Lakes, Cows, Glass, Planes, Wine & Baseball

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!