On the Road to the New York Finger Lakes!

After some great days in Western New York, we are on the road again to another area of this state that has come highly recommended to us. Again, we are searching out the smaller highways. We like the views from the country highways, and we especially like missing out on the expensive tolls that New York charges on its expressway. We love to see the views of the crops from the tall motor home windows. This soybean field is turning a golden color that reminds us of the waving fields of wheat in Oklahoma right before harvest.

We also love the big red barnyards of this area. Now Denisa understands why her Father built a big red barn after traveling in the northeast.

We have been sharing the road with trucks filled with silage. We've been watching as the feed corn fields have been cut, and now transported to silos. We have also been enjoying the "dairy air" around us, as we have been surrounded by sizable dairies and their Holstein herds.

As we turned south between two of the finger lakes, we saw a less automated harvest. Through the glare of the motor home windshield, we could watch as the Amish farmers were loading the corn stalks onto their horse-powered wagon.

Here's another view of the beautiful team that provides the horse-power for this more labor-intensive harvest.

Now we are settled into a water and electric site at Sned's Acres Family Campground. Another Passport America park, we got the best welcome gift ever. The owners' brother-in-law, Bill, bakes Amish friendship bread, and each new camper gets a loaf when they check in. With chocolate chips inside and cinnamon sugar outside, it tasted as good as it looks!

Our motor home is tucked in a spot in the trees. But from the top of the upper meadow we can see over the trees to the biggest of the Finger lakes--Cayuga Lake.

That upper meadow is part of the 9-hole disc golf course that we played one afternoon.

Right across from our camping spot is the swimming pool. We assumed that all the pools would be closed after Labor Day, but it was warm enough to be glad that this one was still open. Everyone is telling us that this is the warmest and dryest summer they remember in this part of the country.

We are in the middle of grape country, and there are wineries and vineyards up and down the country highways in the finger lake area. They are a beautiful sight as the fields of grapes slope down into the Cayuga and Seneca Lakes.

At church we talked to a vintner, and he said they would be starting their harvest this week. From our very uneducated eye, we thought the local grapes looked ready to pick. We also saw and heard indications of the attempts to keep the birds out of these harvest-ready grapes. A few places surround their grape vines with nets. But the vineyards closest to our campground seem to employ an automated air cannon to scare away the birds. We have to assume it is based on motion of approaching birds, because we could never determine any regularity of the sound that reminds us of fireworks being shot off. It does interrupt the natural serenity of the area, but it was another interesting part of living in another section of the country. We preferred it over another vineyard's method of recorded "birds in distress" sound designed to keep other birds away.

After seeing all the grapes in our area, we went looking for some to buy. Most of the vineyards are used to selling by the ton, rather than a few pounds to tourists. But we did find a local fruit stand that sold seedless grapes in smaller batches.

We bought 8 quarts because they were so cheap. We don't know how many pounds that would be, but they are heavy, juicy grapes. It looks like we will be sharing grapes with our camping neighbors down the road.

After the 2.5 hour drive and getting set up, we often take the rest of the day to relax. But the blue skies and cool temperatures drew us out of the motor home to start exploring the Finger Lakes area. This is our first time here, and we have already learned much about these bodies of water in upstate New York. If looking at a map of the state, the biggest lakes show up like long lines that the fingers of a hand scratched into the soil. But we found that there are actually 11 different finger lakes. Most of them were given hard-to-pronounce Indian names. For example, our nearest lake is Cayuga--pronounced cay-you-guh. We are camped between the two biggest lakes, so that will be the main area we will visit.

On this blue sky afternoon, we drove west to Sampson State Park, and our first look at Seneca Lake. At less than 2 miles wide, we could see the other shore to the west of us. But at 38 miles long, it looked like it went on forever north to south. It is over 600 feet deep, so it's one of the deepest lakes in the United States.

We walked along the rocky beach to see more of the crystal clear water, then changed to our bicycles to ride around the state park. That's when we found out that this area was used as a training camp for 411,000 navy soldiers during World War II, and 300,000 more Air Force trainees during the Korean War. Where camping spaces and the state park nature center now stand, were once 800 military buildings used to train and house soldiers.

But our funnest discovery here came when we followed a sign for a TCT rally. We found that TCT stands for "Tin Can Tourist" which is a group of vintage RV owners.

This 1946 Western Flyer motor home was our favorite of the 50+ RVs that had gathered for the weekend.

Some of the owners pull their RVs from the 1940's and 1950's with their new vehicles. But hard core owners pull their trailers with a similarly-aged vehicle. It was fun to see the old RVs and visit with some of the owners.

We are already finding pleasant surprises here in the Finger Lakes region, and we haven't even started with the list of special places that have been recommended!