It has a been a busy summer!
Several people asked us where we have been all summer, and I started adding up all the lakes, streams. ponds and rivers we have been kayaking on. We are hardly hard-core kayakers. We load up the kayak with a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine, paddle upstream or upwind on calm waters until we are tired, and then have lunch and let the current or wind push us back to where we started (about half the time, the wind does not cooperate - changing directions 180 degrees!). We go out for maybe three hours or so. No whitewater rapids, no portaging, overnighting, tenting, or any of that. Still it is fun and good exercise.
We've also gone on some good bike rides - again not pushing ourselves too hard (well, maybe once) - as well as a few hikes - one being the hike from hell. But all in all, it has been a great escape from the current realities of life. Being without cell service, for example, for days at a time, is a blessing, not a curse. We get back to online "civilization" and we find we missed nothing - or nothing we can do much about, other than worry.
Anyway, here's where we've been:
Bulltown Camp (Army Corps of Engineers Park) - Burnsville Lake
Letchworth State Park (just a visit - no kayaking allowed!)
Webster City park (Irondequoit bay and Erie Canal)
Robert Wehele State Park (great place for a mountain bike ride and picnic)
One wonders why we didn't do the more obvious places - Raquette Lake and so forth. They were booked solid and we had to sort of make reservations on the fly. Our plans to visit the Îles de la Madeleine were shattered, sad to say, so the Adirondacks had to fill in for us. We tried to stay several days at each place - sometimes a week or so.
Governor Cuomo gave us this nice certificate allowing us to enter New York State! And the bribes weren't all that bad, either!
We did NOT go to Maine or Vermont because of their more restrictive travel policies.
Places left to go:
Green Lakes State Park (Erie Canal and Cazenovia Lake)
Skyline Drive & Blue Ridge Parkway, including:
Matthews Arm
Loft Mountain
Goose Point (Army Corps)
Rocky Knob
Julian Price
Plus a few wineries, distilleries, breweries, and museums that are part of Harvest Hosts.
I can't take any credit for any of this planning-on-the-fly. Mark did it all. I just drive.
