Big Water Vacations

After our trip to Virginia's Hampton Roads area, the long ride home and unpacking, spending time with our six four-legged friends who missed us terribly, and downloading the last bunch of pictures, I had some time to reflect on why I so enjoy 'big water' vacations.

Before anyone gets angry at me,  I love mountain lakes and rivers and waterfalls; we've spent countless weekends and week-long vacations taking in all that those kinds of places have to offer. 'Little water' has a certain sensibility about it, a finite sensibility if you will, that can't compare the the vastness of pounding surf crashing on the seawall a few yards outside your door. 

Little water changes things slowly, and the changes are noticeable over time. When we were kids, our family used to rent a cottage on Tuscarora Lake, in Madison County.  I remember there was a tree that leaned out over the water at an angle, and there were little pools that would collect in the exposed roots.

Each August when we got there, my oldest brother and I would run over to check out the pools to see if they had gotten any bigger; they were great places to 'store' the turtles we caught, even if only for a short time. By our last year going to the cottage, it had gotten almost dangerously eroded under the tree, to the point where Dad was a little nervous about me getting too close if no one was with me. While we were at our cottage for a couple of weeks, nothing changed in any noticeable way; some 40-odd years later, though, that cottage might not even still be there. 

Now, big water, that's a different story -- the changes Mother Nature brings happen right in front of your eyes. A walk on the beach in one direction shows one thing; the walk back shows something completely different. The wind is different, the sand is different, the sky is different, the sound is different. 

We spent exactly zero minutes engaged in the age-old vacation activity of laying on the beach, but we spent hours on various beaches, bird-watching, shell-collecting, dune-gazing, picture-taking, contemplating. We were in state parks, wildlife refuges, and nature preserves that had seemingly endless (and practically empty) beaches, walking for miles in breezes ranging from sort-of-warm to pretty-darn-cold.

We were up for the sunrise over the Chesapeake Bay every morning, watching for the very second that the sun fully left the water and officially started the day. We managed to be in the right place at the right time to catch a sunset on a very quiet town beach on the Eastern Shore, after a fantastic dinner at an unassuming seafood restaurant. 

We saw  kayaks and canoes, sailboats and crab boats, 'guys hanging out fishing' and big commercial fishing boats, giant shipping boats and US Navy hovercraft.  We didn't see or hear a single jet-ski, and I couldn't have been happier about that. And even better, every beach we were on was 'tampon-free', another thing that made me very happy. (I simply can't get my head around people leaving feminine hygiene products on the beach, sorry).

This summer, we'll make good use of our Empire Passport and visit as many NYS parks as we can fit in. This fall, we'll head to the Adirondacks, and spend time seeking out those little lakes, rivers, streams and waterfalls that we enjoy so much. In the meantime, I'll bask in the new memories we created this past week on big water, hoping they'll stretch as far in my mind as the reaches of the sun over the big water.

(Larger versions of these and other photos from the trip can be found here, in my Chesapeake Bay Vacation album.) 

Finding Freedom on Vacation

One of the things I love about vacations is how, if I allow myself to, I can truly leave more baggage at home than I bring on the trip.  I have to say, it's not always easy for me to 'vacate the premises'.

I'm one of those people who will never have a completely clean desk or a completely clear head, no matter how hard I try. I  typically worry whether I got enough done, or more importantly if I got the right things done before leaving for vacation. I have a very hard time turning off the drip, drip, drip of work-think, often coming up with things to think about just before I go to bed, or in the middle of the night when the cats move around, changing their positions and allowing me the luxury of changing mine.

And then there's my writing, and all of those ideas, and research, draft posts waiting for the right time to pull the trigger -- and I worry, what if the right time doesn't come, or worse, what if it does - will the post really ready, and will it hit the target?

And there's family, my own and my extended; relationships to manage, drama to reign in, and so on. And of course this year, we had the government shutdown to wreak havoc on things.

