This weekend I went to visit my best friends at Syracuse University and as you probably know, the drive up there is about four- five hours. It was interesting to drive up there because as soon as you hit Yonkers, you get the feeling of, “Where in the world am I ?” It seems like as soon as you hit the outskirts of Manhattan, it doesn’t even feel like New York anymore. On the drive up, we encountered three different ecosystems; there was a snowstorm, lightning, and bright sunny weather- and all this in just one state ! It’s just interesting to see how even two hours away from the city, in Monticello (upstate NY), the weather and the look is completely different- it really doesn’t even look like New York.
The point of this is to show how people seem to forget that Manhattan is just a tiny blip on the map of New York State. Other than the city and the other boroughs, its basically farm land. As soon as you hit Albany,Monticello, and Binghamton, the radio stations switch to country music, snow starts falling, and you see farms with cows on the side of the highway. When you think about New York, you forget the fact that Syracuse or Buffalo, which are 4 or 8 hours away, respectively, are still part of this state. On the drive back down, we noticed how when you get closer to the city, the highway signs say “Scranton” and “New York” which was funny to me because we were already in New York, but its like Manhattan is considered a completely separate area.
It just goes to show how this amazing borough that everyone raves about is really like a tiny speck compared to the rest of the state.