Lackawanna NY

This was supposed to be a road trip to Florida, and while I could likely spend a week exploring Buffalo I'll find warmer weather in St. Augustine. In any case, I'm supposed to be meeting Leslie in Jacksonville. (One of the reasons that I'm driving is that I hate flying, and the main reason that Leslie is flying is that she hates my driving... particularly when I'm stalking photographs, which is almost always. Panic stops, sudden U-turns, parking in ditches and standing in the middle of highways to get just the right angle... She would rather not know. So I head for Highway 5 and Lackawanna, passing what was once the world's largest steel mill, stretching for 3 km along the shore of Lake Erie. Employing 20,000 workers at the peak of production in the 1940s, in 1982 the plant would be closed by its owner, Bethlehem Steel. This was perhaps the tipping point for American heavy industry, and the beginning of America's rust belt.