War Memorial Tower
Mt Greylock, MA

Somehow, even in the face of all that, I managed fairly well to grab freedom by the horns and throw myself into it, to fully enjoy the trip to the Berkshires and the week in Vermont that followed, to deal with things on my own terms and not dwell for long on all that other baggage.

I can still feel and hear and smell our walk on Mt. Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts where, they say, on a clear day you have 60 - 90 mile views. The day we were there, we could barely see six feet in any direction, but it didn't ruin our fun. I smile at enjoying, in the middle of the fog, a fun conversation with a couple from Eastern Massachusetts, who we ran into again later in the day at another stop, the natural bridge and white marble dam in North Adams. Together, we scoffed at the folks who thought there was "no reason to take pictures on such a horrible day". How silly, and short-sighted, that thinking.

Leaving Massachusetts after a couple of days, we wandered into Vermont, where we spent a week travelling up, down, across and diagonally, going to new places and revisiting some areas we had been two years ago just a few weeks after Hurricane Irene. There's been progress in many areas, places where if you were unfamiliar with the lay of the land, you'd have no idea what happened in 2011. You might not think twice about road work, for example, if you didn't know that after Irene, the road being worked on didn't even exist anymore.  On the other hand, you come across places like downtown Brandon, home still to buildings behind barricades, some that had their first floors almost completely washed away when the floodwaters created new paths and changed lives forever.

In places all along Route 100 and several other scenic drives that crisscross Vermont (are there any that aren't scenic, really?), there is scarring along just about every river, brook or stream. It's easy to spot; there are thousands of dead trees, lying grey in the otherwise vibrant Vermont fall. You can see the path the water takes now, versus the path it took before. There are rocks and boulders everywhere, strewn about like marbles in some bizarre game, the rules of which defy comprehension.

And yet, there's a sense of beauty to the damaged landscape. It's not the classic fall foliage beauty, which annually attracts leaf peepers by the busload to New England. Rather, it's a more dramatic beauty, the kind that makes a person smaller in the face of the sheer enormity and power of what created the revised landscape. And it's hard not to appreciate the resilience of what withstood that power, and the sense of glorious freedom and rebellion with which the remaining trees sort of flip the proverbial bird and shake their fists at Mother Nature, defying her, daring her to come back and try again.

It's that same sense of freedom and resilience that causes people to uproot and move there, like the guy who served us a great cup of butternut-apple bisque late one afternoon. Thirty years ago he left Connecticut to go skiing at Sugarbush and basically never went home. He spent the first few years in Burlington, but left when it started to feel too much like what he left behind. He moved to a smaller place in the Randolph area, and makes a living nurturing locals and visitors alike.

Like everyone - native, transplant or tourist - I hope Mother Nature doesn't unleash a force like Irene on Vermont again. And while I don't have any plans to pull up my Central New York stakes and move there, I do know that we'll go back, daring to experience that vacation freedom once again. 

Knowing how well it worked this time, and armed with the memories of a wonderful break from everyday reality, it's a challenge I'll be happy to accept.

Sidebar: Embracing winter

The weekend before Valentine's Day My Sweet Baboo and I were booked for a short getaway to rejuvenate and refresh after the long and somewhat logy holiday season of 'too': too much rich food, too much sugary candy, too many leftovers that keep finding their way out of the freezer and onto our table, and too little exercise. 

Typically, for our February escape, I'll find a bed & breakfast somewhere in the Finger Lakes so we can do some winery-hopping.  But this time, with more than enough wine on our racks, I set my sights on the Catskills and started looking for places we could go. I picked The Washington Irving Inn, in Tannersville, and made our reservations before the end of January.

And then...Yep, you guessed it, another of our all-too-frequent 'storm of the century' events loomed on the horizon.  We had a coastal storm. We had a west to east storm. And the two storms were looking to hook up, if you get my drift, somewhere over the New Jersey-New York-Massachusetts area.

