed some place that I knew would have free wi-fi.  It was actually pretty crowded in there, but found a quiet corner and had a sandwich while blogging.  :-)  [of course, you can tell that I'm still a couple days behind!]

I drove the rest of the way into Fairfield, and then set up camp at another free wi-fi spot -- Starbuck's!  Leslie wasn't going to be home until around 6pm, so I had a smoothie and watched the world go by -- or at least the people of Fairfield.  I also mapped out my next couple of legs and looked up a few things I wanted to do in Burlington when I got there.

I met Leslie at her house, and her beau, Sal, and their new puppy, Swanson.  I use the terms puppy loosely, as he's almost 2 years old, and 60 pounds, but he's a rescue dog and pretty much acts just like a puppy -- including full spaz mode.  :-)  We sat in the living room and talked.  Leslie cooked dinner and we talked.  We had a couple bottles of wine and sat in the living room again and talked.  :-)  Then had to finally go to bed as it was getting LATE!  I crashed hard looking forward to a full day with Les -- and Swanson -- on Wednesday!