Finger Lakes 2023

For the third year in a row, we headed to the Finger Lakes for a parents getaway. Here is our 2022 trip. I think we can now call ourselves regulars.

We started at Apple Festival per usual. Unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs, so we mostly stayed in the fritter house. My son worked alongside his grandma, doing the jobs his dad did as a kid. He peeled apples on a manual crank machine, he sliced the apples with a giant onion slicing hand machine and sorted which apples slices were ready to be fritters! He was a great volunteer, complete with an apron and gloves.

Corning

After Rochester last year, we went the other direction to Corning for our cultural component of the trip.  We haven’t been to Corning since 2012, but have been avid fans of the Netflix show Blown Away so were eager to revisit with our new glass blowing knowledge in hand. While we were in town, we also toured the historic main strip (closed because it was Sunday) and also stopped at a local art museum.

Corning Museum of Glass: We caught a glass blowing demo, which is just amazing how easy these artists make it look when you know how hard it must actually be.  Also, for those Blown Away fanatics, finale helper Helen was the assistant for the demo! It was fun to see the Blown Away pieces in real life, though they only had one piece per contestant plus the finale piece. I wish they had more of the pieces from the show because I saw the design and making process, so feel more connected to the end result. We also enjoyed the Contemporary Art wing, where it’s more about glass as an art than a function. It is amazing what people can make from glass, things that look like glass, things that don’t look like glass, conceptual pieces. I wouldn’t mind a few of them in my house, though confident they would be broken quickly by children. 

Rockwell Museum: Housed in the former City Hall, Rockwell Museum was started by a local department store owners the Rockwells. The foundational pieces were originally shown in the store before becoming the museum. The collection moved to the city hall in the 80s, when Corning Incorporated bought the building for $1 and paid for the renovations. Talk about corporate citizenship! It is a small museum, reminiscent of Charleston’s Gibbes Art Museum. Always interesting to check out these small museums because some times they have a some fun pieces and have a personality driven by the founders.

Wine Trail

Dr. Konstantin Frank Vineyard (Keuka Lake):  Because we were all the way in Corning, we decided to finally bite the bullet and drive to the famous Dr. Konstantin Frank Vineyard on Keuka Lake. Dr. Frank was the first European vineyard in the Finger Lakes and brought the European grapes and vineyard best practices to the region.  You could call him the godfather of the Finger Lakes wine region we know today. Its location is far away, which is why we never make it there.  We had a beautiful spot overlooking the lake eastward. The tasting guide, George, was a hoot and gave us about 3 or 4 extra wines to taste that weren’t a part of the official tasting. Maybe he sensed our sophisticated wine palettes?!  The experience was really fun thanks to George. Our favorite wine was the Gewürztraminer. I am glad we went, but I don’t feel the need to go again soon given distance.

Hermann J. Wiemer (Seneca Lake): We booked it from Dr. Franks to Wiemer. We showed up 15 minutes before close and they let us in for a glass. We have been here many times before and it is our favorite in the area. We did our due diligence on the current vintage before purchasing some bottles to go.

What else did we do? We stayed in what AirBNB calls “Ronn’s Tiny House” in Geneva, our typical launch pad. We ate breakfast at Monacos, a great local coffee shop near Hobart College. Our big culinary treat was dinner at FLX Table, a 16 person, two seating per night restaurant with a 5 course prix fixe menu. I had to book in early August to get a reservation.  The meal was amazing and we would definitely go again. It wasn’t pretentious, just really good food.  Courses included: fresh bread and farmers board to start, salmon tartare with dark miso and seaweed, puttanesca with polenta & meatball, strip loin and deconstructed apple crisp. Because it was our first time, we also got the “fun” wine pairing. The sommelier picked the wine for each table for each course; it wasn’t the same wine for everyone.  Interestingly, our favorite wine was a Gewürztraminer. I guess we were just having a Gewürztraminer kind of weekend.