The predictions were horrific, they came days in advance and were unending on the local news, in the paper, on the national news.  The weather people were out in full force, trying to come up with the most provocative forecasts, if not the most accurate.  For example, here's the warning that was in my local paper, Syracuse's Post-Standard, the day before we were scheduled to leave:

If you have travel plans in and out of Central New York, here is some information which might be helpful.

First, if you are traveling east, or coming into Central New York from the east, travel Friday will be difficult. Even if you leave early. By 10 or 11 AM, snow, or some sort of a wintry mix should be entering the mid Atlantic all the way up into the Catskills and Poconos.

If you absolutely have to travel tomorrow, it's best to leave leave early. If you can travel this evening instead, all the better. Less stress.

Really? A massive blizzard?  Leave early to avoid the weather and stress?  Rather than listen to the weatherman, we decided we'd stick to the plan and leave Friday morning. We packed plenty of stuff to read and a laptop, in case we got snowed in. We stopped for gas, bought a new snow brush, and headed out shortly before 10AM, expecting to drive straight into the storm.

Traveling down the Thruway, we saw literally dozens of snowplows on the move; there was no snow on the roads, no ice or anything - it looked more like the plows were getting into position to wait for the inevitable.  Leaving the Thruway, we meandered off  through Schoharie on Route 10, then to Route 23, then to 23A which took us to Tannersville. 

We did not see a single snowflake until around 1:45, when we saw three or four (total).  By around 2:30, it was snowing pretty good, with a few inches of accumulation.  After dinner, backin our room,
we were bombarded by weather reports and dire predictions of 15 - 25 inches of snow, getting them not only from multiple NY stations (capital district and Catskill/Hudson area) but also from Eastern Massachusetts and from NYC.  (Note to self: spend more time watching HGTV and less time on local stations.)

In the end, we saw less than a foot of snow - in some places, way less than a foot, more like three or four inches. Saturday morning, the roads had all been plowed, and in many cases we were driving on bare pavement just a few short hours after the storm had ended. 

So much for needing to leave town a day early.

A Wicked Twist of Fate

Back in the spring of 2009 My Sweet Baboo Patrick and I went on a vacation to North Carolina.  We stayed away from the beaches; instead we flew into Charlotte, picked up our rental car, and headed to Asheville.  We spent a wonderful week wandering around, visiting Biltmore, and enjoying the gorgeous mountains.  (See three old posts on our trip, here, here and here.) We also managed to find some wineries to visit, something that we always seem to do no matter where we go on vacation. 

One of more memorable visits to any winery, anywhere, was to Rockhouse Vineyards, outside Tryon, NC. The day we found this winery, it was overcast, with some lingering drizzle; for us the decision to forgo a trek in the mountains and instead track down wineries was an easy one, and Rockhouse was a great find.  Set back from the road, with a long winding driveway leading up to the tasting room, there were trees just starting to flower, and some fascinating old ruins -- the chimneys were the best, listing a bit drunkenly, inviting us to stop and take pictures on the way up the drive. Aren't they beautiful?

The small tasting room had a bar, clad in copper -- it was absolutely gorgeous! There was also a huge fireplace opposite the bar, and although it wasn’t lit, I could easily imagine parking myself in front of it with a nice glass of Meritage.

It was not just the ambiance of the tasting room that made the visit so memorable; it was Jean-Jacques, who manned the tasting room that day.  He was a transplanted Frenchman who landed in North Carolina after falling in love with a girl in Florida, if I remember correctly.  It turns out the girl was originally from Marietta, not that far from us.  We discovered this during an all-over-the-map conversation with him; since we were the only people at the winery, we had his undivided attention, and we had a blast.  Turns out he had a pretty good memory of the Syracuse and Central New York area, having been here visiting his in-laws over the years, so we talked not only about the wines and North Carolina, but about Central New York as seen through a visitor’s eyes, something I always find refreshing.

We tasted every wine available, and particularly enjoyed the French Door, a port-style wine that cried out for chocolate, cheese, and raspberries.  Our purchases (of course we purchased!) ended up bubble-wrapped then rolled carefully in sweatshirts for the trip back home in our checked luggage. Fortunately, everything made it back safely, and we’ve enjoyed our Rockhouse wines several times over the years.

