A Finger Lakes Staycation
By John Marks, Curator of Collections
For the second year in a row, we planned to go to North Carolina to see my wife’s family. Each time I scheduled the week off. Plans changed, my wife went South, and I stayed here with our college-age son. Last year I tried to be productive and to see how many projects I could complete around the house. I was neither successful nor rested by the end of the week.
This year I resolved to do everything I would do if I were away. I had no regard for time or schedules. I stayed up late and slept late. I read books and napped. I ate things I would normally feel guilty about, because hey, “calories don’t count if you’re on vacation.”
Summer on a Seneca Lake cottage porch, early 1900s
I’m not a “we need to do things!” person when I’m on vacation. Eating, drinking and some light shopping are fine, but I don’t need to be on-the-go all the time. I realized that the Finger Lakes is the perfect location for me. Since the late 1800s, summer at the lake has been about time with family, reading, eating, and spending time in the water. Times have changed with electronics, Wi-Fi, and agri-tourism (visiting wineries, breweries, farm markets, etc.) but the cottage (or home) is still the center of the vacation.
My son and I had one planned activity: drive around each of the Finger Lakes. We had already done Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. We managed to drive around Owasco and Skaneateles Lakes; doing more seemed like work. Growing up in Penn Yan, I knew that each of the lakes has its own personality in terms of size, geography, and development around it. Of course, knowing and experiencing aren’t the same.
The summer weed – Chickory
Owasco and Skaneateles Lakes are both different from the lakes I know. The surrounding roads are very hilly, and both have long stretches of swampy inlet at the south ends that you must drive around. The vistas are spectacular. The farmland in the hills on the east side of Skaneateles Lake is pretty. I love the summer “weed” flowers along the road: chickory, Queen Anne’s Lace, and buttercups. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.
Even driving at a steady speed without stopping, I saw a lot of history, or at least starting points for learning history. We passed many small rural cemeteries similar to Brookside Cemetery on Snell Road. What were the settlements around the cemeteries and what drew people there? Much of the architecture was from the 19th century. The large fancy homes were from the second half of the 1800s and represented wealthy, or at least stylish, owners. What was going on in the towns in that period? Who were the owners and how did they get their money?
If you enjoy taking drives and only know one or two of the Finger Lakes, I recommend seeing all of them!
Read more about summer in Geneva and the Finger Lakes