We also stopped by Watkin’s Glen State Park to check out the gorge trail. Still beautiful. Still feels like the geology Magic School Bus book where they investigate the shale.  My only deep thought was that the view we see today is different from what people saw 100 years ago, because the water is forever changing what the gorge looks like over time.

Finally, in our drive from Dr. Frank to Weimer, we witnessed much of the beauty of the rural area. Farms with open fields and big silos.  It is easy to forget what much of America lives like when you live in an urban setting.  We also came across many Mennonites in their horse-drawn carriages.  Mennonites are similar to Amish, though the internet tells me Amish are more strict in their lack of modern items and practice “shunning” / excommunication while Mennonites do not.  During our drive we saw around 5 carriages, all looked exactly the same, kind of boxish, pulled by a single horse. Someone told us they were coming from church. Everyone appeared to be wearing black. We even saw a family with a baby in one carriage.

Finger Lakes 2022

We were back to the finger lakes for another trip. Our most recent in 2021, then 2016, and 2012.

Apple Fest

Per usual, we started our adventure at the Apple Festival.  We were mostly noting the different between this year and last.  In particular how just one year ago, there was still so much fear and concern about Covid, whereas now it has significantly abated. We had the fritters and bought a Syracuse bandana for my friend’s dog.  Our biggest purchase was a carved wooden bowl, ready for my salads.

Ithaca is Gorge-ous

We drove through Ithaca with the goal of seeing some new gorges and waterfalls. I had read briefly about Cornell’s Botanical Garden which had maps of other waterfalls to see. With very little research, we drove to the parking lot and just got out.  We ended up walking along the gorge that runs through Cornell University.  There wasn’t a trail in many places (just the regular sidewalk) and the waterfalls weren’t as dramatic or close, so it wasn’t that exciting of a venture as the two parks we visited last year.  There are some seriously high bridges and gorgeous views into the gorge and also out onto Seneca lake.

One spontaneous outcome of our stop was that we happened upon Cornell Art Museum’s (Johnson Museum of Art).  Given my extensive art museum tour, we decided to detour into the museum (free!).

Cornell Art Museum – Johnson Museum of Art: I wasn’t a fan of this museum. The building design itself was bizarre. The museum was on non-contiguous floors in a building and outside the elevator, only a fire staircase connected them. The entire building was cement. There were cement walls creating strange rooms. The collection and set up was also not enticing. We both found the collection to be disjointed and displayed in a kind of random way. There weren’t very many pieces, in the entire museum, that we felt were pretty visually interesting.

Rochester

As we have already been to many of the places around Geneva, our launching pad, we decided to drive to Rochester. I had never been to Rochester and found the George Eastman Museum as a destination

George Eastman Museum: This museum is the former mansion of George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak, who enabled the commercialization of the camera. The mansion was the main draw for me, as a lover of historical home tours.  However, it turned out to be an amalgamation of a home tour, a photography art gallery and a history of the camera /Eastman museum. While I enjoyed the museum overall, I felt it was doing too much and thus was not excellent any one of the 3 pieces.

What was available of the home was very cool. Eastman was super wealthy and never married.  He had an enormous 2 floor sitting room with lots of windows and plants. But, a number of the rooms had been converted to history exhibits, instead of the home. For example, George Eastman’s bedroom was NOT one of the rooms still standing in its original state, which is pretty surprising, given it’s a tour of his home.  The history components were stuffed in the home or within the photography exhibits. The photography museum we both really enjoyed. A lot of interesting individual pieces and shows. But again, I’m not sure they achieved excellence in trying to do so many things. The home tour was certainly below expectations, even though what was shown was in excellent condition

We decided to walk around some in Rochester. It is like a lot of other cities that were prosperous and lots of many nice homes and neighborhoods were built. At least the part we walked around (East Ave- Seemed like “Mansion Lane”), the area was in really good condition. My husband was surprised because those aren’t the stories of Rochester he hears.  There is a little bit of a “downtown”, with some clear hip locations like a Cereal Bar, where you can order many types of breakfast cereals, an axe throwing spot, and an ultra modern café (we stopped for coffee).

