Heading North to Cooler Weather

After returning from our trip to Hawaii we had three days to get ready for our trip up to the Northeast. Whew!  Getting things in order and the rig ready to go was a job but we made it and left Friday morning heading up to New York to meet with friends.  Driving up we spent a night in Liverpool, PA, which is located on the west bank of the Susquehanna River.  It was a nice park but absolutely jammed with campers.  Glad we were only there for one night.

In the park there is a ferry that will carry people and cars across the Susquehanna River to Millersburg, another quaint little town. 

The pups had a great swim in the Susquehanna.

We noticed this house across the river nestled in the greenery.  Nice place for a view.

Driving up through the mountains was beautiful with

so many idyllic farms along the way.

We continued our journey and arrived at Sned Acres which is a lovely RV park in the Finger Lakes area of New York.  This is our third stay at the park because we enjoy the laid back atmosphere and lovely hills where the pups can run and play.  The park is also situated between Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake with dozens and dozens of wineries to visit.

We also met up with fellow travelers, Keith and Christine Holland, who are from Queensland, Australia.  We met them last year in an RV park in St Ignace, Michigan, a town on the Mackinaw Straits.  Originally, Keith and Chris were from New Zealand and still consider themselves 'Kiwis' but they have lived in Australia for many years.  Every summer they fly to the United States and pick up a truck and fifth wheeler they store in Indiana to travel around the U.S. and Canada for three month. Now that is really traveling!

Keith and Chris are a lot of fun and we enjoyed several days together visiting all the sites.  We also enjoyed a few bottles of wine along with Keith's wonderful stories of his life growing up in New Zealand.  The Captain and I hope to get over to their side of the world in a few years so we can see their beautiful countries up close.

While in the Finger Lakes area, we took a trip to the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, New York. The city of Corning is on the Chemung River.  It is named for Eratus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company that developed the community.  The first settlement was near the site of the current town and as the glass industry developed, Corning became known as the "Crystal City".

The city is the headquarters of Fortune 500 company Corning Incorporated, a manufacturer of glass and ceramic products for industrial, scientific and technical uses.  It is also home to the Corning Museum of Glass, which houses one of the world's most comprehensive collections of glass objects from antiquity to the present.  The museum also houses the Rakow Library, one of the world's major glass research centers.

We decided to tour the museum and it is quite the place if you are into the history of glass.  We saw many of the antiquity pieces but really enjoyed the modern glass art and the ways glass is used today. The museum is huge and would take several days to see all of it.

This chandelier made from glass is called, "To Die Upon a Kiss", the dying words of Othello in Shakespeare's tragedy. Color drains from the chandelier, opaque black at the bottom and colorless at the top with graduations of gray in between. 

This is a painting with fused glass.  In order for glass colors to fuse together, they must have similar rates of expansion when heating and cooling.  The artist's process involved fusing sheets of colored glass in layers, cooling, cutting the layered  glass into pieces, assembling them into abstract patterns, and fusing the patterns again inside a kiln.

Double Face is a collage of portraits painted on fragments of sheet glass.

Evening Dress with Shawl.

This strange one, and hard to see, is called "Raining Knives".

'Constellation' is represented by 27 glass animals.

These were crows hanging upside down.

One of the more colorful pieces of art made from glass. 

This one is called, 'Lynx after a Sketchboard Page'.  Using thousands of pieces of cut glass the artist recreated the fur of the lynx.  I liked this one the best.  I wonder how many times the artist was cut.......

Showing the more versatile function of glass, the sheet on the left is Low-E glass coated to reflect heat.  On the right is regular window glass which allows heat to pass through.  Keith and Chris are on the left with Brett (taking the picture) and me on the right.

A chair fit for a princess.

While at the museum we sat through a demonstration of glass blowing and saw how much work it takes to make anything from glass.  The demonstrators were very knowledgeable and experienced in their trade but it still involved a good deal of time and effort to just make a small pitcher.  Working with melted glass and the heat involved is very scary.  It would be so easy to severely burn oneself it you are not careful.  (These were paid professionals........please don't attempt this at home).  


After a good lunch in downtown historic Corning (and a major downpour) we spent more time at the museum and then headed home.

Hector Falls is a lovely waterfall alongside the road that flows into Seneca Lake.  

The wine tasting rooms are anywhere from plush to rustic depending on the size of the winery.  This one had beautiful flowers in bloom.

One of our favorite wineries called Anthony Road.

The Captain and I also drove to Canandaigua, NY, to meet with friends, Mary Anne and Dick Sander, and a cousin, Mary, who flew in from California.  Mary Anne and Dick have three daughters who live in the Buffalo area and the kids decided to throw an early 50th wedding anniversary party for them.  We couldn't make the party since we would be traveling to Vermont so got together to celebrate over lunch.  Had a wonderful time and a great meal.

Happy 50th Dick and Mary Anne

Sned Acres is outside the small town of Ovid, New York, and we drove through it several times while touring Seneca Lake.  In the past year they opened a brewery in the town called the Lost Kingdom Brewery.    

It's the old converted fire station in town and since we were driving through we stopped for a brew.

We thought it was a cute place.

Waiting for our beers.

Still waiting.......

Watkins Glen on the tip of Seneca Lake had a Ben and Jerry's but we decided to wait until we got into Vermont to go to the ice cream factory.  The Captain was sad......

Being in the wilderness of New York we finally came across our first wild animal.  Christine and I were frightened but Keith and the Captain said they would protect us.  What surprised me was how cunning the animal was.

I'll never feel safe in our rig again.

After seeing the sights, purchasing multiple cases of wine, and spending quality time with our Kiwi friends, the Hollands, it is time to move on.  Keith and Chris left to drive back up to Canada and we are heading to the beautiful state of Vermont.  Peace!