The Cannon Family's travel blog

Today dawned grey and drizzly with little promise of sunshine so it was quite fortuitous that our plans were not completely weather dependent.  I managed a quick 4 miles before the rain – not near the lake this time but it didn’t matter since I couldn’t see the sun anyway.

Breakfast was slightly less disappointing than yesterday.  I did get Vans GF waffles done in the oven so there would be no cross contamination from the toaster but they were not very well done – unfortunately, neither was Gillian’s French Toast.  But I had freshly picked blueberries to go with the yogurt and granola so we made do and hit the road for Syracuse. Why Syracuse you ask?  Because that’s where the Syracuse Nationals were, of course!  And how could we be a measly 20 miles from one of the biggest hot rod shows in the country and not visit! (If you’d been married to a car guy for more than 20 years, you would think that made sense too!)

So we joined thousands of other car enthusiasts and their family members at the state fair grounds for acres and acres and acres of assorted automobiles and accessories.  Gillian and I couldn’t decide whether to count mullets or tattoos and then gave up on both because it was too hard to do either.  I have to say that I was impressed by some of the care and detail, not to mention the work, that went into some of the cars.  Frank got lots of ideas about what he wants to do with the 54 Chevy he has at school and we covered 4 miles looking at chassis, paint jobs, junkers for sale, vendor stalls and celebrity signings.  (We opted not to wait in line for Catherine Bach’s autograph – time has not been kind to Daisy Duke or she has a bad plastic surgeon!) I can honestly say I did not expect to see a stand selling Vera Bradley bags across from one selling car parts but I was told that the wives need to be kept entertained as well. (Grrr….)

Three hours of gleaming chrome, exhaust fumes, traffic cone orange paintwork and idiotic conversations overheard was all we could take.  (Best one:  “Do you know if you feed chocolate to a duck it will explode?” WTF!) So we headed back west through more small towns and stumbled on a gold mine in the guise of Marcellus, NY.  What does this town have that was so precious?  A fluff and fold laundromat!  We were able to drop off half a trips worth of dirt laundry and have lunch while someone else washed and folded our underwear!  Love the service sector!

We had a great lunch at Daniel’s Grill in Marcellus – Gillian and Frank had various sandwiches on foccacia or ciabatta breads.  One was chicken with pesto mayo and the other may have been Cajun grouper.  I had a lovely grilled flat iron steak salad with caramelized onions and blue cheese.  It didn’t even need any dressing.  While we were waiting for the laundry to be finished, we wandered over to Elbridge which turned out to be a very cute little town with a hardware store where Frank could get waterproofing spray for the convertible top.  And I got to visit the local yarn store where I picked up several skeins of gorgeous natural brown three ply from their own sheep that really wants to be a vest.  I can even picture which one in my Folk Vests book.

Then the rain that had been threatening all day actually erupted and we headed back to Marcellus to pick up the laundry.  But first, we happened on the find of the century: The Chocolate Pizza Company! Holy diabetic coma Batman, what a place!  They sell chocolate pizzas and lots of other things.  We bought “slices” of dark chocolate with M&Ms and mini Reeses, dark chocolate with cashews and candy coated sunflower seeds, and white chocolate with cranberries and almonds!  AND “Wings” which are ruffled potato chips spread with peanut butter and dipped in chocolate.  I can feel my waistline spreading as I type!

Clean clothes and candy securely tucked into the trunk, we headed back to Skaneateles to visit the townwide sidewalk sale and watch the skies.  Gillian and I got some running gear at the local triathalon shop – Endurance Monster – and we tried very hard to patronize the other shops but nothing was calling to us in the rain.

And we continued to nervously watch the skies for the one part of today’s plans that were weather dependent: a movie at the local drive in!  Yes, they have drive ins here and we were so hoping to see “The Dark Knight” tonight by sitting in the convertible eating some of the yummy junk food we have been acquiring. The radar looked like things *might* go our way so off we went to Auburn, NY and the Finger Lakes Drive In.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through a 2.5 hour movie that started at 9pm but I couldn’t let either Frank or Gillian go through life without having been to a drive in.  I remembered all those nights at the Pinehurst Drive In when I was growing up.  But that’s a story for another day and a lot more wine!

