Eight days ago we headed out on our latest adventure – a road trip to Buffalo for a marathon (not for me) along with a spa stay at a small resort in the Finger Lakes. Buffalo is a 380 mile drive from here – slightly beyond the capacity of my fuel tank. To get there you head north of course, through Pennsylvania. I’ve driven through Pennsylvania about 70 or 80 times in the past thirty years so it gets a bit tedious. Fortunately, this time was different as we headed west a bit.
I didn’t take any photos anywhere along the drive until we got to far northern Pennsylvania so this random shot from a past rest area visit will need to do.
Driving from the DC area to Buffalo basically gives you three options for “how to get there.”
The main option is to head due north on U.S. 15 from Frederick, Maryland, to Corning, New York, and then navigate to Buffalo via I-390, U.S. 20A, and a handful of other roads. This one seems to be the lowest common denominator approach – it keeps you on major highways and expressways for a large chunk of the trip.
The second option is to follow the shortest, fastest route (I believe it’s 10 or 15 minutes faster than the above normally). This takes you out through Breezewood, briefly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, up I-99 past Altoona, and then a steady string of country highways through some small towns. Taking this route you spend less than four hours on expressways and three hours on country highways. Some would say it’s the most scenic. Others would say it’s a recipe for following a farm tractor for half an hour.
The third option I think is likely the old timer way – the route likely a lot of people took more than 30 years ago before I-99 was built or before much of U.S. 15 became an expressway. This takes you out of the way as it is considerably a longer distance, but the entire route is on expressway. I-270 and I-70 out to Breezewood, across western Pennsylvania on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, north on I-79 to Erie, and finally I-90 EAST to Buffalo. I think it is about 30 minutes longer, but in inclement weather or if you’re driving at night with bad eyes it may make sense.
We took option two. I haven’t driven this option or most of the roads in more than 20 years and the last time I drove it was in a snowstorm. As I said before, this takes you through Breezewood which is commonly known to DC area residents who frequently drive to the northwest. Breezewood is a relic from another time. It’s basically a town that sits at the junction between the portion of I-70 that was built as part of the interstate highway system and the older road of the Pennsylvania Turnpike which by federal decree was not to have direct access to the interstate highway system. As such, when I-70 was built, all traffic coming west (and north) had to be funneled out onto local roads in Breezewood. Eventually this became a large complex of stoplights, truck stops, diners, and gas stations. On holiday weekends it can be a real chokepoint. Fortunately, in about a year it will be completely bypassed.
Breezewood in its heyday, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, was a great place for a meal stop. The truck stops all had decent sit-down restaurants. There were a handful of fast food stops and a Denny’s set up as a diner. There was a Perkin’s up on the hill. Now, all that is left is a handful of truck stops with fast food, a couple of gas stations, and a brand new Bob Evan’s made up to look like a Cracker Barrel inside. We stopped at this Bob Evan’s and it’s decent. It’s superior to the places it replaced.
I’ve been out through Breezewood maybe four or five times since covid. What I have found is after 2020 it seemed as if the restaurants had a harder and harder time getting service staff. As it sits in an isolated valley in fairly large county that has next to zero population I suspect there just isn’t enough population to support staffing restaurants – especially with the bypass coming. Anyway, this was our first stop on our six hour and forty five minute journey to Buffalo (to be honest I was surprised at how quickly the journey went).
The drive after lunch on Friday was very peaceful but while crossing through the Allegheny National Forest we did reach a point, after three hours since lunch, where it just made sense we would need a new stopping point. I originally thought we would stop near Salamanca, New York, on the Indian reservation for cheap gas, cigarettes, fireworks, or CBDs (none of which we wanted or needed at that point) or simply just because that’s where there are a lot of stops, but about twenty miles from the New York State line we saw a sign for the Zippo lighter museum. And that’s how we ended up at the Zippo Case Museum. And we bought ourselves some lighters – which of course we do not need either! After all, the museum stop is free and they have clean restrooms – but no snack bar if you need a meal!
