"Take one jet black Volvo V70 T5. Add a Garmin Streetpilot GPS Navigator, lots of fattening snacks. Subtract child. Mix well and cook up a heaping helping of road trip.

Last summer my wife Heidi and I enjoyed just such an experience. With our son Izaak safely in the care of Grammy, we jumped on the Mass Pike and headed West - for a while. Gerda's highly-rated audio system (oh, yes, we cloyingly named our vehicle after the Swedish name meaning "protector"), superb seats, and smooth 247 hp engine allowed the miles to breeze by while we scoffed salty foods, drank Coke (the real kind with sugar!), and marveled at the ease of conversation permitted by the absence of our loquacious 4-year-old boy. After several more hours on the unremarkable New York Thruway, dotted with semi-educational rest stops (how about those Dutch?), we arrived in Buffalo.

This "All-America City" is chock full of surprises, although many of its residents don't see it that way. A typical exchange between myself and a local went something like:

" Hi, we're visiting from Massachusetts."
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Why?"

Despite the self-effacing expressions of the City's people, Buffalo boasts buildings designed by Louis Sullivan, Olmsted parks, lesser-known Frank Lloyd Wright prairie homes, and charming shops and restaurants along the Elmwood Strip. For dinner, we skipped the mostly over-rated wings and got our fill of Beef on Weck - a true local delicacy consisting of a Kaiser roll topped with lots of pretzel salt and caraway seeds, loaded with thinly-sliced roast beef served with "au-jus" and raging, freshly-ground horseradish.

Naturally, a visit to western New York would be incomplete if it didn't include a look-see of Niagara Falls. Thanks to our EZPass, we glided over the Peace Bridge to take in the view on the Canadian side. Yes, the falls were stunning, but the surrounding scene was something to behold. Many dismiss this side as overly commercial (it is), but where else can you find hot-pink cotton candy, rickety ski ball lanes, lush parks, and a lunatic crossing a high wire strung between two insanely high towers - while narrating his life story - in one place?

Moving on from this faintly bizarre setting, we continued northeast, taking in the fertile vineyards hard up against Lake Ontario. Though beautiful to behold, the winery stop was brief, as we had a reservation at the Park Hyatt in Toronto that we didn't wish to miss.

Positioned across the immense Royal Ontario Museum, the Park Hyatt is jewel of a building with an attentive staff. We drew heavily on the experience of the seasoned concierge, who secured us prime seats for "Lion King" at the Price of Wales Theatre, reservations for delightful eateries in tony Yorkville, and directed us to a scrubby restaurant in Chinatown in which we were the only English-speaking patrons.

From the city often described as "little New York," we zipped along the Queen's Highway to Ottawa. Divided by the stepped Rideau Canal, Ottawa offers a refreshing respite to Toronto's more frenetic pace (by Canadian standards). Moving at a relaxed pace, we observed the Changing of the Guard at Parliament, munched beaver tails in Byward Market, and sampled poutine - a French-Canadian concoction comprised of french fries, gravy, and cheese curds - from a vendor haphazardly set up in a cobblestone paved alley.

Taking our leave the next morning from Arc, The Hotel - a chic minimalist hotel full of sharp angles and mirrored surfaces - we navigated east through the outskirts of Montreal before driving south through Canadian cornfields into Vermont. We stopped in Quechee to stretch our legs at Simon Pearce at the Mill, a historic woolen mill where Pearce harnessed the hydro-power of the Ottauquechee River to fuel his glass furnace. Fearful of shattering a $90 hand blown Stratton Martini glass that I really wanted to buy, we instead purchased a more substantial ship's carafe. Muscles and minds relaxed, we wheeled back onto Route 89 to complete the final leg of our journey through rolling dairy farms, industrial Concord, New Hampshire, and the mixed bag that is northern Massachusetts.

As I snapped off the ignition in our cramped garage three hours later, Gerda fell silent, having notched 1200 or so miles on her low-profile Pirelli tires. The door to the kitchen flew open, and Izaak, hands on hips, demanded:

'What did you bring me?' "