And so we go to bed in the wee hours after having enjoyed the movie and the drive in experience.  The rain held off and we watched with the top down, Gillian sitting on the back, looking over the windscreen. We could have stayed for the second feature (The Amazing Spider Man) which would start at around 12:10 AM and really gotten our $6 worth but we are just too tired! I owe an apology to the town of Auburn which is apparently a perfectly fine town (with a drive in!) that just happens to have some scary parts that we found on our first foray.  Lo siento!

Total steps today, including the traipse around the fairgrounds were 14,209 or 6.12 miles. Most unusual food item:  Frank got sushi take out to enjoy at the drive in and the salmon in the Alaska roll was smoked – very odd!

Slept wonderfully and enjoyed my early morning 4 miler before breakfast.  As there really isn’t 4 miles of village in which to run, I inevitably wound up in the countryside where I heard a rooster, found the country club and polo fields, and watched the sun rise over the lake.

Then we had to navigate the new breakfast arrangements.  There were many folks at breakfast and we had yet to meet the inn keeper.  Even now, I’m not sure we have! There was plenty of coffee, cold cereal, and pastries out and then we were given a choice of blueberry pancakes and sausage or fried eggs and sausage.  We opted for the latter and when asked my toast preference, I reminded the nice young woman about my gluten free status and she offered me GF waffles if I was interested.  I responded that I was fine with eggs and I then received two eggs over medium with sausage…. and toast…. together…. {sigh} Luckily they also had yogurt available so I got to try the new GF granola I bought in the grocery store across the street last night (it is yummy) in my yogurt.

Undaunted, we set out for a hike!  Off to Fillmore Glen falls at the base of Owasco Lake – one of the smaller finger lakes.  There are several such state parks in the area – the best known would be Watkins Glen – but this one was supposedly the closest to it’s original state.  It was quite lovely and would have been stunning had there been more water.  The landscape was shale and there were sheer walls comprised of layers of rock with plants and trees growing out of them and small slopes of shale chips along the way.  There were bridges crossing the creek and a few places where stairs had been constructed but otherwise, it was pretty rustic as well as rustically pretty.  We followed the gorge trail in then climbed up and hiked back the north rim trail through the wonderful pine forest  for about a 3.5 mile round trip.  Just what the doctor ordered!

Then we were off to see what was to be seen.  We cut across to the shore of Cayuga Lake and paid a short visit to Aurora – a lovely little village which is home to Wells College.  It is a very small but lovely little college that was reminiscent of Pepperdine except the buildings were red brick and not sandstone, the hills not quite so steep and the water was lake instead of ocean. We found a cute little pub where we cold eat lunch and while the initial appeal is probably obvious, we were quite pleased with the choice.  I had a lovely Greek salad with grilled chicken, Gillian enjoyed her buffalo chicken finger sandwich (yes, that’s right – fried chicken strips covered in buffalo wing sauce on a bun!) and Frank had the most amazing variation on a grilled cheese sandwich involving three kinds of cheese, bacon, jalapeno aoli, roasted red peppers and foccacia.

It was then time to proceed north up the side of Cayuga Lake and see what other quaint villages we could visit.  The answer, unfortunately, seemed to be “none.”  Union Springs and Cayuga were small hamlets with no intrinsic charm that we could see and no where we could procure dessert.  We headed farther north around the top of the lake and what do you know?  We stumbled on a winery!  And this one had a distillery associated with it too!  What a find!  I’m not sure we held out much in the way of expectations for Montezuma’s Winery but we were pleasantly surprised!  None of their traditional varietals were much to write home about but the Cayuga White (a grape variety engineered at Cornell) was very nice and slightly fruity.  They also had wonderful fruit wine including a black currant and apple wine (which fuels this missive) and a sparkling rhubarb wine with which Frank was quite taken.  They also distilled vodka from honey!  It was very clean tasting with just a hint of the source and so a bottle of that was also procured.

Then the wandering continued.  Gillian is being quite the trooper, standing by patiently while her parents imbibe and so we launched a search for a reward: chocolate!  Not just Hershey bars from the grocery store but real gourmet chocolate.  Off to Seneca Falls which seemed like a good tourist place to find such things…. and probably is when the main streets aren’t completely under construction!  Next stop: Waterloo.  It has a bigger dot on our tourist map so therefore it must be a good candidate for a chocolate shop.  Nope.  Okay, we’ll keep heading west to Geneva – we’re now at the head of Seneca Lake which is one of the biggest and boasts the most wineries per shoreline mile.  It actually had quite a nice downtown area where we found a gourmet chocolate shop selling monster marshmallows dipped in dark chocolate and a local florist selling local chocolates including chocolate espresso truffles and 70% cocoa dark chocolate – mission accomplished!  We wandered about a bit more and contemplated visiting Bellhurst Castle (which is also a winery!) but decided we were too far west and needed to head back.