Rochester Contemporary Art Center: We saw this center on East Ave, and saw it was only $2 to go in! It was small, but I was pleased with my $2 admittance.  There was an exhibition about murals in Rochester, with photos of admirers in front of the mural and accompanying text.  My favorite was of a sheep in sheep’s clothing (take on a wolf in sheep’s clothing). I enjoyed the text, and the stories of who those individuals felt connected and related to the mural.

Seneca Wine Trail

As we were in wine country, we decided to wine taste, which we haven’t done in a number of years.  The biggest surprise was that reservations are now required for the most popular locations.  Back in 2016, reservations were not needed. My only experience of wine tasting reservations was from Napa back in 2011 (at up to $30/tasting!).  I guess it’s gotten popular enough that vineyards can’t manage walk-ins. Luckily prices have remained affordable and reasonable vs. Napa, even if reservations are required.

Not knowing this, we attempted to walk into Hermann Wiemer. Luckily we could sit outside and enjoy a flight.  HW delivered per usual. We bought a few bottles. We were able to walk into less popular Billsboro, on a recommendation of a friend.  Unfortunately, Billsboro didn’t hit the spot for us.  We also stopped by Lamoreaux Landing the day before, but were too late to start a tasting. Instead we just bought a few bottles. You know, to support the local economy.

Food

We hit up Monaco’s for breakfast each day, as it was 2 blocks from our AirBNB.  Our fanciest meal was at Kindred Fare, where I mistakenly made a reservation for 1 person on a completely full night. Luckily they squished in another chair.   I wanted to try FLX Table, but like last year, was full, and in another mistake, put us on the waitlist for the wrong weekend (which we got off of – salt in the wound!).

Finger Lakes 2021

We have the best grandparents/parents/in-laws and got ANOTHER parents-only weekend trip. This time we went back to our roots and went back to Finger Lakes for the third time. We went first in 2012 and again in 2016. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to go back since 2016. We decided to stay in Geneva, NY again, as our hub for the couple of days, as it is located at the top of the biggest lake and thus is a nice place to go places from and it has pretty good restaurants.

Apple Festival

We started our trip at the home base Syracuse. We went to one of my favorite events, Apple Festival. We have been before, but it has been awhile given Covid and other items. It was as glorious as we remembered, with 500 crafters in 9 of the biggest event tens you have ever seen. Permanent buildings, all painted the same red walls and green metal roofs, had stalls for food. Because this is a community event, no two stalls sell the same food. All the stalls are fundraisers for the town’s various groups, the firefighters, churches, scouts, sports teams, etc. We had the deep fried apple fritters as our indulgence and then Hoffman hotdogs (the best hotdogs, from Syracuse) for lunch.

1890s House – Cortland, NY       

We took a slight detour to the Finger Lakes to see a house museum in Cortland. Check out that post here.

Gorge / Waterfall Hikes

Everyone had heard that Ithaca is gorge-ous, which has to due with the topography and there are many gorges and waterfalls. In the past, we have been the Watkins Glen State Park. This year we went to two new waterfalls. In total, we did about 7 miles of walking/hiking between the two parks.

The fascinating thing about these two waterfalls is that while they are mere miles from each other, and from my untrained geologist eyes have the same type of rock (shale), the waterfalls were completely different. One was a huge 215ft drop waterfall, while the other was a set of 10 waterfalls with no big drops, but many staggered layers of slate.

Taughannock Falls State Park: This was our first stop. The waterfall here is 215ft of single drop, the largest east of the Rockies! This is 33 ft taller than Niagara Falls. We decide to do the “rim walk”, which was up around the gorge vs. going into the gorge on the ground floor and looking up at the waterfall. There was a steep set of steps at the beginning, but after that was pretty flat. The amazing part of this was how deep the gorge walls were, hundreds of feet high. The waterfall was cool too, but I thought the cliffs were more impressive.

