Month: September 2018

The Lake George/Saratoga area is one of America’s most important historical sites, although it doesn’t get much fanfare.

The Battle of Saratoga (there were two, actually) in 1777 is considered the turning point of the American Revolution.  After the Colonists kicked General Gentleman John Burgoyne’s self-important fanny (fun fact – the field commander responsible for America’s victory was Benedict Arnold), France began providing us with military aid.  In fact, Saratoga is recognized as one of the 15 most decisive battles in world history.

Only a few miles up the road from Saratoga, Lake George and nearby Lake Champlain (a few miles east, on the New York-Vermont border) were the strategic hubs of the north-south trade routes between Canada and New York in the late 1700’s.  One of the Colonies’ earliest victories in the Revolutionary War was the 1775 seizure by Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys of Fort Ticonderoga (located on Lake Champlain, only a few miles from Lake George – the name “Ticonderoga” comes from an Iroquois word meaning “at the junction of two waterways”).  Cannons from the fort were then sent to Boston to help lift the British siege there.

By the time Ginny and I got there, everything had calmed down and the area had turned into a haven of scenic beauty.

The Mohawk word for Saratoga is Serachtague, “place of swift water.”  Saratoga Springs is famous for its mineral baths, which Ginny and I indulged in.  It’s also known for its swift horses at the vintage racing track in town, which had closed for the season by the time we got there (although we attended a race day there a few years ago – it’s one of the classic venues in all of sports).  The term “upset” is part of our sporting lexicon because the horse Upset was the only horse ever to defeat the legendary Man-O-War, and it happened at a 1921 race in Saratoga.  A few years later, in the early days of the NFL, Art Rooney used a big Saratoga track payday to keep his Pittsburgh Steelers in business, at a time when the team was on such shaky financial footing that Rooney said, “The biggest thrill wasn’t in winning on Sunday but in meeting the payroll on Monday.”

As we were setting up and unpacking in our Lake George campground (the nicest place we’ve stayed on the entire trip) Friday afternoon, we discovered via social media that two of our best friends from Tuscaloosa, Robert and Ruth Reynolds, were staying in Saratoga Springs.  After a couple of phone calls, we ended up spending the evening with Robert and Ruth.  

Saturday was our long-anticipated reunion with Rebecca Graham.  Rebecca and her husband Jesse were dear friends of ours in Litchfield.  It’s hard to believe it’s been over six years since we lost Jesse to cancer.  Rebecca now splits her time between New York City, where she works, and Lake George, where she has reunited with her teenage boyfriend Rich.  Together, we had a happy day.  Jesse would’ve wanted it that way.

We got back to the rig in time to watch Alabama-Texas A&M, which turned out a lot better than Oregon-Stanford did later that night.

Our other anticipated event in Lake George was the Adirondack Balloon Festival, for which we woke up at 5:00am Sunday morning.  Held at the nearby municipal airport, it featured 100 hot-air balloons launching shortly after sunrise.  Part of the event’s charm was its informality – we were able to mingle among the balloonists as they set up.

And when they all rose with the sun, it was a sight to behold!

After an exhilarating morning of balloons, our afternoon was tranquil.  We explored the town of Saratoga Springs, then went to the Roosevelt Spa for a mineral bath.  Well, it was mostly tranquil – as we soaked in our tubs, the background music was harps, cellos, oboes…and the thrum of the nearby Willie Nelson concert.

Next stop, New Hampshire – the White Mountains and Mount Washington.

Most of our trip has been about exploring new places.  Our stay in Vermont was different.

Vermont’s natural beauty is magical, no matter the time of year.  October leaf season epitomizes what sightseeing is all about.  Golf provides heart-grabbing moments when you get to follow the ball flight against a backdrop of green mountains.  Hiking is probably the official pastime of the state.  The skiing is good (not great, but good), and accessible to New Yorkers and New Englanders.  The state just has a vibe, from the Ben & Jerry’s factory to aging hippie glassblowers to covered bridges.

Ginny and I started visiting Vermont long before we met each other.  Then we made our own memories together – our first vacation together with our kids, plus occasional weekends for special occasions or no occasion at all.

We stayed in Manchester, in the southern part of the state (also near our next stop, back west to Lake George, NY).

I also got to scratch a 35-year-old itch.  Ekwanok CC is a private club that shares a stone wall with the Equinox golf course that’s part of the same-named resort in Manchester.  Equinox has been one of my favorite tracks since the early 80’s and I always looked over that wall with curiosity about what that other course would be like.  This trip, I finally finagled my way onto Ekwanok (with a big assist from my old USGA pal, Jeff Hall).

Ekwanok is a classic New England course in perfect condition and worthy of its rank as the #1 course in the state.  

But when we played Equinox the following day, it was like saying hello to an old friend…a scenic friend.  

Monday, we traded our golf shoes for hiking boots and climbed a mountain – Stratton Mountain, the largest ski mountain in southern Vermont.