The Zippo museum sits in Bradford, Pennsylvania, a small manufacturing town just south of the New York State line in Pennsylvania. Bradford is a town that reached its peak back around 1930 with a lot of employees at the Piper factory (airplanes), the oil refinery (formerly Kendall, motor oil and so forth), Case knives, and Zippo. It’s still a decent town for the era and size and is visibly better kept than most of the places along U.S. 219 through this part of Pennsylvania. Driving for the previous two hours through forested area we kept talking about, “where do people here drive for groceries?” Well, this is it! And it has the Zippo Case Museum.
It seems as if more people are interested in Zippo lighters than Case knives, unless you’re a local.
The company with its manufacturing plant next door puts on a huge Fourth of July fireworks display. Above they have a collage in the form of an American Flag.
The museum goes through the history of the company starting with its founder along with some memorabilia from his office a hundred years ago.
There are included displays of the many very customized Zippo lighters created along the way, and a large gift shop where you can purchase your own!
Of course part of the museum and shop is devoted to Case knives, particularly similarly customizable jack knives and hunting knives. As a kid in Big Flats, New York, less than two hours to the east, I do remember people buying and selling Case knives.
Mostly as cutlery in carefully kept cases. Yes, somehow that axe above counts as “cutlery.”
After a bit of a visit, we hopped in the beast and continued north. For the next thirty minutes the drive carries on through a mix of roads partially on Indian reservation where there is an obvious “tax free” influence. I have never seen so many cannabis dispensaries in my life. At one point Waze sent us down a country road for a few miles to cut out a corner.
This obviously worked well as we waited for a train to pass before rejoining U.S. 219.
The highway here winds its way northward. Eventually you enter Ellicottville which shows the signs of Buffalo’s gravity from the north (in other words, there is a ski resort here, there are condos, and Buffalo is only 45 minutes away). However, this is only a tease as U.S. 219 becomes an expressway and the first 15 miles of expressway take you through rather desolate areas where there are constantly signs warning the freeway closes when it snows. I guess nobody here drives this far south for a commute as it seems to be the Tug Hill of Buffalo that gets the brunt of snow bands off the lake in December and January.
Finally we arrived in Buffalo, just before 6pm after a not-hard travel day. Our residence for the next few days would be the Westin Buffalo where I had acquired an upgraded room we didn’t really need.
The room had a living area and a bedroom area. As the lounger in the living room area was hard as a rock and uncomfortable we did not use it. Therefore, it wasn’t worth the money. It was a nice room otherwise though save two interesting features – the television was pre-loaded with Netflix but didn’t have the connectivity to start up; and the thermostat was hard to read and would freeze in an unlikely position (too hot or too cold) when you tried to program it. I blame this thermostat problem for some ear irritation now a week later as I didn’t sleep well for those three nights!
On check-in I decided I hadn’t had any activity for the day other than turning the steering wheel so it was time to explore – dinner reservations were well in the future still at this point.
We found Asbury Hall at Babeville – an old church that was restored and converted to a performance space by Ani DeFranco.
Old houses, many of which were converted to private clubs or lawyer’s offices. This was the first we realized how much crazy history Buffalo has. On this stretch of Delaware Avenue, in fact, there were monuments to both President McKinley, assassinated here, and Theodore Roosevelt, inaugurated here after McKinley’s assassination.
This large tree, excuse the fisheye lens, which was planted in 1690 lived through it all. Note the size of the trunk on this sycamore compared to the SUV sitting next to it. It’s budding for the season, running a few weeks behind surrounding trees likely due to a combination of age and species. And actually – Buffalo foliage in general is about six weeks behind where we are. Just now trees have full leaves whereas we were there the second or third week of April.
There were plenty of murals and plenty of street art.
Eventually it was time for a steak dinner. And time for an early sleep. Although the weather was decent on our arrival in Buffalo Saturday promised to be a doozy.