FINGER LAKES, NEW YORK

Finger Lakes are a fascinating series of eleven lakes, large and small, formed after glaciers retreated. The largest one, Seneca Lake, is over 650 feet deep. We were in the area for ten days and still weren’t able to see everything.

The first day we went to Seneca Falls that no longer has falls but does have the National Women’s Rights Park. The historical documents were a good reminder of where we’ve come from and where we still have to go. A trip below Penn Yan (the pioneers could decide whether to call the town Pennsylvania or Yankee) took us to the Willow Farms Produce and Craft Market. The market has up to 200 vendors and the Amish run most of the food stalls. Of course we had to sample some of their pastry.

We did our usual boat cruise on Lake Canandaiga. It was unique in that it had actual paddle wheels propelling the boat. We got a good sampling of Finger Lake wines at a Food and Wine dinner at the hotel Geneva-On-The-Lake. We liked some of the white wines but the reds seemed to lack tannin. We liked the hotel so much that we took my brother Art and his wife Jo plus my nephew Tom and his wife Leah to dinner there.

Feeling energetic, we decided to hike the Watkins Glen gorge. We weren’t feeling so energetic that we wanted to hike UP the 800+ steps so took the bus to the top and hiked down the mile and a half. Don’t know if that was a wise decision or not as our muscles were so sore the next day but it was worth seeing the nineteen waterfalls and the spectacular gorge. We stiffly went on to the exhibition at the Corning Glass Museum. They had a fascinating special show of the glass works made for the Maharajah.

There are still things we want to see in the area so may come back sometime. Now we head to the Niagara region to fly out of Buffalo for Zoe’s grandson’s wedding in San Luis Obispo. It will be quite a journey going from Buffalo to Philadelphia then to Phoenix before finally getting to San Luis Obispo. The joys of air travel. They are supposed to have some good red wines in the Niagara region so we will of course try them.