On the Wine Trail

Finger Lakes, New York

We're checked i n at the Cayuga Lake State Park at the north end of Cayuga Lake. Yesterday we did some tastings at three nearby wineries. This lovely creature is named Melody. She has a white wine named after her.

I was born on Cayuga lake in Ithaca. My earliest memory is playing in the dirt in front of 333 Center Street and watching a snake stick it's head out of a hole in the Spring. I was 2 1/2 then..and frightened...snakes fear is instinctual.... Probably the lake is too cold for swimming right now. It gets up to 55 or 60 Fahrenheit. in July. Whenever I dive in, the familiar cold water hits my nose like a salmon returning to spawn. I'll wait and dive in again when it's warmer...

We got several phone messages telling us that a Magistrate in Annapolis would soon issue a warrant for my arrest because my taxes. I put the number into Google and the Internet says that  it's an IRS scam number.I call back a man answers who identifies himself as a Treasury Agent. I tell him I am Phred Firecloud, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and ask him to stay on the line long enough for my telephone trace to complete. He hangs up on me. I file a complaint with the real Treasury Department, but really don't expect much. No money in it for them.

We spent a night and day at New York's Southwick State Park on Lake Ontario. On a sight-seeing drive we stumbled upon Fort Ontario Museum in Oswego which has changed hands, been destroyed and rebuilt many times over the last 250 years. You have the French and Indian Wars, The Revolutionary War, the 1837 Patriot's War (an ill-fated invasion of Canada by Canadians hoping to throw off the British yoke of tyranny), soldiers dispatched from here to the Civil War, the Philippines, WWI and WWII...

The final real uses of the fort were to resettle 982 Jewish refugees from Europe in 1944 and then to house veterans returning from WWII until 1953. We only did a total of 982 refugees in the whole war...We were too busy housing 30,000 Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps in the desert,

I'm a sucker for barn pictures. Took this one on a long walk on a country road in the morning.

We bought four bottles of fine New York white wine after three tasting sessions and Mrs. Phred went to sleep early. Wine tasting is hard work.

The Thousand Islands

Clayton, New York

I think I'm a target for gang stalkers. Every time that I pull out on the highway, they're laying in wait to get right next to my back bumper and follow me everywhere I go. Sometime they work in shifts and one will pass and another takes up the harassment. Usually they drive white vans and wear black baseball caps. Sometimes they're in SUVs or pickup trucks.

The grapes are getting ripe.

After the hurricane passed, there were some nice sunsets.

We came to visit Carol's sister, Jil, and her husband, Tom.

They introduced us to Tom's high school friend, Chuck, and his wife Suzanne. They have a cottage on The River and a boat only a few hours from their home in Rochester.  They took an old, rundown place and turned it into a beautiful cottage.  Chuck was very interesting. He took us for a long boat ride,  fed us lunch and we discussed navigation. 

This area is known for its classic wooden boats and the great wooden boat racer, Gar Wood. More on him later.

There are really a thousand islands along the river. You can buy your own island on either the U.S. or Canadian side and build your own castle.

That's Tom.

The Lustgarten sisters (Jil and Mrs. Phred) have some gross gestalt similarities. Every time we went out to eat some stranger would say "are you related?" or "it's nice to see sisters out together".

Some of the nicer cottages are up at the tip of Wellesly Island where we spent a week last summer.

We stopped in this place, called the Boateak. It's right next to a big old Bordello on the river that closed down in the 1920s. Back then the male tourists would go on fishing trips and spend the day. It's nice that the nature of the average man has changed over the years. Mrs. Phred bought a necklace.

The Boss Hoss

Wretched Excess

We're camped at the southern end of Seneca Lake, one of the largest of the New York Finger Lakes.

Judging from the number of 40 foot cigarette boats that came in on trailers to launch this weekend, upstate New York still has some wealth or at least some conspicuous consumption.

My neighbor, Al, has a Boss Hoss motorcycle. It has a 350 cubic inch Corvette V-8 engine. If the 400 horsepower is not enough, there is a nitrous oxide canister just behind the rear spring that give it a 150 horsepower boost in short spurts. If that's not enough, the factory in Tennessee offers a Stud Hoss with a 504 cubic inch V-8. You can't make this stuff up.

We visit one of the 100 or so wineries on the lakes and have lunch and a fine bottle of Seyval Blanc.

The barns around here are fascinating. I've always wanted a barn to rehab.

Mrs. Phred enjoys some white wine.

There are some Amish farmers around the lake. They have big horses to pull the plows and an obvious lack of electrical wires leading into their farms.

This rig was heading down the highway at an amazing clip.I wonder how many MPG of oats they're clocking.

Gorgeous Gorges

Watkins Glen, New York

You have to take some of this geological stuff with a  small grain of salt.

The numerous deep and narrow gorges that empty into the biggest Finger Lakes (Senaca and Cayuga) are said to have been entirely formed within the last 10,000 years after the end of the last ice age.

The floods have moved a lot of rock into the big lakes. You can see big tree trunks jammed into the many narrow gorges. The Civilian Conservation Corps opened trails of 2 to 4 miles though many of the most dramatic gorges during the first depression.

We hiked though the Watkins Glen gorge yesterday with my cousin Everett and his wife Midge. Everett and I are part of a small band...the brotherhood of Certified Public Accountants... more trusted than attorneys or priests...sort of an honorable band of financial Samurais...What's that you say? Enron? Ronin trash...the exception that proves the rule...

There are definitely huge salt deposits a mile beneath the big lakes...they say that a sea existed here 300 million years ago...for sure they have cheap salt to throw on the roads when it gets icy...

In the evening we go to visit cousin Danny and his wife Doris for a great steak dinner and veggies from Danny's garden.