Buttermilk Fall State Park: This was our second stop, this park located slightly below Ithaca. We filled up on yummy ramen and headed here. Wiki tells me the name comes from the frothy appearance of its churning waters. However, before I read this, I thought it was because all of the waterfalls looks like stacks of uneven pancakes. I’m sticking with the pancakes. This waterfall looked completely different. Instead of a single huge fall, the entire 600ft elevation change was a set of 10 waterfalls of staggered pancakes. It looked like a thrill seeking individual could actually ride the waterfall down on butt or tube.  Of course, not allowed today. There was no flat trail leading to the waterfall, it was right at the parking lot. The walk up the side of the waterfall was many steps and seemed endless, much longer than the first trail we went on. While the waterfall wasn’t a dramatic single drop, I enjoyed walking by it more as there was more to see and the water cascading over the pancakes was beautiful and each level different from the other.  I could also envision 100 years ago people swimming in the small deep pools at the bottom of one of the 10 tiers. Also not allowed today.

Food & Drink

The only new alcohol related spot we hit up was Lucky Hare, a brewery on the east side of Seneca lake.  David tried an IPA as we sat on picnic tables and overlooked the lake.  We quickly stopped by Lamoreaux Landing to buy a few bottles, a place we went to in 2012 in our first trip and liked, and also bought a Hermann Wiemer riesling (when in Finger Lakes, you must Riesling), a spot we went to in both 2012 and 2016, at a local shop (FLX Provisions) in Geneva. We also stopped by Lake Drum Brewing, a bar in downtown Geneva we went to in 2016, that has a lot of different brands, just for a drink.

On the food front, we didn’t do anything too fancy.  I considered reserving FLX Table, a pre-fixe farm to table 20 person restaurant, but the menu didn’t fit my fancy, so we had to pass this time. Instead, we had breakfast both days a Monaco’s, a small hipstery coffee shop with breakfast sandwiches (and of course avo toast) on a residential street a few blocks from downtown. It was cozy and we enjoyed just sitting there, no time constraint, eating our food. We tried to go to Opus for breakfast, where we went in 2016, but it appears to be closed.  For dinner, one night we went to FLX Fry Bird, which is a quick serve fried chicken spot (and a surprisingly delicious salad with pickled veggies!), and the next night we opted for Beef & Brew, a heartier fare after all our hiking, where we got beef stew and chicken pot pie.  Our one lunch was in Ithaca at a ramen shop, Maru Ramen, on the west part of Ithaca, far away from downtown and Cornell. 

1890 House – Cortland, NY

As a part of our Finger Lakes 2021 trip, we took a detour to Cortland to see a house museum I found on TripAdvisor. The museum is known for the year the house was built – the 1890 House.

The house museum we went to this time was the home of the Wickwire family, former barons of wire industry in Cortland, NY.  Although North Adams is much larger than Cortland, in many ways the story sounded similar to our trip a few weeks ago.  At its height, the Wickwire factories produced one-fourth of the world’s wire cloth (think window screens, but they also made all sorts of stuff like chicken wire), before the production declined in the 40/50s as American steel declined.  The plant permanently closed in the early 1970s.  The museum had a picture of the factories, which were enormous and many many buildings in a single campus.  The website mentioned that the Wickwire’s had patents on their machines, giving them a huge competitive advantage. With a name like Wickwire, seemed like this family was destined to make wire.

The Wickwires built an almost castle looking mansion in 1890 and the family and decedents lived there until 1973. A son built a nice brick mansion next store, which is not a museum, but in use by SUNY Cortland Alumni Association as an event space as well as small inn/hotel. The Wickwire house had many interesting architectural features, though unfortunately was not in great shape. Like the town, this museum needs money, a lot of it, to fix water leaks, complete rooms, etc. Many rooms were closed. Not much original furniture. In comparison to The Mount we saw a few weeks ago, this house was so much more interesting looking, but in much worse shape. However, our tour guide was one of the best tour guides I can remember in years.  He clearly loves this house and showed us all the closed rooms, even those in disrepair and being used for storage.  It was the full “behind the scenes” tour. I have never gotten to see this many rooms in a museum tour. We saw everything; it was awesome. 