So why write about Rockhouse now, three and a half years later?  I just read an email from them saying they were closing the winery for good early next month.  Not because of the economy, but because of a wicked twist of fate.  Lee Griffin, the owner and wine-maker, has battled cancer and has had his sense of taste compromised by his radiation treatment – and as the email puts it, “As a winemaker, nothing could be more frustrating.” I can’t even imagine.

I'm glad I was able to find my old pictures, and also very glad I found a bottle of French Door on the rack today. Tonight, we’ll raise a glass to Lee, his wife Marsha, and to Jean-Jacques, wherever he is – best wishes, and thanks for the wonderful memories.

How I Spent My Fall Staycation

I've been on staycation this past week; you all know about staycations, right? A staycation is when you don't go anywhere on vacation, but instead stay home either to save money, to avoid the stress that's inevitably present when you're trying to plan and enjoy a relaxing trip out of town, or in my case to kill a hard-earned 40 hours of vacation. Here are some definitions; my personal favorite is #5, what's yours?

For my staycation, My Sweet Baboo went off to work every day, and I stayed home with the kids. Two of them (the brother and sister pair) were a bit under the weather -- Galway due to dental surgery, and My Angel the Fen because she had a horrible cold. Rightfully so, the two of them got quite a bit of attention, and of course the love must be shared with the other two as well...you can't talk to one cat without talking to all of them. And while I had lofty goals of getting some work done outside, and reading a couple of books, and getting summer and fall/winter clothes organized, and cleaning the porch, and doing something with the plastic storage containers that fall on our heads whenever we open that one cupboard door in the kitchen, and trying to sterilize some dust bunnies, and and and...I fell quite a bit short:

• the lawn is mowed (front and back)
• the garage is cleaned out (OK, that was a MAJOR accomplishment!)
• the brownies got made, as did a cake for someone in MSB's office
• several dust bunnies are now RIP
• I started one book, put it in the "why did I buy this?" pile, and started another
• the new printer is hooked up
• and I spent a great day with my Mom, which was the high point of the week (well, maybe second to getting the garage done...)

I also spent some time organizing the pictures I took on our September trip to the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain. This was one of our classic weekend trips, where we take eight hours to go three hours away, take tons of pictures, stop the car at the drop of a hat to pick up rocks for the garden, and eat someone else's cooking. MSB did the math for me and advised me that had I been using my Minolta instead of the Canon digital, I would have used 28 rolls of film... in four days. Clearly, I have issues.

And I also have only today to finish up the things on my list...and get the last of the bulbs planted, and make some roasted pumpkin soup, and finish the laundry, and...and...

Here's the first set of pictures, which include Ausable Chasm, the Westport area (where we stayed), one of the Lake Champlain lighthouses, and some 'end of season' shots that are typical of the towns on the Lake. Enjoy!

The Update Desk

My Sweet Baboo and I returned Sunday night from a quick trip to the Lake Champlain area of New York, with side trips to Ausable Chasm, the connecting islands between New York and Vermont, and a long ride on Route 100, a beautiful trip on a perfect fall day. On both the way up and back, we avoided major highways and meandered through the Adirondacks instead. It takes longer, but it's worth it. We came home relaxed, refreshed and ready to head into the last quarter of the year.

I'm now hoping to find time to download and organize all of my pictures; this trip I went solely digital, while MSB brought along his regular camera and several lenses. I get the sense that, as usual, his pictures will be better than mine, but I had a few that I think are OK, and will be posting some up in the coming days. And, because of the trip, I’m a little out of touch with what's been going on in the world and behind on my reading, but I thought I’d provide some updates on some previous posts.

Regarding President Obama’s intervention into New York politics, most everyone in the state agreed with me that it’s our responsibility to vote folks out, not Washington’s responsibility to 'encourage' them out. In this poll, taken a few days after the news broke, 62% of New Yorkers indicated that Obama should stay out of the race.

