June 2 to June 5—Westcott (NY) State Park
Drove a couple hours to Corning, NY to tour the glass museum. Quite the place—technical demonstrations on various properties of glass, vast collection of historical glass going back 3,000BC, and fine art exhibits. We were afraid that since it was owned by Corning that they would make us sit for a sales session on Correlware or Pyrex but there was no real sales pitch and they gave credit to Libby and Owens where due. I give it a high rating.
Drove a few more hours, mostly in the rain, through the Finger Lakes district of NY, Seneca Lake, specifically (Watkins Glenn, Geneva, etc.) Seneca lake is about fifty miles long and two miles wide and is lined with wineries, at least on the west shore, one after another. The feel of a beach resort in many places, just gearing up for the season, umbrellas being unfurled over picnic tables, the smell of fresh grease in the air.
Arrived at Westcott Beach state park, on Lake Ontario, near the source of the St. Lawrence river (in a couple weeks we will be at the terminus of the St. Lawrence in Gaspe, Canada). The park was quite empty when we arrived, on Thursday, but has filled up as I write this on Saturday evening. We hiked all the trails the park has to offer; can’t say much good about them, kind of scroungy-looking woods, and the flora limited. We did see, up close, a grouse taking a stroll, which was a first. We went into the nearest city, Watertown, to do laundry. You know Watertown, of course, as the home of the Little Tree Air Freshener Company which has been making those little pine trees that hang from rearview mirrors. (Beastie Boys: “Got my little trees in the mirror/so my car don’t smell.”) since the 1930s when a local entrepreneur heard a milk delivery man say he liked his job except for the smell of spilled rancid milk in his truck. Watertown is also the home of the oldest continually-operated covered shopping mall.
These are Watertown’s gifts to our culture. Also John Foster Dulles and his brother, and Viggo Mortenson.
Lots of quaint walkable coastal villages nearby that we toured—Sackett’s Harbor, Cape Vincent.
We have had many brief, pleasant interactions with locals here and all along our travels. It is one of the greatest pleasures to have a funny or interesting exchange with a friendly person, and we have had many such encounters—the wry guy in the little store up the road who tried to sell me his business, the fellow camper who just stopped by to ask where we went today, the two Canadian bicyclists who work as clerks in the federal government nearing the end of their 1,000 vacation trip. We talked to them quite a while and gave me the chance to start practicing my response to the question from our northern neighbors that is sure to come too often when we get there, i.e. “So what about this Trump, eh?” I am working on a combination of a shrug and a pained expression. I thought I would most miss the 30 minutes or so I spent each morning for the past 40 years reading the Washington Post. I don’t. In fact I care less each day about things that used to consume me. We are moving in a stress-free bubble. Altho the serious rain that is supposed to come tomorrow morning while we are preparing to leave causes me a little concern.