Being built in 1890s when opulence was in, there is a lot of wood paneling and unique architectural features (an arched sitting nook with a fireplace under the stairs). There was a ton of stained glass, mostly as the transom part of every window. There was a turret and a small room you could go in. The third floor was a huge entertainment room with a giant pool table and enough space where they used to hold dances there (not a ballroom and under the eaves, but really large).  The fourth floor is essentially a 360 look out on the entire town, including the factories (now torn down). One of the sons added on a sunroom with an entire pyramid stained glass roof; I was jealous and was wanting that for the cold winters.  The kitchen still had its early 1900 stove, which was as tall and wide as 3 fridges. The master bath has this shower with 4 semi-circle pipes at various heights to spray one not just on the head, but the entire body. Early modern extravagance or torture device? You decide.

The tour guide brought it to life and seeing all the rooms, even if they were a mess, was more interesting to me than just a few “perfect” rooms. 

The Gold Coast (of Long Island)

This past weekend a wedding took us to Long Island, which gave us an opportunity to discover the Gold Coast.  While I am very familiar with Newport’s mansion scene from the Gilded Age, I had never heard of the Gold Coast.  The Gold Coast was a nickname of the northern shoreline of Long Island where over 500 mansions were built at the turn of the century by the massive fortunes of the times (e.g., steel, railroads). Makes sense for those of you who have read (or seen) The Great Gatsby. These massive estates where owned by the likes of the Vanderbilts, Astors and J. P. Morgan.  Following World War II and the decline of huge fortunes, many of these mansions were demolished and only ~ 200 remain.  We had the fortune of seeing two of these mansions, one as a trip and one housed the wedding.

Old Westbury Gardens: This 200-acre estate (formerly 600 acre) was built and owned by Carnegie Steel heir John Phipps and his Irish wife Margarita Grace, daughter of shipping magnet Michael Grace of Grace Shipping Lines.  The Charles II-style house was built in 1906, as a replica of Margarita’s family estate back in England. The house has 23 rooms, including a red silk wallpapered ballroom and a John Singer Sargent portrait (because don’t you have one in your home?).  The grounds were beautiful, with a half-mile long alley emanating from the front and back of the house. John and Margarita had four children, of which one became an internationally known polo player.

I was impressed with how well kept the house and gardens are. Our tour guide said the upkeep costs $1 million per year.  I could tell, with no gaping issues in the house (water stains, etc.) and all the original furniture.  Unlike the Newport Mansions, this house felt more reasonably live-able, excluding the ballroom and massive dining room. The bedrooms were of normal size.  The Gardens and terrace were really the highlight.  Well-manicured gardens, sight lines created by the alley and general aesthetic were beautiful and relaxing.  David and I really enjoyed our visit to this “country estate.”

NYIT de Seversky Mansion: The wedding we were attending was held inside of this mansion.  The current owner is New York Institute of Technology, who purchased the home in 1972.  This home was built later than Old Westbury, in 1916, by Alfred du Pont. The original name of the home was “White Eagle,” which I don’t understand because it is a brick building. It was completed in 1918 for the cost of $1.1M. The house was sold in 1926 to John Phipps’ (of the house we saw earlier) sister Amy. I guess she wanted to be closer to her brother!

Interesting fact: in 1928, Amy’s parents sold their Fifth Ave residence and Amy had their entire marble entry hall and stairs disassembled and moved to the mansion. As one does when your parents move, you take the best stuff. Usually it’s just the dining room set.

This house, as its now a function hall and not a museum, had no original furniture, but did have the original marble staircase, ornate molding and floor plan.  It was fun to move from room to room during the wedding. And obviously a great venue for pictures.

 

Thoughts on Small Towns in Upstate NY

Our trip to the Finger Lakes involved a lot of driving, providing us the opportunity to see the small towns and rural parts of upstate New York. It provided a great contrast to our daily lives in a dense metro region of a large East Coast city. My guess is that most of these towns reached their economic height in the 1800s when the canals opened and the American Industrial Revolution happened. We saw many “Main St.” town centers with the single main drag flanked by old brick commercial buildings. I can imagine when they were the hub of commerce for that area, bustling with people and horses. It was the only place to go, the rest farms or houses. Now, these centers are in various states of use. As areas like these fell into economic recession when mills died, these town centers also started to die. And the rise of big box stores, highways and McDonalds in the strip mall didn’t help.

