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!