The Wheels On the Bus Go...

When I was in college, I took bus trip vacation through the eastern United States. I was a student, and didn’t have much money. So, I slept on the bus at night, and visited cities during the day whenever I could. However, even the traveling on the bus was interesting at times.
The entire trip, including food, cost less than $400. It all started as a trip from Toronto to Buffalo.
Buffalo has never been one of my favorite cities. Kind of dirty, creepy actually. It is like Hamilton, but bigger. From Buffalo it was on to Erie, a 3-hour trip. I didn’t see much of Erie. It was night and it was only a short stopover. Kind of eerie.
After Erie, it was a 4-hour trek to Cleveland. I did not get to see much of that city either. All I can remember is that the bus terminal was God-Awful ugly. The bus that was supposed to take us from Cleveland did not show up. Greyhound sent another bus about an hour later. This bus was an express service to Cincinnati. We traveled down this long, lonely road for a good 4 hours, and then we stopped at this “unknown” city. There was no announcement, and never being to Ohio before, I thought we were in Cincinnati. I started to gather my things to leave the bus, and another passenger said to me “Columbus”. “Excuse me?”, I said. The other person said, “We are in Columbus. This is not Cincinnati.” I thanked the person, and sat down. We were off again in no time, and in 3 short hours we arrived in Cincinnati. Late for my connecting bus, I checked the schedule to realize that the next bus was in 6 hours. Well, I guess there were worse places to be stranded. To my surprise, Cincinnati was a very nice city. People were friendly and the city was clean. I know a lot of people see U.S. cities as crime-ridden and dirty, with rude natives. This was certainly not true with Cincinnati. One thing I did notice was Coke machines. I mean, in really weird places. In places you would not expect to find one. On a street corner, for example. You could actually buy a Coke while waiting for the light to change. They were all over the place. The city must have had some kind of a deal with Coke.
The next bus was a local service to Atlanta. This was a 13-hour trip, but was lot of fun because the bus stopped at all these tiny towns and villages. Some were so small that the bus stop itself was “downtown”. Very cool.
I did not find Atlanta very interesting. I only had a couple of hours to grab the next bus to Jacksonville. About 10 hours. When arriving at Jacksonville, I explored the area directly around the bus terminal, and saw something very disturbing. I saw a police officer hitting a guy with his baton. The man did not appear to be attacking the officer. This left a very sour taste in my mouth about Jacksonville. I was happy when I was able to leave.
The next part of the trip was the longest, and least interesting. It was express service to Miami, with just two stops. One in St. Augustine, and another in Fort Lauderdale. These were very short rest stops, and the entire trip took 11 hours. Florida is a big state.
I stayed in Miami for about a day, before heading back up.
The trip back was interesting because it was all the way along I-95. I-95 is the longest freeway in the United States. It runs from the tip of Florida, all the way up to New Jersey.
It was pretty well the same boring crap up to (Yikes) Jacksonville, again. This time, we headed up the East Coast along I-95, through Georgia.
Late at night, I’d say around 2 am, we stopped at a 24-hour roadhouse in central Georgia. It was odd, because there was this diner in the middle of nowhere, open 24-hours. I guess it was open for the buses. A lot of buses travel I-95.
Next stop, Richmond, Virginia. Nothing special, just another city.
From this point on, there would be no more major stops until New York, if you don’t count the unscheduled stop in the middle of the Washington-Baltimore Expressway. "Expressway" is an overstatement. "Parking Lot" would be a better description. It was rush hour, and, no crap, traffic did not move for over 30 minutes. I had never seen so much traffic. The people “moving” from Washington D.C. to Baltimore was unbelievable.
We were finally approaching New York after what seemed to be a few years. There are two sets of 6-lane freeways into and from New York. It was 10:30 at night, so one of the freeways was closed. It makes you think about how much traffic must move in and out of that city every day.
I had to wait about 2 hours for the bus to Buffalo, but I dared not travel too far from the terminal. I mean, after all, this was a very big city, and I had very little time. One thing that really stands out in my mind is, taxis. Lots and lots of taxis. I mean taxis for days. It is not unusual in Manhattan, to see groups of 20 or so taxis all traveling together. Do they really need that many taxis?
On the way to Buffalo, we stopped at Syracuse. It was 4:00 in the morning, and downtown Syracuse was deserted. The bus station was the only thing open. I had never seen so much “nothing” in a city before.
We traveled through the Catskills, which would have been a beautiful trip during the day. The trip from Syracuse to Buffalo is about 6 hours. From Buffalo, I took another bus back to Toronto.
It was a great trip, but nice to be home.
I would like to do it again, but maybe farther west, through Chicago next time.