Some of the towns looked mostly dead, with some stores, but nowhere most people would go. Why go to a tiny hardware store when there is a Lowe’s 7 minutes away? Why go to this diner when there is a Taco Bell around the corner? Some have some revitalization whether through tourism or perhaps there has been some dollars towards attracting new stores/restaurants. Geneva is lucky in that it has Hobart College, so there will always be a stream of parents looking to take their kids to dinner. Watkins Glen has the state park and the International Speedway. Canandiagua has something going on. But others, like Penn Yan and Waterloo, look like no investment has come in decades. Even the good looking towns still had some vacancy / boarded up storefronts.

Outside of these small towns is mostly farmland. People don’t think of New York, or even the east coast, as where the farm land is. In between towns and outside of the vineyard area, it was all farms. There is even a big Mennonite population around here.

With the small town centers that haven’t seen a revival in a century and mostly rural farms, I can appreciate more why there are such differences in views between rural and urban populations. These people likely look at the place we live and think we have it all.

Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion Historic State Park

Sonnenberg Mansion and the Italian Garden

As I like to do, I found us a big mansion to visit (would any trip be complete without a mansion tour?!). This one is particularly unique because it is owned by New York state and is a state park. Most mansions are privately owned in some non-profit.

Some facts. Sonnenberg (german for “sunny hill”) is a 50 acre estate with an 1885 40-room Queen Anne style mansion. It was the former summer home of the founder of The First National Bank of the City of New York, which you now know as Citibank (aka, making bank), and his wife, the daughter of a NY governor (aka, connected).   After the husband died in 1899, the wife spent the rest of her days transforming the estate into many different types of gardens and traveled the world to find inspiration. Having no children, the wife left the estate to her nephew in 1923. He sold the estate to the federal government in 1931. The government built a VA hospital on adjacent farm land (still in use today) and used the house for doctors and nurses. In 1973, a local preservation group rallied to turn the house and estate into a publicly available location.

The estate: While the house is neat, the gardens are the real eye candy of this trip. There are 13 gardens still upheld today made possible by 230 volunteers as the estate only has 6 full time employees. The gardens range from a traditional Japanese garden complete with tea house (very en vogue at that time), a rose garden, an Italian garden, a traditional English garden with boxwoods, a secret garden complete with marble fountain, a deer park formerly completed by deer that lived in the barn in the winter and the oldest wood-framed greenhouse still in use in the US. I am amazed by the work that went into these gardens to create them (total overhaul of the landscape) and to maintain them. This landscape speaks to another time when the uber wealth had cash to blow and labor was cheap, because to maintain these gardens the way the pictures showed must have taken a small army (and remember they didn’t have any riding mowers or other gas powered lawn tools). The staff and volunteers do their best, but the deterioration of the house, lawns and other buildings is clear. They need some better fundraising, stat.

David and I both liked the variety of gardens. David liked the Italian the best, swayed by curlicue patterns in between the walkways. He also liked the idea of the secret garden, which originally had a short hedge maze to get into. I also was taken with the secret garden, because who doesn’t like secret gardens?! I also like the Roman baths, which was built in 1914 and was a fancy pool with columns and personal changing rooms. Now it is falling apart, but I can imagine it originally with its turqoise blue tile, white columns and 1915 bathing costumes. I am also impressed with early engineering because they had to pipe in water from Canandaigua Lake and heated it by boiler in a building next door. Finally, there was an aviary house, the last of 5 originally used to house many birds, which cost over $20,000 circa 1900. That is a lot of birds. Personal zoo of sorts.

