Woke up fully rested. In fact, some of us are over 12 hours rested, which makes for a happy morning. We slept in with our only “have to” being to pick up the rental car by noon. Our hotel in the city has been fine – clean, enough room for us, free breakfast and courteous staff. But oh my word – The elevators in the mornings! . The hotel is 27 floors (floors 2-14 are a Springhill Suites with their dedicated set of elevators), so we are talking about 12 floors. I’m not sure if it’s spacial or number of guests or what but it is a good 20 minutes of waiting to get on the elevators. And some of the people, Lawd have mercy! I get that I’m not in the south where hospitality is important, but we were about ready to throat punch some of the people! 🤪 okay rant over.

We checked out, scheduled our Uber, and got ready to go back to LaGuardia to pick up our rental car. We headed out to wait with our bags and knew that our Uber would be a black Toyota Highlander. So we waited and watched on the app as our Uber coming our way. Finally we saw it, but it was in wrong lane. Off I run to tap on the window of this black Highlander. Window rolls down and there are 2 young men. “Hi, are you our Uber?”

Thank the Lord for my southern accent because despite their odd looks, they politely responded “um, no.” 🤣🤣🤣

3 cars back we see another black Toyota Highlander… but this one with an Uber sticker. So other than starting my day becoming a potential carjacker, everything’s going great 🤣

New York City traffic at 11am is crazy but we finally made it to the car rental at LaGuardia and off we went in our car for the next couple of weeks, a Ford Durango. We did almost run off the road laughing at these tree signs in East Elmhurst, NY

We traveled over the RFK bridge (and googled to find out that his middle name was Francis), and saw Yankee Stadium.

Then we went over the lower level of the George Washington Bridge. It was really cool to see the difference in each side of the bridge… one side was city and the other all green

Welcome to New Jersey! State #42

After 2 stops to get groceries and supplies… have you ever seen a Walmart with a grocery section but not a produce section? Well, we have now 🤪 We also learned that 2 years ago, New Jersey stores stopped using plastic bags… we have our unbagged groceries loaded in car and off we went!

We finished off our eclairs from Carlo’s for dessert and kept on driving

Rolling on, we made a quick pit stop in Scranton, PA for our favorite paper company, and stopped in at Copper’s Seafood House. Don’t recognize it? Its the location to a little award show called The Dundies!

Back on the road with a little Dunder Mifflin swag, we crossed back into New York and rolled on across the state.

We are scheduled to arrive at Niagara Falls after 9pm, so we started looking for dinner spots. Mike suggested chicken so I started searching. We found a chicken place with good reviews and a great name, Dicky’s Fried Chicky. With a name like that we had to give it try… but as we searched for the location in Victor, NY, we learned that Dicky’s Fried Chicky is a brand/style of chicken instead of a location. But they serve it at The Thirsty Turtle!

Dicky’s Fried Chicky was good. Let’s be honest, if you’re from the south, you probably know how to make really good fried chicken. So it takes a lot for us to say someone’s fried chicken is really good. So it was good, and the chicken wings were good too. Plus we got to watch some of the USA v Uruguay soccer match which thrilled the boys.

We finally made it to Niagara Falls around 11, checked in and ready to explore the Falls tomorrow.