After the shenanigans in Albany earlier this year, where Republicans adopted a couple of ethically challenged Democrats and ‘stole’ the Majority, only to have the Dems ultimately regain power through some very shady dealings of their own, I wrote to my State Senator asking for responses to some simple questions. I never did hear back from him; I’ll keep trying, though.

I did hear just a few days ago from NY’s Junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, after I sent in a postcard to her asking that she not support the kind of health care reform that could theoretically put my regional, not for profit health insurance company out of business and me out of a job. She basically thanked me for writing, then proceeded to completely ignore my opinion but tell me hers, which was in support of a public option.

Today, the Senate Finance Committee failed to get approval for a couple different versions of public option. I hope they’ll keep trying to get real reform, in a thoughtful and fiscally sound way, just as my company will continue to support other significant health care reforms. Let the debate continue, sanely, until a solid solution can be realized.

Last, in this post from March, I talked about the trees that MSB and I started to care for after they were planted on an empty lot several blocks down the road. We had hoped to be able to tend to them throughout the spring and summer, but they were in the middle of a construction zone from April through last week. Now, it's too late for us to prune them. We’ll check back in with them in the spring, and hope for better luck next year.

Blue Ridge Memories, Part 3

Our house in the Valley was built in about 1905. Biltmore opened in 1895. We have multiple gardens. Biltmore has multiple gardens. And that’s about where the similarities end.

Biltmore, one of the homes of George Washington Vanderbilt, is a 250+ room mansion set on 8000 acres just outside the city of Asheville. According to the guide we had on our carriage ride, there were some 600 individual land purchases just in the Asheville area, and who knows how many others were required to amass the original 125,000 acres that made up the estate back in the day.

It’s hard to put the house into perspective; it’s so vast, and so imposing from the outside, and yet inside some of the rooms actually seem to normal scale, if that’s possible. Some are ornate, some are simple; some clearly feel as if they were well-lived in, and others look like they’re only for show. There’s a huge triple fireplace in the dining room, with a small table (for ten or so) set up in front of the fireplace for intimate family dinners, and a huge dining room table that seats 66 people in the main part of the room, along with a multi-story pipe organ at the other end. By comparison, when we have both families over for Thanksgiving, we have to use two rooms and borrow chairs from Mare and John. And we listen to the stereo in the living room.

We have the plantatarium, a room with generally southern exposure that’s filled with rattan furniture, lots of plants, and a cool ceiling fan with wooden blades shaped like leaves. Biltmore has the Winter Garden, my favorite room in the house, a glorious sunken room with a glass-and-wood ceiling to die for, sculpture, and huge plants. The room overflows with warmth and happiness; I don’t know any other way to describe it.

The basement is another great part of the house – swimming pool, bowling alley, the kitchens and laundry rooms – pretty cool to see all of that. But for us, the piece de resistance was the roof tour. Four stories up, high above all of the visitors; patting gargoyles on the fanny for luck; looking down on the Winter Garden room; checking out the servant’s quarters and some of the unrefurbished rooms, and getting to check out all of the craftsmanship in the house was amazing. The view is indescribable.

More pictures. Sadly, we were not allowed to take any inside – and the bulk of my house and surrounds shots were on the 35 not the digital, so these are mostly from the roof tour. Enjoy!

Sue

Blue Ridge Memories, Part 2

I’ve never been one of those people who had to retire near the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, I love an ocean beach as much as anyone, primarily when it’s early in the morning, the sun just coming up and the sand littered with shells that washed in with the tide. My second most favorite time on the beach is at sunset, watching the day slide away beneath the water in the same way that I snuggle into the covers at night.

My Sweet Baboo feels the same as I do about that. Can’t decide if our similar thinking is simply good fortune, or by design, but if we were going to retire somewhere other than here in the Valley, it would more likely be near some mountains not a beach. And the Blue Ridge Mountains are simply breathtaking.