The House: Because of the history of house, there isn’t much original furniture left so the house is a bit sparse compared to the photos provided where it looked like the wife liked to buy artifacts and hang them on the wall, put them on the mantle, basically everywhere. The house was neat though, very big with a cool 2 story “great room” and multiple bedrooms and libraries opening to the gardens and the view. I also always enjoy the bathrooms or other “modern amenities” in houses like this because they are familiar yet so bizarre. There was one bathroom with an arched entrance to another room, in case you want to take your tub with a view through an entire room. There was also a very tiny elevator, the size of one skinny person, with a tiny corner seat, stuck in a closet looking space.

Finger Lakes 2016

The blog has fallen silent this year as we welcomed our son in March. 7 months later, we felt it was time for a little parents’ getaway. We hoisted our son onto a set of grandparents and spent two days in the Finger Lakes, where we had a trip wayyyyy back in 2012. See posts here and here.

Apple Festival: Of course we started off the day in Lafayette, NY at the annual Apple Festival, where over 400 crafters descend into multiple tents to sell their wares next to every edible apple concoction you can think of and a small portable amusement park. This is an annual event for us, so we breezed through the tents, ever impressed by the guys who make wooden bowls and cutting boards and ever puzzled by the number Syracuse-themed items (e.g., aprons, potholders, hats) made from the same patterned material. I think they buy in bulk. We also snagged some apple fritters at 9:45am, because any good day starts with fried apples with cinnamon and sugar on top.

We then headed off on our adventure. We originally had an itinerary to hit the east side of Seneca Lake on Saturday and the west on Sunday. But it was raining and we were tired and didn’t want to drink all day. So instead we headed to Canandaigua, a town on the next lake over to see a house mansion and estate I had discovered called Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion Historic State Park (see post here). More thoughts on small old towns in upstate in a later post, as we visited multiple.

We carved back to Geneva, NY, home of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and at the northern tip of Seneca Lake, to check in to our hotel. We enjoyed our first wine tasting at Belhurst Castle and walked around town before a dinner at Red Dove Tavern and drinks at Microclimate Wine Bar and Lake Drum Brewing.

On Day 2, we awoke with delicious breakfast at Opus and then drove to the southern tip of Seneca Lake to walk the gorge at Watkins Glen State Park, where we also visited in 2012. It is still an amazing park, with tall walls around you showing the different layers of rocks, all revealed by eons of water eroding a path through the stone. I felt it was a school science field trip in the making or the place a young child would be inspired to be a geologist. Also interesting was the number of foreigners in what I felt is a random location from another country. I try to envision how someone from S. Korea is reading a guide book to the entire US and Watkins Glen is the chosen spot.

We had lunch at a hilariously named FLX Wienery (not winery), which sold hotdogs of various sorts.

Our afternoon involved two wineries (not wieneries) and two breweries. We went back to Hermann J. Wiemer, which was still excellent, and tried new (to us) Fox Run. Unfortunately the best thing about Fox run was the custom metal gate at the front. The gate was huge, with foxes jumping out the gate. I can’t imagine the cost. I think they should have focused on the wine instead of the gate. The two breweries, Climbing Bines and Glass Factory Brew House, were not of note per David. I don’t remember many breweries the last time we came (we went to one, Two Goats, on the east side in 2012), so it may they are not well seasoned or just catching the micro brew wave without much substance to back it up. Luckily we didn’t see many tour buses or people there just to drink/get hammered, so our day was pleasant.

We finished with a movie because why not when the kid is away and dinner at Hasley’s in Geneva.

Later Post: Lake George

Over the weekend of August 8, David and I headed to Lake George for a friend’s wedding. We had only been there once before, but it was during the winter, when Lake George is asleep and many inhabitants are elsewhere.  I often think of Lake George as the Lake Winnipesaukee of New York. It just seems like everyone goes there. Luckily the wedding afforded us some time to enjoy the lake.

Lake George is conveniently located at the south part of the Adirondacks, close to NYC, the metro region and many of the surrounding towns, which makes it a huge destination during the summer.  There appear to be a wide range of home, from those original summer cabins (a true summer cabin with no insulation, a few bedrooms and place to cook before hitting the lake), to huge modern mansions, to motels.