Everett tells me that they tracked down 100% of his 1961 Ithaca High School graduation class. 95 of them were dead which tells me a lot about actuarial losses of people, like me, born in 1943...I continue to be a smug survivor...

The gorges keep working on the rock which fractures a little in the icy winter...

Why I Don't Want Another Dog

Horseheads, New York

Strangely, Horseheads has better shopping than Ithaca. We go to the mall there and have lunch in Olive Gardens.

In 1939, my father got drunk and drove to Horseheads to see the embalmed body of an itinerant they called "Bill Bailey". Bill was on display behind a plate glass window as an example of the funeral homes art. One thing led to another and my father pushed his friend though the window leading to hefty fines for disturbing the peace.

My father, a WWII vet, always liked to brawl in bars on Friday night. It was just a form of entertainment for him. He really liked the Deep South bar in Tampa. Often he would call out two or three adversaries at the same time. The worst that ever happened to him was gravel burns on his face from the parking lot. When he was around my age a young man took out a chunk of his scalp with a tire iron and ran for his life.

This is a picture of Nigel, a really intelligent Portuguese Water Dog. He has a working vocabulary of over 327 English words. When we visited Nigel in Maine he would bring the Sports Page of the newspaper down to our RV in the morning and sit patiently until I went outside to get it. I would ask him for the front page and he would look at me dismissively and offer his ears to be scratched.

Many people who live in RVs have little yappy dogs. .. But there are reasons I don't want another dog, no matter how wonderful and intelligent dogs like Nigel can be:

1. When we want to go to China or some other exotic place for a month, I never liked trying to find a dog sitter. Finding a sitter would be even more difficult now that we live in an RV with no fixed base of operation.
2. In an RV you have to follow your dog around with a plastic bag and pick up the steaming shit.
3. I hate learning to love a dog for 15 years and then taking it to a vet for a mercy killing as a result of old age. It's nice for the dog and something humans should be able to avail themselves of. On the other hand, this reason is losing cogency because it's now a toss up whether a new dog's life expectancy will exceed our own or not.

Virtual Life

Watkins Glen, New York

I did a major backup this morning onto the detachable hard drive. I'm up to 40,000 two megabyte pictures and 2,000 MP3s, all neatly arranged in folders. Maybe this winter I'll scan in some of the pictures in storage from our earlier life before we went virtual. I'd also like to break out the wine making gear and make a few batches of Savignon Blanc or maybe Seyval Blanc this winter....

I'm really hoping to be able to scan in my brain before it deteriorates too badly and live on forever in a virtual wonderland. Maybe as an interim step we'll ditch all our possessions except a sleeping bag, the bicycles, the laptop, an IPad and the digital camera...

Another blueberry pie is in the oven. When it's done we should be able to get in a couple of sets of tennis before the rains come again. I had to get under the RV and reattach the muffler and exhaust pipe again. I think it'll hold this time.

Our oldest grandson sent just pictures from his trip to Haiti, He was digging septic tank holes and pouring concrete...


Next stops: Niagara Falls, Toronto, Chicago, St Louis, Arkansas, North Carolina, Key West.

One Last Blog

Wellesley Island State Park, New York


We’re on an island that is jointly owned by Canada and the USA. Tomorrow we rent a boat and go searching for my 40 pound pike. Who knows?


We may approach Nova Scotia though New England or we may simply head up though Ontario and Quebec.


Crossing the Canadian border presents several financial problems:

First, we just loaded up on cases of fine New York Finger Lakes wine and anything over two bottles is going to incur outrageous Canadian customs charges.

The second problem is our cell phones. Roaming in Canada is viciously expensive, but I just signed up for a plan that includes Canada for an extra $30 per month.

The real problem is the Verizon air card that we use to access the internet. The cost for data in Canada is $.20 per kilobyte or $200 for a megabyte. I won’t be posting many two megabyte pictures or checking stock market results unless we hit some campgrounds with a wireless connection.

Sooo…we will be incommunicado for awhile and not checking e-mail unless we choose the New England route to Nova Scotia (which will give me a chance to deplete my wine cellar before hitting the border).

I've got a dream, I've got a dream

Hammondsport, New York

Oh, I know I could share it if you want me to
if you're going my way, I'll go with you
lovin' me down the highway
Rollin' me down the highway
Movin' ahead so life won't pass me by

....Jim Croce: "I Got a Name"

We hit Dr. Konstantin Frank's winery today and picked up another case of fine Rieslings and Cabernet Sauvignons. Dr. Frank was the genius who first grafted European grape vines onto freeze-resistant native New York Grape roots.

Dr. Frank was born in Odessa, Russia and did his PH.D dissertation on growing grapes in cold climates. He came to Cornell University in 1951 and his theories were hooted down for many years until he proved them to work.

In the morning we're driving up to a culinary institute to have our lunch cooked by student chefs.
Watkins Glen has a really unusual used bookstore that only carries hot authors of all genres: Zane Gray, Max Brand, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke. Lee Child, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Vince Flynn, Lescarot and the like. I bought 15 books for $35 which should last a week or so. We've made a date with Cousin Everett to have a picnic cookout Friday and hike the Enfield Gorge. There's a bar here in Watkins Glen that has live music Friday night.
I'd like to rent a boat on Saturday and catch a 40 pound lake trout. Maybe it will be so.


We'll he on the road again Sunday to a lovely park on the Canadian border. Maybe I'll catch a big Pike? I've got a dream, I've got a dream.

Hang on to your dreams
On that highway 2-18.
Live every day
Love it away
There's a whole world you've never seen.

The Bellamy Brothers: "Highway 2-18"