Day 2 of the family reunion (July 30) was spent mostly around the house. Some of the group attempted to go tubing. The water level was low though and it involved sections of walking. I took the girls to what was supposed to be a good wading spot, but it was a bust. Jess caught a cold along our travels so then the girls and I took a trip to the nearest pharmacy (25 minutes away) to pick up some pseudoephedrine for her. By the time we got back it was lunch.
In the afternoon I ran the treasure hunt I designed for the little kids, but I apparently didn’t take any pictures (I was taking video though). After they finished, I ran the harder treasure hunt for the 13-year-olds. Over several hours they managed to complete it (with a little help nudging along the way).
Some of the kids played kickball for a bit in the yard.
And in the evening was the first round of music bingo.
On the 28th we loaded up for a meandering day across the rest of New York to Ticonderoga. Sadly, the fort is closed on Mondays so we didn’t get to visit that. But we ate lunch at a pizza shop across from the street from a place which has painstakingly recreated the sets from “Star Trek: The Original Series.” Why this is located in Ticonderoga I couldn’t tell you, but it’s there. We did not visit. The girls wouldn’t have cared at all and Jess and I both watched “The Next Generation” so we didn’t really care either.
But we did stop at the Dixon graphite company’s little museum. They make the “Ticonderoga” brand pencils, but they never made them in Ticonderoga. But they did mine graphite all around that area.
From Ticonderoga we took a ferry across the southern edge of Lake Champlain into Vermont.
Once in Vermont (there’s really nothing on the Vermont side of the crossing, which I found odd) we made our way to Rutland and looked at animals in a pet store while we waited until we’d be able to get into the house for the family reunion.
We arrived at the house in Killington, not the first to arrive, but it took some kerfuffling to finally actually get into the house. Then lots of shuffling about moving luggage and trying to figure out where everyone would be sleeping.
Erin ran an glow-egg hunt for the kids (plastic eggs with little glow sticks inside–and prizes also).
The only picture I seem to have taken that evening is Heather sitting on the couch with a bag of ice on her head. Don’t remember why though.
On the 27th, packed up from the Royal Mountain Campground, we headed further north to North Creek to ride rail bikes.
We stayed at The Alpine Lodge which (unless I somehow missed it) did not market itself as “staff less” when we booked, but learned that was the case when we arrived. Had we not arrived early enough to catch someone on the property and get the Wi-Fi password it would have been a problem since we had no cell service and our room access code was only provided via email at our check in time.
As much as I like not needing to interact with people, when I’m paying money for something I much prefer having someone to fix things as needed. Like “I need to get into my room and something’s wrong with the lock” (which didn’t happen) or “a kid in the room above is stomping around and jumping off the bed from midnight to 2 AM” (which did). I finally got up and found the room (since access to those rooms was from the opposite side of the building it wasn’t obvious which room it was) and asked them to please make it stop. I didn’t get shot. The noise settled down until about 6 I think.
Anyway, the reason we were there was for the rail bikes which we rode after eating lunch at the diner next to the hotel (and some ice cream down the street). A nice ride along the Hudson River. We were the only people in the group with the guides so at least when Heather freaked out about a mosquito that landed on her we weren’t disturbing anyone else.
I bought a frozen pizza from the grocery store across the street from our hotel to eat for dinner (the hotel room had an oven). That was convenient since there really wasn’t anything else around. Not sure there were any restaurants open for dinner within 20 miles.
I also discovered we were back in Drake’s Cakes territory and bought the first Funny Bones of the trip. Yay!
The 28th would take us across Lake Champlain and to the start of the family reunion.
On the 26th we continued our eastward journey to Herkimer where we took a cruise on the Erie Canal and through one of the modern locks.
Corinne was grumpy but perked up when we decided she could get the red panda stuffed animal in the gift shop as her trip souvenir. She named it Pearl.
From Herkimer we stopped in Little Falls. Little Falls, according to the book Wedding of the Waters (which I read before the trip), was the critical component of the Erie Canal’s existence because it is the location of a natural cut, caused by glacial activity, through the Appalachian mountain chain. Without it any canal route would have to manage an extremely challenging (possibly impossible at the time) elevation change over the ridge of the mountains.
Jess had found information suggesting there was a little boutique shopping area in the town. What we found appeared to be a deserted and dying little commercial district next to the canal. During the heyday of the canal it was a critical resupply and stabling area, but its time has passed.
From Little Falls our adventure continued north into the mountains to the Royal Mountain Campground. I managed to find a campground with a cabin that provided linens. We ate dinner at a sketchy little diner down the road and then returned to our cabin for a fire and s’mores. We settled in for the night and listened to a rainstorm come through and plip plop on the roof into the morning.
Upon leaving Niagara Falls we headed to Lockport, NY to see….the locks!
The Erie Canal needed to climb the same elevation change that Niagara Falls drops over. That climb happens at Lockport where a series of 5 double-locks (side-by-side for bi-directional traffic) raises and lowers canal traffic 60 feet.
One side of the bi-directional locks is still in mostly-original condition. The other side was replaced during one of the canal modernizations to have fewer locks of greater height and wider widths as enabled by new engineering and technology.
There’s a little museum in between the sides of the locks, but otherwise you can just kind of meander about the area. I apparently didn’t take any pictures of the locks, but Jess got a picture of the sculpture recreating a historic photo of lock workers.
We ate lunch at a little diner next to the locks before piling back in the car and continuing our drive to Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion State Historic Park just north of Lake Canandaigua (one of the Finger Lakes).
This property was a summer home of a rich banker in New York City in the late 19th century. Fun to walk around. Some areas in desperate need of funding for restoration–especially the Roman Bath.
My favorite area was the “Rock Garden” which was a set of trails through a rocky area covered in mosses, ferns, and trees. It included secluded grottos, bridges, twists, and turns.
We drove along I-90 further east until deciding to stop. Upon which we discovered that while many hotels existed in the area, they were all, for unknown reasons, just about booked up for the night. So we paid an absurd amount for a basic double-queen room, but we at least got a room.
That evening found us back in Friendly’s territory and we got our first Friendly’s sundaes (and dinner) of the trip.
