One of the best parts of being retired is being able to take advantage of the beautiful fall weather to take a road trip. Sometimes my husband and I go by ourselves and other times we go with another couple. Our usual traveling companions are my brother and sister-in-law. We have always gotten along well and make good traveling companions.
This time no one was available so we headed out by ourselves. Destination: New York. We traveled first to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. We had 2 tickets from July 27 which was Hall of Fame Induction Day. This allowed us to enter free of charge. It was an incentive for this destination. We stayed at a beautiful old inn right in the center of town. Unfortunately the downtown is all restaurants and sports store. Very few of the cute little stores we've seen in other towns. But the restaurants we ate at were good and we were only there for a day and a half. The Hall of Fame was much more of a museum than I expected and we spent several hours exploring.
Our next stop was 2 hours away at Ithaca. Country scenery on the way, just a few weeks too early for fall foliage. Here we stayed in the outskirts of town near all the malls. We took a ride into town but the pedestrian mall was all torn up due to renovations. I'm sure it will be nice when it is done. We stayed long enough to eat and then took a drive up the mountain to the Cornell University campus.
Nothing makes you feel old like walking around a college campus. It felt like it hadn't been that long since I lived at college but in reality it is 40 years since I graduated. Anyhow the campus is beautiful. A mixture of old and new buildings and a view of the town that was spectacular.
Next day was hiking day. We hiked through 2 gorges. One was an easy walk the other all steps going up, up, up and then all the way down. The views were magnificent. After our hikes it was time to hit a winery. We did a wine tasting and surprise, I likes a lot of the wines. We bought 6 bottles since it is hard to find wine I like. We also stopped at a huge antique consignment store. We browsed for about an hour and bought a few things. The prices were quite good.
Bright and early the next day it was off to Corning. Now this was a downtown. At least 4 blocks of restaurants, antique stores, boutiques, and of course glass stores. We took a drive through then off to the Corning Glass Museum. We spent most of the day watching demonstrations, taking a tour, and making our own projects. Dinner downtown and a walk ended our evening. Next morning we spent a couple of hours browsing downtown again, picked up our projects, and saw one last gallery at the museum. Then the ride home and our trip was over. It was a perfect fall getaway.