We opted for the throughway to avoid the construction at Seneca Falls and got off to visit the town of Weedsport where we had seen advertisements for a local farm based winery.  We found acres of berry bushes obscuring a shack like structure with the signage for “pick your own blueberries” competing for space with “Giancarelle Bros Winery.”  That should have been our first clue.  But Gillian was thrilled with the idea of picking blueberries while we did a wine tasting and she grabbed a bucket and left.  This was before we realized that the wine tastings were being doled out in small plastic medicine cups and that none of the wines we tasted would actually taste like wine and there was no where to pour out the vinegary substances so we had to actually finish them so as not to appear rude.  In short, it was awful.  Disgusting. Blech.

We used finding Gillian as an excuse to escape and dashed out of the shack into the acres of bushes.  We found her quite easily and could have departed quickly but we found, much to our surprise, that it was really fun to pick blueberries!  None of us had ever done it before so we spent the next 20 minutes filling her bucket and thoroughly enjoying the activity. Who knew?

We headed back to the homestead and wandered around town in search of the evening repast and wound up at Joe’s Pasta Garage – a little pizza place offering GF pizza!  So twice in one week I find really nice GF pizza – definitely hand-thrown crust as it was too uneven to have come from the freezer – and they even had Redbridge so I could have pizza and beer.  Gillian opted for another buffalo chicken themed meal, mine was roasted chicken with spinach and pesto (I’ll smell like garlic for a week) and Frank had the pastrami sandwich.  Sound boring?  Far from it! I was actually jealous because the restaurant cured the pastrami themselves, shaved it thin, and served it on a brioche roll with some reuben-like sauce, caraway cucumbers (kinda like pickles) and deep fried potato salad.  Yes, I typed that right.  I was jealous!

We definitely needed to walk off some of those carbs – Gillian managed lava cake for desert but she was the only one of us – so we explored the village on the other side of the lake. We wandered by St. James Episcopal Church advertising their outdoor service lakeside on Sunday – which is what we stumbled upon several years ago and led us to be enamored of this village.  Unfortunately, we’ll be in Canada on Sunday but maybe someday…

So with the hike and the big lake house gawking expedition after dinner, we managed a whopping 20,052 steps or 8.75 miles today!  Unexpected food find:  Frank likes blueberries!  After 25 years in this country insisting that he doesn’t like blueberries (but tolerating them in muffins when he had to), he tasted them straight off the bush today and decided that he might actually like them!

(With apologies in advance to vegetarians!)

So today we said goodbye to our new friends at The Springwater Bed and Breakfast (highly recommended – great job handling GF diets!) I got a quick 5 miles in early which was longer than I planned but I wanted to see the horses training – track season opens Friday.  Then a final wonderful breakfast before heading west.  We originally planned to stop at the Saratoga Auto Museum but since the main exhibit was on the history of NASCAR and they were in full swing preparing for an event starring Bobby Allison, Frank decided it wasn’t a good use of our time.

So we were westward bound to Skaneateles, NY at the tip of one of the smaller Finger Lakes.  Along the way we got to see law enforcement at its finest:  a minivan sped past us and the truck in front of us crossing over the double yellow line and barely missing on coming traffic to squeeze back in on our side of the road.  To bad he didn’t notice the Ford Taurus behind him with the little blue lights on the dash!  It didn’t take long for the unmarked car to catch him and pull him over and when we passed, the cop, in shirt and tie, was balling out the driver like there was no tomorrow.  There is no way I would ever want to be on the receiving end of such a tirade from an armed man!