The climb was steep but the views at the top were worth it (yes, we started our hike in that village in the pic)!
The Stratton bear was at the peak to greet us.   

We also had two exceptional meals at local restaurants and generally ate too much and drank too much the whole time we were there.  Just for old time’s sake.

As we left Vermont to go back to Lake George for a balloon festival there this weekend, we had one of those experiences that renews your faith in the goodness of people.

Interstates, U.S. highways and state highways are all okay for us to drive The Big T on.  They all have bridges strong enough for our 18-ton load and overpasses high enough to go under without bumping our 12-foot-tall roof.  Things get less certain when we’re on less travelled roads.

Our route from Manchester to Lake George included a long stretch on a county highway.  This turned out to be fine – until we got to an old bridge with only a 10-foot clearance and a weight maximum of 10 tons.  Fortunately, Ginny was driving ahead of me instead of us towing the Jeep behind the rig.  She sent me an SOS when she got to the bridge, which gave me enough time to stop and make a u-turn before getting to it.  Just to add more spice to this little hot sauce moment, I also was getting uncomfortably low on fuel (during our hour-and-a-half drive, we’d passed one gas station, which didn’t have diesel – did I mention that Vermont is very rural?).  So we’re pulled over to the side of the road, figuring out an alternative route, when a couple pulls up behind us and asks if we need some help.  We said yes and explained why.  It turned out that they not only live in the area and know all the roads, the guy is a truck driver and knows all the bridge heights, weight limits and where to get diesel.  They didn’t just give us directions, they insisted on leading us to the nearest town and to the nearest gas station (which I couldn’t have gotten the rig into had he not led me to the back entrance that he uses to get his truck into the place).  Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head at your good luck, shake the hands of the people who are so nice to you and keep driving.

P.S.  Happy Birthday to my daughter Abby!!!

We expected our stay in the Finger Lakes region of central New York to be easygoing, but we kept finding interesting things to do, plus we had a special houseguest.

We stayed near the picturesque village of Hammondsport on the south end of Keuka Lake, distinctive because it’s the one Finger Lake that isn’t shaped like a finger (it’s y-shaped).  It didn’t take us long to walk the entire town beach,

which was too bad, because we needed the walk after finding a little joint in town that served the best burger we’ve had on the entire trip,

On our drive back to our campsite, we passed a small pasture full of what we ended up calling designer cows.

They looked like some special breed, but the website of the farm, Crooked Line Farm & Orchard, brags more about its apples than its cows.  So what do we know.

Tuesday, we went to the nearby city of Corning, home of the Corning Glass Works and the Corning Glass Museum.

A glass museum?  Yep.

Its displays range from art, 

to historical artifacts (such as the world’s largest crystal punchbowl),

to a glass-blowing exhibit (made semi-hilarious by a Mandarin translator who reminded me of an old Laugh-In sketch when Arte Johnson translated English into pidgin Swedish).

We also learned about the history and science of fiber-optic cable, safety glass, lens refraction and more.  The only thing missing was a re-enactment of the time Corning’s CEO, Wendell Weeks, told Steve Jobs to “shut up and let me teach you some science” when Jobs tried to be a know-it-all during a meeting about whether Corning’s gorilla glass would work as the screen on the iPhone.  It worked, by the way – on the day the iPhone launched, Jobs sent Weeks a note saying, “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Friday evening, Ginny’s sister Cindy O’Hara arrived from her home in nearby Otego, NY to spend the weekend with us .  We started with a barbecue and the U.S. Open on the outside TV.

The next day, Ginny and Cindy visited the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls.

Sunday, the museum we visited honored an entrepreneurial daredevil, not equal rights pioneers.

Glenn Curtiss was born in Hammondsport and it would be an understatement to say he was a local boy who made good.  One thing kept leading to another for Curtiss – he started racing bicycles in 1901, which led to racing motorcycles, which led to building motorcycles, which led to building airship engines, which led to building airplanes (lots of airplanes), which led to millions of dollars and early retirement, which led to – of all things – inventing the modern RV.

All of Curtiss’s early development was done in Hammondsport.  In his “June Bug” plane, he made the first long-distance flight between two major cities, New York City and Albany, taking four hours and involving two refueling stops along the 137-mile route.  His model A-1 plane was the first U.S. Navy aircraft, and he trained the first Naval aviators.  By World War I, Curtiss was a major contractor to the military, especially the Navy.  His Curtiss Jenny bi-plane was used as a training aircraft by both the Army and Navy.  Replicas of the June Bug, A-1 and Jenny are among the many aircraft in the Glenn Curtiss Museum.  

Curtiss cashed in his chips and retired to Florida in the 1920s to live a life of leisure (and dabble in real estate – he essentially creating the cities of Hialeah, Opa-locka and Miami Springs in his spare time).  It was his passion for the outdoors that led him to one more momentous invention – the “Bungalo”, the forerunner of the  modern recreational vehicle.  That one sorta choked us up.

