Week 3: Unexpected Car Troubles
Hey all,
I'm still in New York for a while. Let me catch you up.
Day 15 – 20
I spent Monday driving out of the Adirondacks slowly, stopping at little towns and waterfalls along the way, then drove south into central New York state. I knew I must be out of the official park area because I noticed I was gripping my steering wheel tightly at 10 and 2 and my breathing had changed. I looked around and instead of seeing country roads and mountains I saw chain stores, people, and cars everywhere. I was feeling something unusual - stress! I couldn't wait to land in my next small town, Cazenovia, outside of Syracuse. I basically picked it as my next stop because it sounds like Genovia, which you may know is the fictional magical town in Princess Diaries. It's as good a reason as any when you have a lot of options.
I picked up historic highway Route 20 that runs from Albany to Buffalo. The route was initially Native American trails, then dirt roads for horses and carriages, now it’s basically a long country road that runs through farmland and cute small towns with village greens every 20 minutes or so. Genovia (I mean Cazenovia!) is one of those towns and I'm so glad I stayed there, it was just the pace I was looking for to bring my heartrate back down.
The town was great for walking around - it has a lake, a few beautiful inn’s, a historic main street, at least five gorgeous churches, and a few museums all within walking distance of each other. A lot of the town's history has been preserved. Horses used to pull up out front of the very buildings still in use today and got hitched to a post. There is still an actual stage coach hitching post outside the historic inn I stayed at where Presidents and Rockefellers have stayed, now lil' ole me. I saw a stone horse trough from the 1800’s in one of the gardens. The library has a museum in it with a mummy, a real live one, well a dead one, so random, and an entire Egyptian collection donated by a former townsperson who had gathered these items on his worldly excursions back in the day. The building next to the Library was formerly an old carriage house, it is now a used book store and the horse stalls have been turned into bookshelves. One of my daughters has a good friend that grew up here, I met her mom one day and she kindly gave me a tour of the town so I got to see all the highlights in town and in the countryside, making it even more special (thank you MB!). She took me in all the shops and I did my best to support the economy - no bags this time – I learned my lesson, I just shipped everything straight home.
Day 20/21 – I checked out and headed west on Route 20 to check out the Finger Lakes. Home base is on Canandaigua Lake, not too far from Rochester for a week of going slow/yoga/reading/chilling out.
New things I saw this week:
Foot pedals to turn on the sink water in the "Lassies" room at a haunted inn from the 1800's
An actual chicken crossing the road
A groundhog, I didn't realize I had never seen one before until I saw one, have you seen one?
A rookery: Do not mock me here. You know I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to birds, but I think anyone would think this is cool. I went to check out the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in Seneca Falls on my way to Canandaigua. Turns out there is a "rookery" there which I learned is what they call a large number of Great Blue Herons nests. This one has over 200. If you go to Tschache Pool there is a little tower you can climb and there is a scope there so you can look at the birds building nests and sitting on them and basically hanging around making babies. Given these birds look like mini pterodactyls, it's like a scene straight out of Jurassic Park. I attached a picture so you can get an idea of what it looks like from afar but you can’t see the dinos which is the good part, so you are going to have to go check it out in person at some point if you are interested. Sounds like they'll be there for a couple of weeks and they come back every year.
New car message: As could be expected after spending so much time together in a small space, my car and I are having relationship problems. Basically, she’s a screenager who has a lot to say and I land on the side of “cars should be seen and not heard.” She thinks she can drive better than me even though I have been driving since before she was born. So here's what's going on - many of you know that when I first got my car - day one - I took a sip of my coffee and she beeped at me and displayed a message on my dashboard “Driver Inattention Detected- Look Forward.” I was horrified. How did she know this? Was she pointing laser beams at my eyes? And how annoying - I was looking, I had just moved a little. Either way, I took it to the dealer near my house and they turned it off for me, in a way that most definitely cannot be replicated by a lay individual. This message was OFF before I left for the trip. However, I had to go to the Toyota dealer this week for an unrelated item and low and behold she's back on somehow, and worse than ever. As you can imagine, I am on a ROAD TRIP and I am looking out the window - A LOT. Ding! Ding! Ding! It's killing me. I tried to recreate the message and take a picture for posterity. I was driving, so I carefully started moving my head all around, squinting my eyes, no luck, but I did get this ridiculous message (see pic attached). Who designs this stuff? Why is this a thing? First world problems, I know.
Pictures attached:
Rookery
New Car Message
Caz1 – Caz 4 shots around town
Pedals
Book Barn
Two new friends I made this week
The Heavens- this trip is heavenly, #blessed! Lol
Peace,
Kim
