I’ll tell you, people, it can be hard being an old traveler like myself, steeped in the jazzy breakneck literature of the Beats, wondering where did the time go and how did I wind up here in love with a beautiful woman with a beautiful little five-year-old daughter who’s sleeping in the room down the hall as I type my reminiscences of a short Sunday drive down one of the many charming, gossamer routes spinning out from our city—like a web spun by a spider on LSD—meandering, struggling to be useful, but mainly just forming an interesting design.

When this road trip was first hatched, two things were obvious: We were going to Amish country, and we were getting there by way of one of my favorite roads, US Route 62. Stretching for nearly 2,300 miles from Niagara Falls to El Paso, Texas, 62 is one of America’s great roads. At least it’s great in my mind. Having grown up in a small town along Route 62, that road became my window to the outside world and excited my imagination. As if by magic, the road regularly produced Amish buggies, motorcycle gangs, farmers on great tractors, pre-fab houses on their way to becoming homes and, of course, freighter trucks, countless rumbling freighter trucks.

To get to the Finger Lakes, it is but a hop and a skip into the car and then no more than a puddle-jump onto Route 63, off Interstate 90, at Batavia. Before you really feel like you’ve left the Buffalo area, Geneseo appears along with the first signs for Letchworth State Park, and here a choice presents itself: Continue on Route 63, with the winding country roads and crumbling old farmhouses lending a gothic touch to the pastoral landscape, or grab the I-390 to the 86 East/17 South.

US Route 20, the longest highway in the country, runs from Newport, Oregon, just a mile from the Pacific Ocean, to Kenmore Square in Boston, Massachusetts. The 400-mile stretch that traverses New York State is mostly scenic, two-lane highways, descended from the first great western turnpikes and, before those, well-worn Native American trails. Until the New York State Thruway opened between 1954 and 1956, it was the most frequented cross-state route; today the decline in traffic is evident in the darkened windows and weed-tangled lots of abandoned motels.