Alma Mater and the Finger Lakes

The next day we drove down the lake. We stopped at Taughannock Falls, a place we occasionally visited during our college days. We also stopped at Bellwether Cider along the way. At the bottom of the lake sat Ithaca, where we parked our car on Seneca Street across from our college apartment. We walked through the Commons, up a gorge, and across campus. It was great to walk around Cornell again; it made us feel like going back to college.  Hil had fun wandering around her old building hunting up professors she worked with.

Next we visited Ithaca Beer Co. To be honest, we didn't really like Ithaca beer when we were in college. However, we were also beer idiots. Ithaca gets lots of good press for its beer, so we went. It was great! We liked most of the beers (their apricot beer was probably the least offensive apricot beer we've tasted to date, so I guess that is praise too). We bought a 750 ml of their sour beer Brute to take back to camp with us.

On the way back to camp we drove up the east coast of Seneca Lake. We stopped at Silver Springs winery--awesome! There were several good red wines, reminiscent of European or Californian wines, a pleasant surprise. We hit one more winery on the way up, though it was closer to the regional style (sweet wine) and not all that good.  Of course we had to stop and try for good pizza one more time before giving up our NY dream, and this time we did hit a great place... it was glorious.  You poor shmucks on the west coast don't know what you're missing.

The next day we drove east through the Finger Lakes along US-20. We drove through lots of cute little towns, and eventually wound up in Cooperstown. No, we didn't go to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We went to Ommegang! The brewery is in a beautiful setting looking out over the rolling hills. We got a sampler and really enjoyed the Bret & Fruit beer. After leaving the Finger Lakes, we made our way north to Vermont.