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful and we got to Skaneateles in time for a late lunch at the Blue Water Grill: Frank had the lobster and clam roll (not NE authentic BTW – on brioche!?!), Gillian the pulled pork sandwich and I enjoyed the grilled chicken, pear and Gorgonzola salad with Craisins and candied pecans! Then off to explore our new home base starting with a lovely little artisan shop where I found the cutest moose earrings (I know…) and a gorgeous silver earring and pendant set crafted by a local jewelry artist that Frank decided I must have! (Don’t you hate when people *insist* on buying you gifts? :-))

We wandered a bit more before finding the B&B where we found the key left out for Fan Cannon (?) and checked out the suite with the jacuzzi tub!  We then realized that there was a winery not 8 miles away and it didn’t close for an hour!  So we were off to Anyela’s Vinyards for a tasting – only $2, what a bargain!  There were several wines we liked, especially the dry Reisling and a red blend called Sync that Frank really enjoyed.  We managed to escape with only two bottles and then went off to find somewhere for dinner.  Skaneateles is not quite the same size or character as Saratoga so the dining options are more limited.  We decided instead to head to Auburn which seemed like a good sized town that might have more options.  The idea was that we would park in the downtown area and wander around to see what the various eateries had to offer.

And that idea was quickly dismissed!  I’m sure Auburn, NY has much to commend it but if there were lovely pedestrian precincts, we did not find them!  We found a correctional facility and many run down houses with rather large, tatooed inhabitants who didn’t seem to have much to occupy their time.  (I can’t decide if it would be in worse taste to make a joke about Detroit or banjo music, but you get the picture.)

Needless to say, we did not dine in Auburn this evening!  Instead, we headed back east and found the fabulous farm restaurant Elderberry Pond Country Foods where everything was organic, locally sourced and fabulous!  From the potato, sausage and greens soup to the local lamb and steak that Frank and Gillian enjoyed to the NY Cabernet Franc, everything was wonderful!  I nearly ordered the lamb as well but… there was pan-seared duck on the menu…. while I knew it was petty and pointless to consider the pizza thief of last night, I would be lying if I said it didn’t influence my choice.  It was delicious!  Add the flourless chocolate cake and you had a dinner that I couldn’t run off in a week!

Then it was back to Skaneateles to wander around the large lakefront houses and try to get a feel for the place.  We did pass a house with a decorated and lit tree on the porch and we tried very hard to pretend it wasn’t a seriously out of season Christmas tree. There was one house with a yard so large that Gillian felt compelled to run in circles and do cartwheels on the grass. That’s when I realized that I had failed as a mother:  my daughter can’t do cartwheels!  I totally schooled her.  Something to work on in the future perhaps.

Now we are relaxing with some wine in rocking chairs on the porch planning the events for tomorrow while Gillian soaks in the jacuzzi tub.  The pedometer says we managed 10,818 steps or 4.66 miles.  Most interesting food for today:  lemon mousse parfait layered with fresh blueberries.  Not unusual perhaps but unexpectedly delicious!

Today’s plan was to venture forth from Saratoga Springs to get more of the Adirondack experience.  I put in an extra half a mile on my morning run to make up for yesterday’s snack fest and in preparation for the inevitable food-o-rama to come.

After another fabulous breakfast (Mediterranean omelet for me, “Eggs Bob” for Frank and a plain omelet for Gillian compete with home baked corn muffins and the appropriate GF options for me) we headed north to Lake George with a plan to hike to Shelving Rock Falls before heading for a picnic and a swim at Million Dollar Beach. After reaching the lake area and following obscure – but correct! – directions for an additional 30 minutes down a really long unpaved road through the forest, we were met by a the driver of a truck from the Fort Ann Department of Public Works who informed us that the rest of the road was closed unless we lived there because there was some major road equipment blocking the road.  He made it sound like a machine got stuck and they couldn’t get it out because he mumbled something about how they should have been out of there already and he hoped the guys weren’t taking a nap…..

So we headed back and attempted to start another hike but without having a good end point other than “a clearing”, we decided not to fight the annoying bugs and headed straight to the beach. (I’m not sure Gillian and Frank were nearly as disappointed as I was.  I like hiking to waterfalls, especially when I manage not to fall down them!) We had a nice picnic at Million Dollar Beach and then Frank and Gillian proceeded to play in the water like the 8-year-olds they really are. We were surrounded by French-speakers- I guess Quebec likes Lake George – and it made it seem a little more exotic.

Then when we were done at the beach, we walked around Lake George Village and realized that there’s nothing exotic about a beach town whether it be on a lake or at the sea.  They all have the same collection of T shirt, ice cream and keich shops. (A good Scottish word: the literal translation is poo but crap is probably a better term.) You know the shops:  they sell hermit crabs, license plate tags with none of your kid’s names on them, pop rocks and out dated sunscreen.  They exist everywhere from York Beach in Maine to the Wisconsin Dells.  I’m pretty sure they have them in California too but they are likely to be next door to a sushi store rather than a tattoo parlor.