Our history lesson at the museum made us thirsty, so we then explored the wineries surrounding Keuka Lake (and enjoyed the scenery!).  

We could see firsthand that it’s almost harvest season.

Sunday was also the day that summer came to a screeching halt.  We went from 90 and sunshine on Friday to sweaters, jeans and 55 on Sunday!

We then made a short drive from Hammondsport to Cooperstown, NY, our second patch of baseball-related hallowed ground in the past month.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum didn’t just happen as an organic part of the game of baseball.  It was founded by the owner of a local hotel, Stephen Carlton Clark, as a way of growing tourism in the Cooperstown area.  Clark cleverly leveraged the fictional claim that baseball had been invented in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday to establish the credibility of the location of the Hall.

The museum is full of history.  There’s a wonderful exhibit on Henry Aaron.

And tributes to other sluggers…

The section on Major League Baseball records deals with the recent PED controversy by noting the milestones of both juiced and non-juiced players – e.g., Pete Rose and Ty Cobb.

Speaking of drugs, there’s even a special bobblehead…

Inspecting the plaques in the Hall of Fame is a tour through the very best of the game, including groundbreakers… 

and boyhood heroes.

After our trip to the Hall, we had an enjoyable dinner at the nearby home of Cindy and Terry O’Hara, where we also met their granddaughters, Riley Ann and Lilly, and visited with their parents, Kelly and Sarah.After a couple of days of the first rain we’ve had in a long time, we got lucky enough with the weather to play the beautiful Leatherstocking golf course that’s part of the Otesago Lodge on the banks of Lake Otsego, a few blocks from the Hall of Fame.

One of the ongoing pleasures of our trip is meeting nice people.  That happened at Leatherstocking – we played two rounds there, both with a delightful couple from Massachusetts, Rick and Jane Johnston.

Next stop is one of our favorite places, Manchester, VT for a few days of golf and nostalgia – my first-ever birthday present from Ginny was a trip to Manchester.  I expressed my gratitude by making her eat in our hotel room and watch a Red Sox playoff game on TV!

Being in Western New York this time of year is sort of like…well, like being in Duluth in August.  When the weather is nice, the beauty of the area is exhilarating.

Our first stop was to visit old friends, Tom and Susan Stenovec, at their beautiful home on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution about an hour south of Buffalo.

The Institution is summer camp for grownups – a three-month-long festival of art, music, exercise, education and commentary.  Sort of a combo of the Bohemian Grove, Tanglewood, Omega Institute and TED.

We know all of this because Tom and Susan described it to us – we couldn’t partake, because the Institution’s program for summer, 2018 concluded the day before we arrived.

We still admired the scenery and architecture…and enjoyed spending time with old friends.

While we were there, we all went to Jamestown, NY to visit the Museum of Comedy.  Why Jamestown?  We learned that Jamestown is the hometown of Lucille Ball.

It’s a wonderland of laughs, with exhibits honoring stand-up, television, comic strips, movies and more.  

We could’ve stayed all day and laughed all night.

We made the short drive Wednesday from Chautauqua to Buffalo.  We had a magnificent feast that night at Anchor Bar, where Buffalo wings were invented in 1964.  Anchor is to wings what Dreamland is to ribs!

The next morning, we made the short drive north to visit Niagara Falls.

Niagara is the largest waterfall in North America, measured by volume of water-flow.  The primary falls are the American Falls, located entirely in New York, and the Horseshoe Falls, located on the U.S.-Canada border.

Remember our report from Sault Ste. Marie about the 20-foot elevation change on the river between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, creating rapids that require navigation locks?  Well, when there’s an elevation change of 165 feet between two Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario), the resulting “rapids” are Niagara Falls.  Instead of locks, the engineering marvel at Niagara is hydroelectric power.  Before going over the falls, more than half the flow of the Niagara River is diverted to turbines that power generators converting mechanical energy to electric energy for use in both New York State and Canada.

We crossed  into Canada to get the best look of the entire scene.

I also indulged in a zipline – this was the view as I climbed into my harness.

Sadly, on our walk to and from Canada, we witnessed the latest ugly scene in Trump’s America.

The U.S. and Canada are connected by the Rainbow Bridge.  Both the Canadian and U.S. border entrances have buildings that everyone walks or drives through and shows their passports.  The Canadian border still has glass doors, a modest fence and a turnstile.  The day we were there, coils of razor wire were being installed on the U.S. side.  The project was completed by the time we returned in the afternoon.  Plus, we had to each pay $1 to operate the American turnstile!  The difference between the welcoming Canadian border and the foreboding U.S. border did not make us feel great again.

Over the weekend, we completed our tour of all five Great Lakes, by visiting Sodus, NY on the banks of Lake Ontario.   

We enjoyed the beach…

and the nearby Sodus Bay Heights Golf Club.

Saturday night, the prettiest Bama fan in all the land surprised me by debuting her new lucky sweater just before kickoff of the Tide’s drive for National Championship #18!

Next stops – the Finger Lakes, then Cooperstown, NY.