Westbound Day 4 – 258 miles – Stockbridge to Ithica

Tuesday, 21 June 1994

We roll south out of Massachusetts into Connecticut and then turn west into New York state, cross the Hudson River and stop for lunch in that centre for peace and love, Woodstock. Twenty five years on from the rockfest that made it famous Woodstock is doing just fine with a street packed with counter-culture and new age shops, plenty of restaurants and pleasant little cafes, boutiques, an excellent bookshop and lots of people, like us, trying to catch a faint whiff of the ‘60s.

That Woodstock (the town) is doing so well out of Woodstock (the event) is a little unfair since back in ‘69 the good citizens of Woodstock banned the event, which ended up taking place over 50 miles away in Bethel. But the name Woodstock with the event even though the event didn’t stay with the town. Of course Woodstock was a counter-cultural centre long before those three days of peace and love and it remains that way today.

The image of New York City, the ultimate urban icon, is so strong that it’s easy to forget upstate New York can be so rural and so eye-pleasing. Continuing west we drove through Delhi, through a fierce rainstorm which revealed that the Caddy is not exactly watertight and arrived in early evening in Ithica accompanied by a very nasty noise developing from somewhere at the front of our venerable vehicle. As we searched for one of  Ithica’s well hidden motels the noise got steadily worse and removing the right front wheelcover revealed melted grease oozing from the wheel bearing. Oh dear.

Parking Kieran in the motel room with a pizza and a video Maureen and I went out to sample Moosewood, Ithica’s renowned vegetarian restaurant. We’ll worry about the wheel bearing tomorrow.