We got the inevitable chotchkies but with a twist: nearly everything there is either bear or moose themed. Even the restaurants! I was in heaven.    We got the Christmas ornament for this year (moose on a Harley!) and a mug for my coffee.  I could have filled the trunk but it wouldn’t be healthy to cater to my addiction any more than that!

The weather was really painfully hot and humid and we ran out of less scary air conditioned shops to pop into so we headed back to Saratoga for the main event of the evening:  Shakespeare in the Park.

We picked up some sushi and packed up the left over pizza from last night in our new picnic back pack and headed to Congress park to sit in the grass and watch Twelfth Night with a South Beach theme.  It was really enjoyable.  We spread out our picnic on the grass, enjoyed the sushi while it was still cold and let the leftover pizza sit out until it warmed up a bit.  While we were waiting, we were enjoying the antics of several families of ducks (duckings and all!) that have the run of the park and they wandered freely through the crowd, picking crumbs up out of the grass.  One duckling decided he was going to try to eat my toe nails and was pecking at the pink polish.  Then his mother noticed the pizza.

Before I could sit fully upright, momma duck had grabbed a slice of Gillian’s buffalo chicken pizza and had started to speed across the grass followed by her ducklings!  The chase was soon joined by other duck families and it turned into an episode of Keystone Cops!  Ducks were fighting over the pizza slice and ducklings were diving for the bits that were flying off the pizza in the struggle. The antics entertained the entire audience for the last 10 minutes before the show started and I would love to see how those ducks fare when they actually digest the Tabasco sauce that covered the slice!

We then watched a very good production of Shakespeare with Latin musical interludes throughout the production.  The stage was done in white and bright blue with pink flamingos for decorations.  The courtiers were decked out in tank tops, seer sucker shorts, and top siders.  All in all, a fantastic (and free!) production where the heat felt like it was part of the set!  We then did one last wander around the town – mostly so Gillian could get a red velvet cupcake since she had to watch me eat a GF version last night – and now we face a evening of drinking Adirondack Mountain winery’s Semillion and preparing to head out to the Finger Lakes tomorrow.

Abandoing the hike seriously affected the pedometer count: 10160 or 4.37 miles.  Today’s interesting food find: FRENCH ROLL sushi – Alaskan king crab, shrimp, avocado, cucumber, cream cheese and wrapped with a thin omelet.  Yup, sushi wrapped in egg.  It was *really* good and since I brought a packed of my wheat-free soy sauce, I was able to partake.

So today’s primary agenda item was the summer Open House at Skidmore College.   I started the day with a 4 mile run through the quiet streets of Saratoga – met a few dog walkers and cyclists but the rest of the city seemed to still be sleeping at 6:30.  I noticed that there was a large number of porches with milk boxes on them – where the dairy comes and delivers the milk in glass bottles!  I remember having one when I was a kid in Connecticut.  When I got back to the B&B, I actually got to pour the milk for Frank’s coffee from just such a diary bottle.  Very different from what we get in Northern Virginia!

Breakfast was a lovely start to the day – out on the large porch served by the proprietor and her daughter who baked a gluten free blueberry muffin for me when she baked the cranberry scones for everyone else! I then got a mushroom, spinach and feta omelet with GF toast! Frank loved his fried eggs and Gillian got locally made Greek yogurt with cereal and fresh fruit.  We were well fortified for the day.

Then on to Skidmore.  Started with the special tour of the science facilities (one building for geology, earth science, physics, chemistry, and biology but what would you expect for a school with around 2500 students!).  Then we had  “picnic with the faculty” which was a BBQ for about 400 prospective students and parents with about 50 “student ambassadors” and 5 faculty.  (Executive chef for the event was happy to verify that I could have the BBQ chicken and potato salad and even made me a little green salad to go with it.) Then it was two hours of less-than-scintillating-but-very-informative discussions with admissions and financial aid folks and current students.  We were in a big tent behind the student center and pretended not to notice that it decided to rain in the middle of the presentations.

Luckily, this is not the first college visit we’ve been on or we might have been distracted by how enthusiastic the students were in trying to convince us that Skidmore was *the* college for them.  To her credit, Gillian was looking at things with a very critical eye – comparing everything to UMiami (where she just spend three weeks at summer school) or one of the other colleges we’ve visited this year.  She admitted that the campus, while nice, was not the prettiest we’ve seen but did really like the ability to do really odd interdisciplinary studies – our morning tour guide was a history major with a physics and German minor. We stuck it out through the general campus tour in the afternoon to make sure we got in the group with the theater major who had done some study abroad in London.  (He confirmed that a double major in physics and theater would be more than acceptable here which made Gillian very happy.)