We spent a little time wandering around the mountains one day, including a stop to Chimney Rock Park (CRP), above Lake Lure. People have been able to get to the top of Chimney Rock since 1885, although things are much more modern now than they were then. For starters, there’s a 30-second elevator ride that takes you 28 stories up so you can get to the actual Chimney Rock, or you can hike and climb stairs to get there. There’s also a beautiful trail that leads to the 400+ foot Hickory Nut Falls. Interestingly, part of The Last of the Mohicans was filmed here, even though the action actually took place in New York. For some reason the movie folks thought the Blue Ridge Mountains most closely resembled the Adirondacks. Hmm…

After spending quite a bit of time at CRP, we headed north and ended up on Route 80. Let me tell you, when I said that I thought Alternate Route 74 into Lake Lure was like our Thirteen Curves on steroids, I hadn’t yet seen Route 80. To continue with the steroid analogy, think the difference between A-Rod (Alt 74) and Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire (Rte 80). My vertigo was working in overdrive on this trip. The photo at the beginning of this post shows just one of the switchbacks (look for the road signs on the left and right about a third of the way from the top of the picture) and it seemed like we were on over 100 of these things during the day, between Route 80 and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

So where did we end up on this day? Well, we drove just about to the summit of Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain in NC and the highest peak in eastern North America, other than some islands. At 6643 feet it’s taller by quite a bit than NY’s Mt Marcy (5343 feet) but getting to the top is an easy drive. We would have gone all the way up, if we had wanted to, but I found a bathroom before we got to the summit. Besides, the clouds were so thick at the top that we could barely see more than a couple feet in front of us. Maybe next time we’ll get to the new observation deck.

Here are some shots from the mountains. Enjoy!

Sue

Blue Ridge Memories, Part 1

My Sweet Baboo and I just returned from a week in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, spending our nights at two very different (and wonderful) bed & breakfasts, and our days exploring the Asheville area.

We've been to the ocean part of North Carolina - that was our first vacation, the 'test', if you will, where he and I spent the week with most of his family in a rented house on Sunset Beach. Figured if we could make it through that without committing murder or mayhem, we'd probably be OK.

This trip marked our ninth out of state vacation, and we love getting away from work and stress and exploring places we've not been to before, or at least places we've not been to together. For me, this was my first visit to the Blue Ridge Mountains; MSB had been in the general neighborhood before. We had a full visit, and between us we took about 30 rolls of film and too many digital pictures to count. I'll be putting out some of the digital shots over the next couple of days.

Here's the first collection, taken in the Lake Lure NC area. You may have heard of Lake Lure -- it's the home of the 2006 HGTV Dream House (currently empty, we were told) and the site where the beach shots in the movie Dirty Dancing were filmed. The lake is beautiful, with around 2000 mostly seasonal homes surrounding it, including one where the owners allegedly bring in white sand from Florida for the beach in front of their estate. Two of the original camps are still on the lake, each of which is something in the neighborhood of about 600 square feet. The largest house (so far) on the lake is 12,000 square feet. Clearly, the definition of 'camp' has changed over the years!

One of the best parts of the side trip to Lake Lure is how we got there -- on Alternate Route 74, which is like our local Thirteen Curves on steroids -- there aren't thirteen curves, there are about one hundred thirty curves on the way into town. Rocking, rolling, greater than 90 degree curves, with drop offs or mountains about an inch off the road, or so it seemed to me. For My Sweet Baboo, this was a good thing - he was having a blast trying to keep it under 60 MPH (kidding) with a marked speed of 15 MPH (not kidding). For me, less of a good thing, as I have developed a bit of vertigo since I had LASIK surgery a couple years back. I think it's the enhanced peripheral vision or something, but I don't enjoy that kind of drive quite as much as I used to. Fortunately, we stopped in town so I could catch my breath, and that's how we discovered the tour boat, which led to a great interlude and a wonderful start to the vacation.

Enjoy the pictures!

Sue