New York and Vermont

Wednesday, 9/26 (day one of week five)

The Corning Museum of Glass wasn’t on our itinerary but we read about it in some brochures we picked up in Niagara Falls. It’s very close to our destination today and  our drive is only a few hours so we decided to go. Plus it’s raining today which makes being inside a museum seem like a good idea.

Corning Ware (also Corelle and Pyrex) is situated appropriately in Corning, NY. The museum is about glass in general but, of course, includes the glass science that Corning has been a part of. We loved it. There were two large galleries of contemporary glass art and an extensive collection depicting the history of glass around the world. There was also a special area about crystal & cut glass. The science hall discussed things like mechanization of making glass bottles, fiberglass, borosilicates, and telescope/optical glass (Corning made the mirror that is in the Subaru telescope at the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii).

They have 40-minute workshops throughout the day where guests pay to make their own glass pieces: sandblasting, fusing, or blowing your own mini pumpkin. We already have a pumpkin and we’re going to take a fusing class in Santa Cruz someday so we didn’t do a workshop. We did go to the second museum building to visit the the Carder Gallery. Frederick Carder worked for Steuben (a sister/subsidiary company of Corning). He was prolific in exploring new formulas for coloring and shaping glass. The gallery was small but PACKED with examples of both production pieces, personal pieces, and examples of items that, for various reasons, couldn’t be produced commercially. It was well worth the walk across the parking lot and probably most guests miss it.

From Corning it wasn’t even a half hour drive to our camp ground in Watkins Glen State Park.

Thursday, 9/27

Woke this a.m. to bright overcast but no rain which is exactly what was predicted and great for our plans today.

Watkins Glen State Park is super tiny and basically has one feature - the Glen Creek Gorge. The gorge trail is 1.5 miles each way with 800 steps also each way. It is exceptionally photogenic which explains why it took us 2.5 hours to “hike” three miles.

After our gorge visit and lunch we decided to explore the Seneca Lake Wine Trail. The Finger Lakes area of New York is a major wine producing area. The first place we stopped at had a lot of Reisling and other sweet wines - both red and white. Those are not what we like so we continued on. We stopped next at Pompous Ass Winery because we liked the name. It appeared their wines were also Reisling and sweet reds but it was less crowded which meant we could ask the server questions so we decided to stay and taste. She confirmed that this region produces a lot of Reisling, other whites, and some dry Reds but more sweet Reds. She pointed us to HJW Winery further up Lake Seneca which might have wines more similar to what we are accustomed to. It didn’t. But the tastings at HJW were cheap, Jeff enjoyed the whites for what they were (floral, fruity and dry) and the tasting experience very personal and pleasant. We also learned that despite this being off-season for the usual tourism things in this area it’s heading into a busy time due to leaf-peeping. We are unlikely to see a lot of leaf color since the peak starts in the north and the peak won’t reach the south where we are (and will continue to be) for a couple more weeks.

This area also has a lot of breweries and beer tasting, but we didn’t. Maybe next time. We have realized we are barely seeing any of New York and a return visit might be in order.

Friday, 9/28

Fun fact we were able to confirm today at the Schuyler County Historical Society in Montour Falls, NY. Schuyler County is named for Phillip John Schuyler. He was the father of Eliza Schuyler who married Alexander Hamilton. We will be seeing the play Hamilton in just a few days.

We drove to Walton, NY on county byways which was pretty and relaxing. Walton, NY is on no one’s tourism to-do list unless you are a North. One of the first settlers in Walton is Jeff’s great-great-great-great-great-Grandmother. We stopped by the cemetery and saw her gravesite and other North family members. Tomorrow Jeff will stop by the local Historical Society offices and hopefully learn more about his family.

Today we also learned that “upstate” New York refers to elevation, not latitude. And, since we are in the Catskill Mountains we are in upstate New York.

Saturday, 9/29

Jeff spent a few hours at the Walton Historical Society reading up on the North’s that settled here. Serena hung out at the Ogden Free Library using the internet and letting our devices share photos with each other. We were on the road north to Cooperstown around 3pm and we got there about 4pm. We were able to go inside the Baseball Hall of Fame for about 45 minutes and the tickets we bought today will work tomorrow too.

Sunday, 9/30

The Baseball Hall of Fame is packed with displays and information. We tend to read most of what is on display in museums but it’s just not possible here. The cases are jammed with memorabilia so even reading just the historical and overview parts took us 3 hours for the 2nd floor (where most of the displays are). The 3rd floor is a lot of info about baseball records; we were starting to be overwhelmed so we skipped some of those too. The grand hall where the Hall of Fame inductee plaques are displayed is on the 1st floor. There are 200+ of them so again we couldn’t read everything. Overall, it is a very impressive collection and a great museum. Displays included information about: stadium design and historical stadiums, photography, women in baseball, black leagues and integration, players from South & Central America, and performance-enhancing drugs. There were also special galleries for Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.

Monday, 10/1

We had planned to spend two nights in Walton but didn’t. That gave us a free day. Serena has a friend in Portsmouth, NH. We were going to try to visit on Wednesday but it was easier to do today. We went one hour along our route last night before camping.

Aside from a more leisurely visit in Portsmouth, this itinerary adjustment means we get to go into two more states (Vermont and New Hampshire) that weren’t part of our original plan. We drove through southern Vermont and the Green Mountain National Forest. It’s not peak leaf peeping season this far south (fall leaf color changes start in the north) but we did see some color. Also, it is very gray today (we even had some rain) which is probably not the best for great tree color pix.

We spent a lovely evening in Portsmouth. Tomorrow we head for Massachusetts and tomorrow night we see Hamilton!

The butterflies are solar panels that power the light.

Layer upon layer of torch woven glass

Millions of tiny (smaller than the word tiny) pieces of glass rod “paint” this picture of the Duomo in Venice. The picture is roughly 4’x6’.

Learned a bit about how Cameos and pieces like this are done. Two (or more) different colors of glass are layered. Then the top piece is carved. This piece took eight years to carve.

Watkins Glen State Park - Glen Creek Gorge

Probably a picture very like this one is what Serena saw in a magazine that led to Watkins Glen being on our itinerary.

The trail goes behind that cascade on the left.

Some of the 800 stairs. We didn’t count them but we believe what the sign at the entrance to the Gorge Trail said.

This is the largest waterfall that the trail goes under.

Seneca Lake wine country

One of Jeff’s relatives.

Upstate New York in Walton

Jeff in Cooperstown, NY

Initially we were mostly seeing individual trees.

We’ve been told by our Portsmouth friends that this lovely dark red leaf is Poison Ivy.

But we also saw some colorful trees grouped together.

We could see on the hillsides that in a week or two the color will be widespread.