The Long Way Home

June 25 and 26, 2011

After our second night in the Seven Seasons Hotel in Montreal, we decided to start heading back a day early, mainly to prevent an 8+ hour travel day from occurring immediately before our days back at work. Our original plan on Saturday was to head to the city's namesake, the triple-peaked hills of Mont-Royal, though the occasional steady rain put a damper on that plan.

Instead, we decided to ride the rails a bit more and find some record stores to poke around in. Our first stop for the day was Tim Horton's, the Dunkin Donuts of the great white north. After fumbling a bit with both language and money, we got our food and polished it off. We headed back to the hotel to make a list of the places we'd like to hit up and then we were off.

The first place we came to didn't have much Dana was interested in - although the basement was filled with tons of vinyl, it was mostly classic rock stuff. We moved on to a place Dana had found called Aux 33, and apparently it was a jackpot. She had a hard time picking through everything and picking out the precious few she wanted to purchase.

Anyway, we headed back and checked out of the hotel, and by four we were on our way. We crossed the border after a few quick questions by the border guards. The only thing I declared was the tincture of maple syrup I had bought for my parents, so obviously there wasn't much searching involved. The scenery of upstate New York was gorgeous, and unsurprisingly rivaled Vermont and New Hampshire, mainly because they're all so close together.

We arrived at the hotel and went to sleep fairly soon after arriving. We also made a few plans to continue our legacy of Weird NJ tours of the state, picking out a trio of possibilities to fill the drive home.

Upon waking, we got ready and checked out by noon before heading to the infamous Clinton Road in North Jersey. Supposedly the hangout of several ghosts, KKK members, aliens, and who knows what else, it wasn't exactly all that scary during the day. It seemed like one of those disused, abandoned roads that most people avoid for the sake of their commute not taking longer. We turned around to head back to where we started and I pulled off to do some business quickly, since we were in the middle of nowhere. Dana advised me to get back into the car and directed my attention to what appeared to be an adolescent black bear padding across the road. Definitely didn't have to tell me twice!

It was reasonably creepy in the daytime, though, so I could only imagine how weird it might be at night, especially in knowing all the rumors about the place. We drove toward the next destination, the mysterious Luna Parc, stopping off at a festival we randomly drove by. The festival happened to be the famous Olde Lafayette Village's HOT DOG FEST. No, we hadn't heard of it either. We walked around for a few minutes just to soak in the worship-like fascination of the hot dog.

Hot dogs. We didn't stand in line for this.

Anyway, diversion completed, we headed to Luna Parc. When we saw the row of cars seemingly a mile long on the side of the road, we assumed we were in the right place. We parked and walked about a quarter mile to a strange-looking mailbox with a couple modest balloons attached.

After admiring the artistry of said mailbox, we headed onto the actual property. Almost immediately, we were quite blown away - the artistry that the owner, Ricky Boscarino, had put into the place was incredible and left us more or less speechless. I snapped a ton of pictures - here are a select few:

Quite the collection

Some stained glass in the bathroom

The little "Life Church" out back

They even had free popcorn! After marveling for a good forty-five minutes we decided to move on. We were extremely hungry, so we decided to make our next stop a restaurant. Dana found a lovely little place called Sammy's on the way. I ordered a chili dog and Dana got the chicken sandwich. Both were absolutely excellent, as was the raspberry shake I ordered to drink, and the whole place was decked out in a bunch of retro Coca Cola machines.

Places like this are, sadly, rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Visible from the lobby of Sammy's were a Taco Bell and a Sonic, probably doing their best to drive the competition from the area. I hope Sammy's continues to be profitable and just as tasty as it was the day we went there.

The last stop on the way home was to see a few metallic-industrial dinosaurs up in North Jersey. It was actually in the same town as Sammy's, but unfortunately it seemed that the whole place was part of corporate grounds. We couldn't discern any way to get in, so I snapped a couple pictures and then we were home-bound.

T-Rex in the distance

On Friday, July 8, we're Hawaii-bound! Stay tuned.