Finger Lakes — Corning and Seneca Falls

We had a longer day of travel on Thursday over some very rough roads (New York worst by far) and took a detour up and down a country lane to get here.  The weather is sunny, so far and it even got up to the eighties today.  We had miles and miles of the sunken concrete roads that just jar your teeth, every three seconds, even at fifty five miles per hour.

Chequaga Falls

We are in a large KOA campground near Watkins Glen just south of the Seneca Finger Lake, one of ten or so long, narrow lakes left from glaciation.  Since it is a weekend, it is full of weekend familes, as well as the motor home crowd.  Yesterday (Friday) we went south to Montour to view Chequaga Falls, an impressive waterfall that comes right down into the town almost. It is the opening background for one of the Hallmark mysteries movies we watch, and always wondered if that scene was real.

After that, we drove into Corning to the Corning Glass Museum.  Wow!  Three stories of exhibits `is almost over whelming to to absorb what they depicated about glass history, glass crafting, glass blowing, glass in industry, lighthouses, telescopes, fiber optics and much more.  I think that our friend Kurt might have been able to make it through the entire museum, but we flagged after about three hours.  It is worth a visit and they have demonstrations and even make your own glass item classes that we did not attend.  We did find it fascinating that the creation of glass goes back to the ancient Egyptians. We did learn the era of a couple of our vases and wince glasses that have been passed down from our mother’s.

One of MANY Glass Exhibits

One Very Large Punchbowl

Chess, Anyone?

The Corning Glass Gift Shop

Goblets and More Goblets

The Liberty Bell in Crystal

More Glass

After the museum closed, we drove downtown into Corning and found an old (established in 1951, it was as old as Neil) Italian restaurant called Sorges.  Pamela had gluten-free ravioli and Neil had seafood fettuccine. Both were outstanding, and we left very full and satisfied, including a glass of wine.

Sorges Italian - We Had the Table in the Back Left Corner

Today, we took a drive up the East side of Seneca Lake and stopped at one of the more than 80 wineries in the Finger Lakes. Tried six different kinds and came out with a half case of wine.  Our destination was Seneca Falls at the northern end of the lake, and the location for the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.  It is the site of the 1848 convention for women’s rights.  It only took 72 years from this first meeting of over 300 women and men for the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gives women the vote.  It is an amazing history of dedication, much newspaper writing and speeches across the nation. If you look up the fate of women back in those days, you wonder why there was not a bloody rebellion with men dying in mysterious ways. We were surprised to learn several western states, such as Wyoming, Utah and Montana were the first to give women the vote at least state-wide.

Ranger Talk at the National Women's Rights Museum

Seneca Falls is also where the movie It’s A Wondeful Life was set.  There is a museum on it, but we decided to go to another winery and have dinner overlooking the massive 38-mile long lake. Course, we tasted more wine and dinner and bought four more bottles. This is the land that introduced the first ice wine — a special technique that leaves grapes to freeze on the vine for several days, then they are picked at night while frozen and made into a really sweet wine for after dinner sipping. The amazing part is that people pay for the privilege to go pick these frozen grapes at night! We had first tasted ice wine near Toronto 15 years ago and really liked the unique flavor. After that, we visited yet third winery, which included hard cider tasting, so have a little of quite a variety now. On way home, we stopped in Watkins Glen at Ben and Jerry’s before returning to the campground.

Here in the campground, Neil decided to finally upgrade the RV thermostat with a digital model.  Since it was the same make, it was just a mattter of cutting the old wires and splicing in the new ones, making sure to attach red wire to red wire, etc.  It was a successful upgrade, so we can set the temperature more closely.

Our New Digital RV Thermostat

Since we had  very poor WiFi and cell service at this campground, we had trouble attaching photos.  Enough people left that we were able to add them later.  Best wishes,

Neil and Pamela