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We are beginning to wonder if this trip is jinxed. Our bus did arrive to pick us up at 9:15 as planned. We had to detour a bit to downtown Rochester to pick up 8 additional passengers who will be joining this portion of the trip so we were now 26 total passengers on a nicely sized bus that easily held 40 so there was plenty of room to stretch out.

Before proceeding a bit of history about Rochester, a medium sized city of 211,328, founded in 1788. It is famous as being the city that George Eastman built as it was/is the headquarters of Eastman Kodak, an ionic US company that once dominated the film industry, only to ignore the advent of digital technology and eventually was forced into bankruptcy in 2012.

Our first stop for the day was Letchworth State Park to see what is known as the “Grand Canyon of the East” and view some waterfalls there. The park consists of 1,000 acres, covering a 17 mile stretch of the Genesee River that flows through it. The canyon created by the river sometimes reaches a depth of 550 ft, thus earning its title. We ended up spending close to two hours stopping at viewpoints in the park. I have to say that the fall colors were spectacular. We live where it is green year round so to see such autumn colors was a real treat.

After leaving the park people started asking when would we be seeing the sights shown in our trip itinerary which included a short train ride and a ride on a lake. We were told the itinerary had changed. Oh,oh..people were not very happy about that. This was now the second change to the itinerary and it was only day two. The joke became that this is now the “whatever” trip and now we know why the company is called “uncommon journeys”. The natives were getting restless!

Lunch became delayed until 2 PM  which further irritated people, some of whom had not had time for breakfast. Lunch was in the small town of Hammondsport, a cute little town of 583 people located on the south end of Keuka Lake, of the the finger lakes in New York.

After lunch we were joined by Bill McLoughlin, a local tour guide who will be with us the next few days to show us the local sights. As it turns out Bill is somewhat famous as he is a former air traffic controller who was involved with the miraculous landing by Captain Sully on the Hudson River in 2009. He was on duty that day and is the one who responds “which engines?” when the mayday call first came in. The actual transcript can be heard on this YouTube posting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1xBXopdKNo.

From Hammondsport we headed eastward to the next finger lake (Seneca) to the town of Watkins Glen, one of the locations for NASCAR races. All was going well until we came downhill into the town when we smelled what appeared to be burning rubber. We immediately pulled over and the driver quickly determined that our brake linings were overly hot. The question was were they damaged? We exited the bus and many of us convened in the ice cream store located next to the bus.  The driver tried pouring water on the brakes and talked to his headquarters to determine what should be done. The bad news was he was told to not drive the vehicle and another bus would be sent to replace ours. The bad news was that it would be at least two hours to make the exchange! There goes the rest of the sightseeing for the day. The good news was we were not in the middle of nowhere; we were in the lovely town of Watkins Glen with shops and restaurants. With the guidance of Bill McLoughlin and his wife we walked the short distance to the lakefront where we lounged around and many of us chose to dine at the nearby restaurants as it was now early evening.

The good news was that a new bus did arrive by 8 PM and after moving luggage and personal items to it we ultimately reached our destination for the evening, Geneva, New York, located at the north end of Seneca Lake.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!

Well, the day did not turn out as the schedule called for. More on that later.

We flew into Albany, NY last night on our United flights through Chicago. The weather cooperated but some tarmac traffic at O’Hare resulted in a 30 minute delay arriving in Albany. By that time (10 PM) the airport was virtually empty. Luckily the hotel had a shuttle.

This morning we had a nice off-the-menu breakfast before meeting the rest of our 16 fellow travelers for our 9AM departure. We also met for the first time, our tour leader, Brian Alvarez, who we learned was from Las Vegas and had never been to this area which was a bit surprising to us. The game plan was to have our luggage shipped directly to our hotel while we rode the Maple Leaf Amtrak train to eastern New York. Surprise #1: we all thought we were going to Geneva, NY, our supposed stay for the next 3 nights. We learned that we will be going to Rochester, NY which is considerably west of Geneva. Moreover, we would be spending the night in Rochester as there was a problem with the hotel reservations, which, even our tour director was unaware of. Oh, well, everyone was an experienced traveler and we were ready to “go with the flow”.

Compared to European rail travel, Amtrak remains an embarrassment to rail transportation in the US. Surprisingly we only left 10 minutes late, and the coach seats were fairly comfortable, but the exterior of the cars and windows were dirty! Brian knew people were unhappy with the change in plans and graciously offered to buy us lunch on the four hour train ride to Rochester. Food service on Amtrak trains is not much to look forward to. Luckily because of our hearty breakfast we settled for some snacks as our lunch choice.

