NBNC>SYRNY: July 23 2014

Nine hundred and fifty eight motor home miles+seven campsites at four campgrounds=sixty days on the road. This sub-total brings us to this fourth Wednesday of July. Add to this 31 more days at this campsite in Sylvan Beach and we will begin our return to NBNC. We have extended this trip to not only continue with elder care of Dave’s parents but also to be able to see our daughter, Carol, and our son-in-law, Eric, when they visit for a week to central New York for Carol’s high school class reunion.

These past sixty days we have watched a tornado gain its strength as it blustered by and then touched down about ten miles from us, where sadly four people lost their lives; temperatures have fluctuated from the mid-50s to the high-80s; and we continue to enjoy haddock and steamed clams at various restaurants; being industrial at Dave’s parents and setting aside a few days for us to not only reminisce places we grew up around but also finding new places to bookmark in our memory manuscripts.



Sailing on Cazenovia Lake

Highlighted these past few weeks are a few road trips that led us through the tranquil valleys of Madison county to the 221-year old village of Cazenovia, where we picnicked at Cazenovia Lake. Cazenovia is an affluent community and the mc-mansions that line the roughly 8 miles of lakeside indeed causes the chin to drop and gape at the prosperousness of the owner.

 

Wind turbines in Fenner

During our journeys to Dave’s childhood home we have seen on clear days wind turbines on the mini-mountains in the distance. On the day we went to Caz we aimed for these windmills and found ourselves following rustic farm roads tunneled with wide green leaves of field corn, which led us to the township of Fenner, where we wandered near the windmill farm and were in awe of these gigantic machines that are about 215 feet high and each blade is 113 feet long. These windmills are huge! The towers are almost 14 feet in diameter at its base and the sweep of the blades creates a diameter of 231 feet. The weight of the whole assembly is 190 tons and the turbine starts producing electricity

when the wind speed reaches seven mph. We wondered what happens when the winter winds howl across the countryside and learned that the blades are feathered to allow the wind to pass by without turning the rotor. Over 6 thousand tons of ceee-ment was used to put the foundations in place at just this location where these twenty-two massive turbines bully the air currents.

Another day trip was made northeast bound towards the foothills of the Adirondacks where we circled the town of Boonville, settled in 1796, and now seems to be a declining rural town. On our way northbound on route 46 we passed through Rome (no, we did not take a wrong turn and end up in Italy!) where construction began in 1817 on the Erie Canal.

 

Pixley Falls

The canal was labored on the shoulders of immigrants from northern Ireland, where they felled trees to clear paths through virgin forests and crudely excavated earth using teams of oxen and mules. While driving through Rome we saw the reconstructed Fort Stanwix, which has been in place since the mid-1770s. It was kind of like driving past “The Alamo,” unless you saw the signage you would not have known it was there.

Pixley Falls

But we did find a Subway and got lunch for a picnic somewhere on the roadside. This led us to Pixley Falls State Park, after following the Mohawk and Black Rivers crossing through the Adirondack foothills.  After subbing at this picturesque park we followed a trail that meandered through the forest to get some Kodak-moments of the falls, but recent rains muddied our nature walk and we were resigned to listen for the surge of water tumbling over the limestone falls. On our return to camp we passed through several hamlets including Ava, which was formed in 1797, when the population began with 9 people, as of 2000, there were 725 people in this wide-place in the road. Imagine everyone knows when everyone sneezes!  

As we crossed over hill and over dale through this asphalt trail (no, we did not see any cassons, but go ahead and keep humming) we see clothes lines hung with various sized solid-colored dresses and white aprons fluttering in the gentle wind and a horse-drawn buggy clip-clopping down the road with plainly dressed children, the girls with white bonnets and the boys in broad-brimmed straw hats. More than likely they were on their way to visit a neighbor. The Amish have found rural property in this region to be more affordable than the Amish sects of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The serene image of this pastoral Kodak-moment gave us the impression of life being lived at its most simplest.