After 5 hours of touring Thoroughbred land (yup, even the mascot is related to horses!) we went back into town to stop into some of the interesting shops that we had seen while wandering in the rain yesterday.  Found some great hiking shorts which met my longer-than-my-crotch requirement and were on sale.  I fondled everything in the yarn store and managed to emerge with no new additions to the stash (although it would have been sooooo easy!) We also stocked up on picnic supplies (including a new picnic backpack!) to eat while watching Shakespeare in the Park.  We were disappointed to find out that I had done the calendar math wrong and the production doesn’t start until tomorrow (D’oh!) but now we are ready!

So we had a “real” dinner instead at the one restaurant on Broadway that I had purposefully been avoiding:  Wheatfields.  What would a restaurant with such a name have to offer to a celiac?  An amazing GF menu apparently!  I had GF pizza with hummus, goat cheese and roast vegetables with a lovely bottle of New York Pinot Noir (drink local!).  Gillian loved her buffalo chicken pizza (and now we both have leftovers for tomorrow!) and only Frank was disapointed:  the homemade pasta and Alfredo sauce was apparently very nice but the chicken thing with the roasted red pepper with goat cheese stuffing was underwhelming. Luckily, we have the cupcakes and chocolate bomb purchased earlier for the aborted picnic which we know won’t make it until tomorrow…. 😉

Most interesting food consumed today:  chocolate covered potato chips.  Apparently, potato chips were invented here in 1853 (check Wikipedia!) and there are tons of shops which sell the chocolate covered version!

And the pedometer readout for the day: 17255 or 7.43 miles.  Not quite as far as yesterday but add that to my four miles from this morning and I might just make up for all the carbs I’ve consumed today!

We knew the first day would be the hardest – earliest start, longest drive, toll roads, boring freeways but at least it was the beginning!  Of course, there was no way that I would actually need the alarm to wake me at 5 am  – I was awake at 3:30 and there was no way I was getting back to sleep.  We actually managed to get out of the house at 6 am even with Frank having a belated “Happy 80th birthday” call with his mom. Then it was 7.5 hours up the most expensive pavement in North America! Almost $10 just to get out of Maryland then we got to support the transportation budgets of Delaware, New Jersey and New York – nearly $30 in tolls!  I’m so glad we aren’t coming home this route! But leaving early paid off and we made it more than 400 miles in just about 7 hours driving time under cloudy skies through humid air.

First stop: Saratoga Springs.  What an adorable town!  Big Victorian houses with huge porches and lots of gables and garages and places where people should be tying up their horses.  (Frank was trying to figure out how many cars the folks with the 4 car garages must actually own!) Thoroughbreds are obviously king here and I’m glad we’re here right before racing season starts – and leaving before the masses descend! We arrived in time for a late lunch at Max London’s – actually it was brunch – where Gillian and Frank had breakfast pizzas (complete with bacon and eggs and since Frank’s was the “full English breakfast pizza” it had mushrooms and tomatoes as well!) and I had a fabulous omelet.

It had started to rain as we arrived but the drizzled didn’t seem to bother others so we went with the flow and wandered up and down Broadway, popping in and out of shops as the fancy struck us.  Then we went to check into the bed and breakfast and the skies opened up and we got completely drenched.  A brief sojourn in our room at The Springwater and tried to dry out a bit.  (Lovely room with a private balcony for our morning coffee if it isn’t still raining!)

Once things dried out again, it was off to wander the streets, checking out the Art District and sussing out where the “Shakespeare in the Park” production will be for tomorrow night’s entertainment.  As we continued to wander, the skies again dumped their moisture on us before we could get to a late dinner at The Turf Club  next door to the B&B.  They had gluten free items marked on their menu and I enjoyed my roasted beet salad but admit I was very jealous of the fish and chips that Gillian and Frank had!

So now we close the books on day one, heading to bed early to prepare for tomorrow’s visit to Skidmore College – Gillian’s current top choice.  But what would a blog post be without the pedometer readout!  And now we have the new Fitbit so we have an electronic estimation of the day’s activities.  Even with spending all that time in the car, we managed 18,944 steps or 8.16 m