Monday, July 5, 2010

GREYHOUND WINE TRAIL EVENT ON CAYUGA LAKE


June 25-30
We're so excited to be heading to our home away from home... Cayuga Lake country! This week is the Greyhound event with the Cayuga Wine Trail. This is the 2nd year in a row that we've gotten free tix for this and it's the perfect excuse to get away! We're not 'dog people' but there's not many around so it's ok.
We left on Friday morning and arrived at Robert Treman State Park by 11:00. We made GREAT time! They allowed us to check in and set up our tent right away. As we were checking in, I was watching some guy do his yoga moves or something under a tree. Someone said they thought he was praying for rain because it's been so dry in the area.


We started at our check-in winery... Six Mile Creek. Being that it was lunchtime, we decided to have lunch and a glass of wine and sit out on the balcony. We love the view.We went to a few garage sales and then did our sampling at King Ferry, Long Point and Montezuma Wineries. Those 4 were participating in the event for tonight (Friday).
For dinner we went to The Plantation... one of our newest favorites. We love that it's a kick back attitude and you can sit outside and enjoy the view of the mountains.

After dinner, we drove to Sunset Park to watch our first sunset of the week. It was a little cloudy but still was good. I heard someone approach on a bike and I turned around and who should I see but John H. (last name withheld by me)! We met him 2 years ago right here at Sunset Park... right after Cornell layed him off after working there for 28 or so years! He now lives in Hawaii but comes back every summer to try to get a retirement package. It was a lot of fun talking with him again. He has the coolest, strangest stories! He's quite a character , kind of like a weird scientist sort of way!

Our first night we had the most awful thunderstorm with constant treacherous downpours. I thought we'd either be killed by lightening or float away in our old 1979 tent!
All was well the next morning. The tent didn't even leak!! I guess that guy WAS doing a rain dance or something!!!
We took a ride to see our property. It looks the same as far as the weeds go!
PJ planted some pumpkin seeds for the fun of it. The rest of the week he kept saying "I wonder how the seeds are doing"?
Our street, Piper Rd, looking toward our lot. A few more people have started construction on their lots.
Off to our morning ritual of breakfast at Wegmans. It's so relaxing there. We always get the same table overlooking the Sushi guys. It's fun to watch them start the day making their specialties.
We went to a few more garage sales. One of the couples that had a garage sale were wearing the weirdest sandals. I had to get a picture of them. The guy even commented that he's lucky to have an easy going boss because he wears them to work! PJ's comment... "I guess you're not in construction".
There was a block garage sale where the street was closed down for the event. I have to say, we LOVE garage sales up there. The prices are always GREAT and every one of them has boxes of free items. We even got a free, full bag of Kingsford charcoal from one of them!
This little 'house' was just adorable. The tree was cut down and part of the inside was rotted out. They turned it into a little house for their child to read in. Very creative!!
The G.H. event starts at 10 today but we wait until around 12. Our first stop had a Greyhound that was already exhausted!

This was so typical of Ithaca. This 'piece of art work' was rocks on sticks!

We took a ride to the Cornell campus to go to the bookstore. I love the clock tower.
The view, overlooking the lake, is always beautiful.

We walked to the 'Suspension Bridge'. This overlooks a gorge that is just beautiful. I always took pictures of the waterfalls under the bridge. We used to swim in it! Now, you can't even take a picture! They put up really high fencing on this and ALL of the bridges around the campus. It turns out that this year they had 8 students commit suicide by jumping off various bridges.Next we walked to Mimm's Garden outside of the Plant Science Building. We love this garden. Besides the beautiful plants, we love the gates that they have. They are wrought iron and cast to be tree trunks, vines, flowers etc. This is the entrance.


This is my favorite gate. It's on the side and cast to be some of the flowers that are grown in the garden.
PJ in his glory!

This is PJ's favorite gate. It's the entrance from the sidewalk. It's made to be a bunch of vines creating an arch.

On our way back to the campground, the radio was interrupted with an emergency announcement of a tornado warning, which was actually for an area east of where we were. The sky suddenly got really dark and scary. It started to rain pretty hard. Instead of going somewhere that we could take cover, we headed to Sunset Park. Looking out toward Ithaca College (WEST) , it was still dark but there were 2 rainbows.
This was a little east of Ithaca College.
Turning our bodies to the west, we saw a beautiful sunset over Cayuga Lake. Very strange weather!!! It turned out that there was a tornado about 40 miles away from us.
We headed back to the campground and had our last campfire.

The last morning we wanted to go for a swim under the falls that are at the campground. Because it rained so hard the day before, the water was too cloudy and they closed it to swimmers. Oh well. We walked back to our site, packed up within 25 minutes and left. We had a GREAT, peaceful and yet adventurous 5 days!

3 comments:

  1. What a beautiful place to spend time! I'm so jealous!!!

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  2. Sounds like a fun trip. Great pictures.

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  3. Great pictures! I love the Finger Lakes area-- so beautiful!

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