202 miles via I-86 and PA 89, with a lunch stop in Falconer NY. Cumulative TS8 route miles: 532. Cumulative car miles: 574. Miles since the end of Hop 1: 246. The 44 extra miles were due to the trip to the Corning Museum of Glass.
The day was cloudy but the traffic was light (which is a bit surprising as it was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend). Easy trip of just over 3 hours.
Our home in Elmira was the Clarion Inn. This is a large hotel (about 350 rooms) on the river (though you can’t see it due to an earthen berm along the banks). It is also in an uninteresting area (a housing project is across the street). i found it to be a bit of a puzzle. Some hotel corporation decided that this was a good location. Probably Holiday Inn as the WiFi password was “HolidayInn” (though it changed on the day we arrived). The room was comfortable, the pool was nice and the staff was exceptionally good, but the decor was dated, the hallway carpet was worn and dirty and the key cards barely worked (I often had to try 5 times or more before the door opened). And, despite it being the start of a holiday weekend, the place had an empty feel – no one in the restaurant. It seemed to us that a lot of money would have to be poured into the place to make it the kind of hotel one would expect from the Clarion brand.
We ate in the empty hotel restaurant the second night and it was quite good. The first night we dined out at Taste of Asia which was exceptionally good. It was mostly a takeout place and we pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves, but the service was excellent and we liked the food very much.