Day 24 - Bye Bye to the BeigeMobile

Our final day on the road started well.  We didn't have too far to go so slept in a little.  Not easy though, those cars, trucks and trains on the nearby Interstate were a tad noisy.

The road ahead looked a lot easier than it might seem.  Driving in to New York City sounds daunting.  But there is a parkway called Taconic State Parkway that ran from near our motel all the way in to the city.  Parkways are for the use of passenger vehicles only.  No trucks, no commercial vehicles, no caravans or motor homes even.  This sounded like heaven.

Karen's GPS route showed us going the Taconic, the Sprain Brook Pky, The Henry Hudson Pky, 56th St then 7th Ave.  Easy.

Too easy.

But first, breakfast.  We let Karen find us a food outlet, selecting "American", and sure enough, just two miles off the parkway here was the nicest looking diner of our trip so far.  Dan's Diner is run by three young ladies and they do a terrific job.

Is this neat or what?

Just as neat inside and good food too.

Taconic State Parkway - no trucks, no caravans.

Only Mustangs.

Back on the Parkway and we cruised along listening to podcasts and enjoying the relatively traffic-free run.  We were early so doing right on the 55mph limit and getting overtaken by almost everyone, except one Mustang that stayed behind us for miles.

Nearing the end of the Taconic, we pulled over for a while and sorted out the BeigeMobile.  We would need to have her cleaned out fairly quickly in Manhattan and packing all the loose stuff away was best done somewhere quiet.

Still way too early - checkin was listed as 4pm - we got Karen to find us a Starbucks.  Just back a little from where we stopped.  Coffee, snack, internet and restroom, we were still four hours from checkin and less than half an hour away by parkways.

Looking idly at the map I saw a road nearby that joined up with another called North Broadway.  Looking all along, it turned out that this road ran all the way in to the actual Broadway as one long road - eventually - and Broadway runs right behind our 7th Avenue hotel.

Well, we had all this time to spare so I suggested we drive all the way in on this "surface" road rather than the Parkways.  Charleen was a bit dubious but it looked like a pretty straight through run.

So I switched Karen's directions off and away we went. We could always call her back up if needed.

Well, that sure used up most of the spare time.

Paintings of buildings on the buildings

Almost looks like a movie set.

It was fun.  Though Charleen is not sure of my idea of fun.  Heck, I've driven heavy vehicles through the centre of all of Australia's major cities and punting the BeigeMobile in NYC traffic was a lark compared.

Well, there was this one incident involving a school bus and an unmarked police car, but we all missed each other.  Not even a horn honk, but that was probably due to the presence of the police car and the signs that advise a $350 fine for unnecessary horn use.  A law that many NYC drivers ignore most of the time.

Oh yes - on Columbus Circle I had to duck across a couple of lanes and cut off a couple of yellow cabs - but they were fine with it.  Really.  American drivers are much more polite than the average Aussie city driver.

Plenty of these

Getting in to the thick of it

Yellow Cabs - must be close now

We turned in to a quiet street

so we could run beside Central Park

We didn't honk and the cab drivers were very patient.

Arrived at the Hotel and casually parked out the front, the door bloke helped us unload and let us leave the car there while we checked in.  By the time we got back out, there was a different bloke there, but he had our keys so he got the tip.

We took the BeigeMobile the last couple of blocks to the rental company and gave her back.  We were just a little sad to see our gallant little steed go.  Sure, a Ford Escape wasn't what we asked for, but it served us well, never missed a beat and was pretty comfortable and quite economical.

Total distance for the circle, shown below in magenta, was 9592 kilometres according to Karen.

So here's all our USA tracks since 2009, the magenta one is the most recent.