Today was another early start, around 7:15am, though we had to have our regularly scheduled nonverbal Instagram time before we could properly get up. Once we were up, we had breakfast at home (just some cereal), before walking to the corner of the block together and saying goodbye. I was headed to the car while Sophia was headed to the subway to go to work.
I had a lot in my arms as I walked to the car, including my box of clothes, two pillows, a blanket, a sheet, my Steam Deck, and my backpack (the Steam Deck was strapped to the front of my bag). On the way to the car my arms were basically falling off, but I managed to make it and load everything into the trunk before cleaning it up a bit incase the US Border Patrol wanted to search the car again. I sorted everything in a way that was easy for them to search so they wouldn’t damage anything (like last time).
After my little cleanup, I got on the road and headed towards the United States. I was crossing over just west of Niagara Falls, not the rainbow bridge to hopefully avoid some crowds. The highway wasn’t too bad, and definitely better than the last time I took the Queen Elizabeth Way with only a few slowdowns here and there, which is pretty standard for the Toronto area.
Arriving at the border, my decision to take the more westward border crossing definitely paid off as it was almost completely empty when I arrived. There were no trucks and only one car ahead of me, which cleared the checkpoint before I even pulled up behind them. The actual interaction at the border was super quick as well and only took about a minute. The agent also mentioned the bear in the back that I got in New Brunswick and thought it was cute.
Once through the border I drove south towards Pennsylvania. This was my first time in upstate New York and it’s certainly very pretty. This time of year everything is exceptionally green, and so just before I got to the border of Pennsylvania, I stopped on a road alongside the highway and put the drone up into the air. I took a few photos of the area, along with some straight down photos to try and combine into an orthophoto, a combination of geometrically corrected photos, usually used for mapping.
After taking my photos I packed everything back up and drove a bit further to a rest area in Pennsylvania. I sat there for a little bit, had a call with my aunt, checked my messages, and used the bathroom. I was planning to stay the night at this rest area, but then found out that Pennsylvania is pretty strict with their rest areas and doesn’t allow stays longer than two hours. That seems to defeat the purpose of a rest area to me, but oh well. I didn’t really feel like taking the risk, and so I booked a hotel about 15 minutes away and headed on over.
I arrived shortly after and walked into the lobby to find no one at the desk. That’s not unusual, especially at smaller or less busy hotels. The unusual thing though was the sheer number of cameras at the front desk. I think I saw like, 9 or so? Multiple normal security cameras along with a few doorbell cameras. They had one of them marked with a notice that said “ring for service”, so I did, but after waiting a minute or two no one showed up. I rang it again, still nothing. A few minutes later I rang it a third time and finally someone showed up and was able to check me in.
Once I got to my room I settled in and worked on my orthophoto, which turned out really well for my first attempt! I discussed it on the OpenStreetMap Discord with some people, before calling it a night around 11pm and getting a good nights sleep.
