Frolicking in the Finger Lakes

For our anniversary this summer, my husband and I took a return trip to the Finger Lakes. For long-time readers, I wrote about going to 25 wineries for our 25th anniversary. We must be slipping, because we did not make it to that many this time, but we did visit quite a few. The majority were new ones for us, which is easy to do considering there are about 100 wineries in the area. Here are some highlights from the trip:

Our first stop of the day for a tasting and lunch at the northern end of Seneca Lake. It was a lovely Tuscan-themed facility, though most of the building is for events such as weddings.

This was the view from their deck, where we ate our lunch. A great start to the trip!

Throughout the trip, I noticed an inverse relationship between the tasting room and the quality of the wine. Shalestone, which was really just a little pagoda, had the best red wine by far. It was a treat to have the winemaker/owner pour us our wines and talk to him about everything from sports to running a family business, to the state of the nation! We spent a long time here.

Our first night was spent in Watkins Glen, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. Here is the harbor, which we walked around that night.

We enjoyed a hearty breakfast on the patio of our hotel the next morning. Perfect weather and such a great view. My four hydrangea here at home have ZERO blooms this year. I think we all know who to blame.

While Cab is king in Napa, the Finger Lakes are known for their Rieslings. It was nice to be able to do side by side tastings of dry, off-dry, and semi-sweet Rieslings.

One day, we did a tour and lunch at Bully Hill. The tour was part wine museum and part the story of the shenanigans of its founder, Walter Taylor (originally of the famed Taylor Wine Company, now owned by Coca-Cola). Taylor Wine Company makes the majority of wine used for Eucharist in America. Walter was a bit of a crazy rebel.

We stayed a few nights in Hammondsport, NY. Supposedly, it was voted, 'Coolest Small Town in America' by some magazine. It was cute, but I wouldn't go that far.

It did have a cool mural on the side of its grocery store about its most famous resident, Glenn Curtiss, an aviation pioneer.

We did a lot of this on the trip: relaxing with a view.

On our way home, we visited Letchworth State Park. The waterfalls are quite grand. I managed to catch the train going over the tracks above Upper Falls.

Here are the Middle Falls. No one got too creative with the names.

Care to guess the name of these falls?

 

The park is known as the 'Grand Canyon of the East,' and this picture illustrates that. It was a really gloomy day when we were there, but still a nice ending to our trip.