New York - Day 15

Keuka State Park

Tuesday, 15 May 2018

today's route

Leaving the Allegany State Park, we passed the Seneca Casino.  And presumably also Hotel because the building must have been 15 stories tall and it just couldn’t all have been casino.

For some time yesterday and today I saw highway signs like these and assume they show the names in the Seneca language as well as English. 

My plans for the day got torpedoed by the critters.  First Gracie decided she was probably going to be carsick.  I’ve learned that we can head that off by letting her out to walk a bit – fresh air, exercise, chance to poop – so I turned off at the next exit we came to.  That road was one of the bumpier ones we’ve been on and got so obnoxious that in desperation I just pulled off the road into a miscellaneous side road and pulled onto the half-shoulder.  Gracie and Dexter and I had a nice little walk and, fortunately, I was the only one of the 3 of us who saw the 2 deer looking intently at us.  But I started getting very nervous because I was remembering a road sign I’d seen just before I pulled off saying to look out for bears for the next 3 miles.  With the long winter, they’re probably starving and I just did not want to deal with that situation.  It was hard to get the dogs back into the RV.

Then back over the extremely bumpy road, onto the highway, and Jasper started yowling.  I was assuming that was his I-need-to-pee yowl and couldn’t find an actual exit so I just pulled onto the shoulder.  There was enough room on the shoulder, but people don’t always pull into the other lane and my mirrors stick out quite a way, and when I looked out the back window and saw a semi bearing down on us and not moving into the other lane, I got very nervous again.  And after all that, Jasper didn’t want to pee.

So we went on again.  And it happened again.  And again no results.  By then my nerves were getting frazzled and I needed to take a break to regroup because so much time had passed that I hadn’t planned on.  The next decent-sized town had a sign saying “Welcome to Hornell, Est. 1888, Home of Bill Pullman.” For those who can’t quite place him, Bill Pullman is the fiance who loses out in “Sleepless in Seattle” and he’s one of my favorite actors.  I had no idea.  It looks like a nice little town.  It calls itself “Maple City” and is probably beautiful in the fall.

I’d intended to drive to see Mark Twain’s grave today and then go to the campground, but given the extra time we were using, I decided to save that for tomorrow and go straight to the campground.  I was pretty tired when we finally got set up anyway so it’s just as well.

Not far from the border with Pennsylvania I saw a sign saying I was entering the Lake Ontario Watershed.  That surprised me.  Lake Erie is much closer to where I was.

The small town of Hammondsport at the south end of Keuka Lake has a lovely town square – very old fashioned with a band stand in the middle.

Isn’t this beautiful?  I came upon it suddenly on the small winding road along the west side of Keuka Lake. 

Keuka is pronounced Cuke-ah – cuke like cucumber.  I guess you have to be from New York for that pronunciation to make sense.

I keep ending up in campgrounds with no wi-fi access, which is why these aren’t getting posted in a reasonable amount of time.  I’ll get them out soon, though.