Surprise #2 was when we exited the train in Rochester. Our bus that would be used for touring the area was coming from Buffalo and had gotten stuck in traffic because of a football game. It would be at least 90 minutes late! Brian, to his credit, suggested we all grab Uber vehicles and make our way to our hotel for the night; he would reimburse us for our expense. With a couple of hiccups I did finally get an Uber to take us and another couple to our local hotel.

Surprise #3: Although the Country Inn & Suites was only 6 miles away it was located in an area with very limited local eating opportunities and no cocktail lounges which was desired by most of the travelers after today’s travel issues and change in the itinerary. At least our luggage (traveling by truck) had arrived safely at the hotel.

Hopefully tomorrow will find us united with our travel bus and back on schedule with no further travel issues!

Several years ago I ran cross a boutique travel company (Uncommon Journeys)  whose specialty was including train rides with their escorted tours. It turns out the owner is a train buff who wants to expose his fellow travelers to various trains in North America. Our first trip with them was spending New Years at the Grand Canyon (2021), followed by an extended trip to see the magnificent Copper Canyon in Mexico (2023). We enjoyed both trips and now that we are on their mailing list we were intrigued by the current trip we are now taking- an autumn exploration of upper state New York, a short cruise on the St Lawrence Seaway and a visit to Niagara Falls (which, surprisingly, I have never seen). And, as expected, the trip includes several train rides. The trip is called “Canadian Sunset” and it leaves from Albany, New York on October 20 and finishing in Buffalo on October 28.

The weather looks promising and the fall colors should still be in full display. Join us on our autumn journey in the northeast.

 

 

We awoke hoping that things would go smoothly from now on. Our agenda for the day was to drive around and explore the Finger Lakes region of New York. The Finger Lakes region consists of 11 lakes that run in a north-south orientation in this area of upper state New York.  Seneca and Cayuga Lakes are the largest of the Finger Lakes  and some of the deepest in the USA. Cayuga is 435 ft deep and Seneca is a whopping 618 ft deep! They are both 38 miles long. I was blown away when I heard that Cargill has a huge salt mine UNDER Cayuga Lake. This area was the realm of the Iroquois Indian nation back in colonial times. An old Indian  legend says that the Finger Lakes came into being when the Great Spirit placed the imprint of his hand in blessing on the Upstate Land.

Today was a day of much history. After we left Geneva we passed through the town of Waterloo where Memorial Day was first held. Our first official stop was in Seneca Falls where we toured the National Women’s Right museum there, which is also a National Park. It was here in July, 1848, 300 women (and some men) gathered and created the Declaration of Sentiments, proclaiming the equal rights of women. The leaders behind the movement were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Frederick Douglass was also a proponent.

While in Seneca Falls we stopped to take pictures at the bridge on the Erie Canal featured in the 1946 “Its a Wonderful Life”movie.

Also nearby in the town of Auburn is the original home of Harriett Tubman, born in slavery in 1822, escaped to the north where she became an abolitionist and was active in the Underground Railroad used by escaped slaves as they worked their way north to freedom. We stopped for a short visit to tour her home which has been restored.

We then headed to the small (population 7,100) town of Skaneateles, located at the top of Skaneateles Lake for a bit of sightseeing, shopping and lunch. This was the town we were supposed to have seen yesterday, but better late than never.

Late in the afternoon we ventured south toward Ithaca where we first stopped to see one of the numerous waterfalls in the area. This one is at Buttermilk State Park. When we got there we joked that someone forgot to tell them to turn on the water as the normally large waterfall was barely a trickle. It is a beautiful sight even with the minimal water flow. Our granddaughter is a junior at nearby Cornell University. We called her as she was going to study for an exam later that evening. We would not be getting together this trip. So close, yet so far!

The last stop of the day was at one of the highest waterfalls in the area, Taughannock Falls which is  215 feet high. It was pretty spectacular even though its flow was reduced this time of the year.

We were back at the hotel by 6PM and went to a nearby restaurant for our “welcome” dinner which normally would be held the first night of the trip. No problem, we ate, drank and had a good time.

Tomorrow we will be working our way to Canada and the start of our four day cruise on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Brian was able to also arrange for a boat ride on the famous Erie Canal before we get to Canada. That was one of the things I really was interested in doing.