Corning/Ithaca

July 28/29.

Corning/Watkins Glen/Ithaca

We decided that we would stop on the way back to New York State at Niagara Falls, to take one last look at the Falls. We decided the best place to stop would be at the Botanical Gardens, near where the butterfly Conservatory was. We also had the thought that once we stopped, we would eat the felafels that we had picked up in Toronto for lunch, and then take the People Mover to get us down to the Falls, get off the bus to take a walk near the Falls, and then catch another People Mover to bring us back to the butterfly Conservatory. However, once we stopped at the butterfly Conservatory and ate our felafels for lunch, we realized that we had just missed a people mover and it would be a 30 minute wait before the next one arrived. So, we decided that instead of using the people mover to get us around, we would simply drive down to the Falls to take a look at the Falls from the car. The disadvantage was that we would not have a chance to park the car and walk close to the river, but it was clear that we did not have the time to wait for the People Mover. So, we drove south on the Niagara Falls Pkwy. to the Falls and swung around to take a last look before heading across the border.

After we got on to the New York State Thruway, I had a choice of either taking Route 390 to Corning, or stay on the Thruway to exit 42, and then take Route 14 down to Watkins Glen. I decided that there was a small chance that the Corning glass factory and Museum might be open and took Route 390. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision, since we did not get to Corning till about 7 o'clock. We thought that it was extremely unlikely that the museum would be open, but as luck would have it, it turned out that through the summer the museum was open to 8! As we walked into the museum, we came across an open air exhibition of glass blowing. We rushed to join the audience and were absolutely transfixed! A very talented young man was walking the audience through the steps of making a platter. The end product was an absolutely spectacular piece of art. The added benefit was that they were handing out raffle tickets for an end of the show raffle, during which they would give out some of the pieces that they were making during the demonstration. We were hoping that we would get one of the pieces, because they were all very lovely. We did not, but we did enjoy the show very much. We were very glad that I had made the decision to come to Corning, and decided we should come back the next morning.

We drove to Watkins Glen. The B&B was not very impressive. I took an instantaneous and perhaps unjustified dislike to the couple who ran the B&B. The town of Watkins Glen seemed terribly rundown and unprepossessing to me. After checking into the B&B, we walked around to see the local sites. There were a couple of boarded-up stores, a Burger King across the street, and a camping site leading to the local gorge. We tried to walk to the gorge, but it was getting very dark and we decided not to walk along the street which did not have a sidewalk. We were fearful that if it got any darker, the trucks and SUVs that seem to be the majority of the traffic on the street might hit us (deliberately or inadvertently!) There is no restaurant nearby, so we decided to walk into the Burger King and by ourselves a couple of veggie burgers and an order of onion rings. We were impressed by the extreme level of obesity of all of the clientele in the store. All in all, it was a very dispiriting environment.

The next morning, we had a fairly mediocre breakfast. There were three other couples at the B&B, and we overheard two of the other couples in conversation before sitting down at the breakfast table. They sounded rabidly right-wing, and fiercely anti-Obama. Sandy and I looked at each other and I whispered to her to not pick a fight with them in case we ended up sitting at the same table with either of those two couples. Luckily for us, there were two tables for four people each, and the two couples decided to go sit together. This left us with the other table for four. The couple that joined us a few moments later turned out to be far more liberal than the other two. They were from Vermont, and one of them was a state legislator. I mentioned to him that I loved Bernie Sanders, and he told me that he did to and the reason he got into politics was because of Bernie. This made it clear to us that they were at least as left-wing as we were, since Bernie Sanders is the only self-declared socialist in the U.S. Senate. We had a fairly pleasant conversation with them.

After breakfast, we headed back to Corning. We got tickets to the museum at a substantially reduced rate, since the museum honored both our AAA membership and our senior citizenship. Unfortunately, it started raining quite hard so that the outdoor glassblowing demonstrations had to be canceled. We were looking forward to them, with the somewhat unrealistic hope that we would win one of the raffles. Even without the glass blowing demonstrations, however, our visit to the museum was an unqualified success. We took a tour of the museum with a docent, a woman who was somewhat obnoxious, officious and pretentious. Nonetheless, she was pretty knowledgeable and showed us some interesting exhibits and explained that provenance in a way that made them even more fascinating. I was simply blown away with the quality of the art in the collection. Particularly fascinating was a temporary exhibit of glass-art collection from a Chicago couple. The exhibit occupied two whole rooms of the museum, but the couple lived in an apartment in Chicago! One had to wonder where they found the room to house all of the art that they bought. I am really not that much into museums, but I found many of the pieces in this particular museum entirely captivating.

After the docent's guided tour, we went to a in-door glassblowing demonstration. The artist, just as impressive as the young man the day before, made a lovely glass bowl. Unfortunately, there were no raffles!

Sandy had bought tickets for one of the do-it-yourself shows, where they let you make a piece of glass with your own hands. So in the pouring rain we went across to another building where the studio is located. They handed Sandy a plain glass vase, on which she was asked to make a pattern using stickers. They then helped her sand the glass so that it turned opaque, basically turning into ground glass. When she took the stickers off, there were patterns of transparent glass surrounded by opaque, ground glass. I think that she did a very nice job making a very pretty vase.

We wanted to stay longer. There were sections of the museum that they had not even had a chance to see including some of the more technical aspects of glass making including fiberglass and so on. But it was getting near noon, and we wanted to have lunch at the famed Moosewood Café in Ithaca, New York. Sandy has been using their cook book for a very long time, and wanted to have lunch at the source. It poured the whole way. When we got to Ithaca, it was just after three o'clock, and the Moosewood Café was closed in preparation for dinner. Sandy tried to bully and/or cajole them into seating us, but they adamantly refused. We decided that this was one of the few disappointments we have had during this vacation. We walked around a little bit, and I picked up a slice of pizza and Sandy picked up a sandwich. We ate them for our lunch instead of the much anticipated lunch at the Moosewood Café. We headed home.

The drive home, through Route 17 (which is scheduled to be converted into Interstate 86 in the future) was one of the more harrowing experiences of the trip. Route 17 goes through the Catskills, with many steep inclines and declines, and many sharp turns. Throughout this 100-odd mile trip, it poured like it was going out of business. It rained so hard that I could not even see the front end of the car! I could barely see the road, and sometimes it was difficult to know whether I was making the right turns. At some points, especially at the bottom of steep downgrades, water was pouring in rivulets over the road, and I wondered whether I should pull off and wait. Unfortunately, my compulsive nature won out, and I kept driving on. Luckily, when we descended from the Catskills on to more level ground near Newburgh, New York, the rain subsided somewhat. We made it home late in the evening on Wednesday, 29 July.