Yes, I said motels.  For how many people go to Lake George, I was surprised at how many motels there were.  We stayed in one. Most of the lodging choices are motels. And motels that are from the 1950s.  Driving into Lake George Village, the largest village on the lake, was like going back in time. I read that Lake George was once like the Hamptons, for the ultra rich and very posh. With the advent of airplanes, the ultra rich moved on and the middle class (with their cars) now had the ability to visit the lake. The boom of this popularity appears to have been in the 1950s, as many of the motels look like they haven’t changed since.  I hear there is some upgrading to hotels, or high-end motels, though the motel continues to leave a lasting mark on the main road alongside Lake George.

The wedding was in one of those new modern lake-side houses. It was gorgeous, with perfect weather and lake views all night long. Perhaps next time we will get to water ski on the lake, an obvious favorite pass time of many visitors.

Finger Lakes – Day 2

Corning Museum of Glass: Looking for a non-alcoholic event, we drove to nearby Corning to visit the glass museum.  Once known as the “Crystal City,” Corning was an American epicenter for glass production and innovation. The museum chronicles the history of glass making, provides a gallery space for modern glass art and has live demonstrations of glass blowing.  My favorite part was the modern art gallery, where glass becomes more than a window pane.  Some pieces seem to defy the medium, having glass act like soft, pliable material.  Of course the entrance area sculpture was a Dale Chihuly, whose work I was fortunate enough to be introduced to in a 2009 New York Botanical Garden exhibition of his work within the plants of the conservatory.  I was also impressed to learn of the history of glass innovations, having never thought making a light bulb or square TV would be difficult.

Mini golf: On our way back to Seneca Lake, we stopped to play a round of mini golf at a reputable spot that also offered a go-kart course and bumper boats, which was something I have never seen.

Silver Thread Vineyard: Off the beaten track is Silver Thread, a sustainable vineyard.  Down a dirt path, the tasting house is small and cozy, not a factory vineyard for the masses arriving on buses.  We enjoyed the ambiance and intimate setting, but the wine was lacking and expensive for the quality.  The new owners as of 2011 need a few more years to get the taste down, though I have confidence in them because the husband used to work at Lamoreaux Landing, the best winery we visited. The best Riesling we tried was made from grapes bought from another vineyard.

Lamoreaux Landing: The best winery we visited during our weekend, hands down.  After our tasting, we had multiple wines we were ready to buy.  The servers, though young (mid-20s), were knowledgeable, fun and had good tips.  From my trips to Long Island and Rhode Island, I had sworn off reds from the Northeast, but the server gave us a tip about swallowing the wine like whiskey to hit the back of the mouth instead of the front.  Turned out the Estate Red was good!  Nonetheless, we left with the 2007 Chardonnay, 2011 42 North (moscato white blend) and 2011 Red Oak Vineyard Riesling.

Chateau Lafayette Reneau: Our last stop was the vineyard associated with our B&B (no travel!) where we had a free tasting and full glass of wine.  Although this location has an amazing view (reported most photographed winery in New York State), the wine was not as impressive.  Including all 17 wines on the list, the tasting was a free-for-all of tastes.  Made from the same grapes as Welch’s grape juice (Niagra grapes), some of the wines tasted like juice. We found the dry Riesling and semi-dry Riesling to be decent, though not to purchase.  We took our glasses outside to enjoy the full porch and view, which was spectacular.

Sitting outside with view: We spent Sunday afternoon sitting in Adirondack chairs, sipping our Lamoreaux Chardonnay and gazing out over the vineyard onto Seneca Lake.

Dano’s – Although we wanted to go to Stonecat again, one look at the parking lot and we kept driving to Dano’s.  I was a hesitant at first about Dano’s, because sometimes Austrian restaurants can be a throw back to the 1970s, complete with interior and heavy menu.  Dano’s beat all my expectations: A modern restaurant with Austrian fare.  We sat on the back patio (must do) and enjoyed everything we ordered, including the must bratwurst and apple strudel!

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