Lake Canandaigua, New York

Today was a super mellow day ~ after having breakfast in town, we hung out at the hotel (while it poured outside) doing laundry and napping. We finally took a walk late morning and checked out the boathouse again.....

 ....took a drive around the area, walked the town's main street....

 

  .....chilled out some more, had dinner at a nearby pub, and hung out by the hotel while a band played until a thunder and lightening storm stopped the festivities......

 

Yep - we know it sounds boring, but it was a perfect day!😎

 

 

 

 

 

Driving to Lake Canandaigua, New York

While we were in Ithaca and talking about where to head next, we thought about starting to head south. However there was a huge heat wave for the next few days (in the area we thought about going), so we decided to spend a couple more days in the finger lakes region of New York and headed to Lake Canandaigua for a couple days. On the way, we drove (a bit out of the way) to Rochester, NY to see where Suzanne lived when she went to graduate school there in the early 90's. She lived on the top floor of this converted (at the time) 5-apartment house and loved the area. 

 We arrived at the hotel late afternoon......

 

 ....and after getting settled, we wandered along the lakefront.....

 ...saw these three older gentlemen jammin'.......

 

 ....some geese.....

 ...and what we thought were floating houses until we chatted with a woman the next day who said that they were simply boathouses - no sewer and no potable water - one selling for nearly $300,000 earlier this year! 😮 

 

Ithaca, New York Day 3 ~ The Corning Museum of Glass

We aren't huge museum go-ers, but had heard that the Corning Museum of Glass was one not to miss, so off we went on a very rainy Monday.

The parking is a bit down the road, where a shuttle is provided, or you can just walk the 1/4 mile or so......

 

When we checked-in, we were given the brochure of all of the glass demonstrations throughout the day.....

 

So we figured out which demonstrations we wanted to see and walked throughout the museum between the demonstrations. We saw....

• Hot Glass - where the presenters creates a small vase (pretty much what you see in any glassblowing shop)
• Don't Try This At Home - this was interesting mostly because it took place in their mobile hot glass classroom - which they drive to places to bring glassmaking to those that would not otherwise have the experience 

• Flameworking - this was very interesting as the presenter used two rods of glass to create art

• Secrets of Glass - this was rather redundant of the Don't Try This At Home presentation
• Glassbreaking -  this was one of the more interesting presentations where we learned how glass is created to cause it to break in some form (think car front windows). 

 

Of course, there was a lot of creative and interesting pieces of glass art - quite difficult to capture in photos.....

 

 

Then we went to The Studio building of the museum where classes are conducted and professional glassmakers rent space to create their art. The super cool thing about this area was that it was casual and open to anyone who wanted to watch..... The verbiage next to the door says: Feel free to wander down this hallway to our artist workshops to see artists and students at work. 

 

 

And so we did.......and found this group working together.....

  

We ended up spending 6-hours here and really enjoyed it. 

Ithaca, New York Day 2 ~ Wine Tasting!

We slept late today and spent some time this morning deciding where to go after Ithaca ~ with the goal that we want to stay in cooler weather as long as possible. Finally, we got going and visited three brad-selected wineries in the area.

First, we went to Thirsty Owl where we started with lunch ~ while the food was good, the service was painfully slow. This was the busiest of the three wineries we visited, and for a $5 wine tasting, you could try five wines. If you decided to buy a bottle, then you received $2 off. We split the tasting (as we usually do) and were surprised to enjoy some of the Riesling that the finger lakes is known. (We usually do not like Rieslings.) We ended up purchasing a bottle of their dry Riesling.

 

Then it was onto Hosmer Winery where the tasting fee was $12 (which we thought was expensive) for five tastings, plus you get to keep the glass (which we did not). We split the tasting again and tried a variety of their wines, ending up with a Pinot Gris in our bag. (We forgot to take a photo, but did take this one of the grapes at Thirsty Owl. 😏)

 

Lastly, we went onto Sheldrake Point Winery where the tasting fee was $15 (and if we thought $12 for a tasting fee with a wine glass was expensive, $15 was not going in the right direction! 😆) for five tastings. That being said, there was a free tasting to start and for some reason the bartender-guy wanted us to try a wine that we did not select, so he poured us a seventh tasting. (This is why we split tastings....each pour at each place was 1oz, so there were 15oz of wine in total - for us, that's a lot of wine in the early afternoon! 😂)  We really liked this place as well and their wines were quite interesting. We ended up buying a Wild Ferment Riesling.

So three wineries and three bottles! 🍷😀

Ithaca, New York Day 1 ~ State Parks Galore!

We had a great night's sleep and decided to start our day at Watkins Glen State Park, primarily to walk the Gorge Trail. It was a nice park and very accessible, which is great for the masses, however that means that there were tons of people there, which is not our cup-of-tea. 😕 

Regardless, it was a nice walk and we can only imagine how the many waterfalls would look in the spring, rather than late August when we were there.

 

View from behind a waterfall....

Afterward, we walked the town of Watkins Glen a bit and took a short stroll along Seneca Lake.....

 

(We almost stayed in Watkins Glen, but could not find accommodations; this ended up being a good thing since there wasn't much in Watkins Glen.)

 

 

We had an awesome lunch at a low-key joint at Frog Hollow Marina ~ The Oar House......

  

 

We then continued on to Taughannock Falls State Park to walk the 3/4 mile gorge trail there.....again, we can only imagine how this all would look during the spring melt.....

 

Onto State Park #3 ~ Robert H. Treman State Park where we only walked about 1/4 mile to Lucifer Falls.....but first, we explored the grist mill which ground grain into flour from 1839 to 1916.....

 

....then onto the walk! 😊

 

 

Lucifer Falls

 

This was a beautiful park and we considered coming back another time while in the area, but then the rains came and it didn't happen. Next time! 😎

 

Our fourth and final park of the day was Buttermilk Falls State Park which had very little water....

 (When we drove by a couple days later after tons of rain, it was much fuller!)

 

Driving to Ithaca, New York

Brad wanted to see the finger lakes region in New York, and after lots of research, we figured that the best place for us to land for a few days was Ithaca, so we were up at 6:30, first stopping in Saranac Lake for a quick breakfast. We also decided to take the scenic (rather than highway) route......

 ...eventually finding ourselves in the cute town of Inlet......

 ...with its pier where one can buy a "slat" and honor someone.....

 

 Of course, there was a bakery....

 

 ...so we went inside.....

 ...and shared (if one bite for Suzanne is considered "sharing"......😆) a walnut maple sweet......it was awesome! 

 
Of course, as we were still technically in The Adirondacks, there were plenty of Adirondack chairs for sale......

 

We continued along the scenic roads, seeing lots of apple orchards, farms, and even a little early fall foliage changes.....

 

 We drove into Skaneateles and meandered the quaint town for an hour or so.......

 

About an hour later, around 5pm, we arrived to our hotel in Ithaca with a ton of dirty clothes and looking forward to doing some laundry. Alas, the hotel no longer had laundry facilities (might be time to update the 'ole website......😡) so it was off to a local laundromat........

 

An hour-and-a-half later we were back at the hotel with clean clothes! 😁