Summer 2010 Part II

Commentary

We wanted to finish the summer with a short trip that kept us close to home and would include us being a little more stationary than we had been in the past. perhaps we are a bit gun shy after our experience earlier this summer or maybe it was time to see some of the areas of upstate New York that we had passed through on other trips. I like to think it was the latter.

When you ask people, especially outside of New York State, to describe New York, most will talk about New York City. Upstate New York, outside of cities such as Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, is quite rural. The Finger Lakes region, where we will spend the first part of our trip, is one of the major wine growing areas in the US. Adirondack Park, in whose boundary we will spend a week, is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States and is larger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined. Half of the park is publicly owned and is constitutionally protected to be "forever wild." There is much more to upstate New York than we can cover in the short time we allocated for this trip, but we will save that for another trip.

After our stay in the Lake George area, we will do a weekend in Montreal, mostly visiting with friends and doing a little sightseeing. After Montreal we will head to Foxboro, MA for a few days. We picked this area because it is close to our grandchildren. Ben, our oldest grandchild, is fascinated with the idea of living in a trailer (or in anything that has wheels) so we are hoping to take him with us overnight. If that doesn't work, and we hope it will, it is only a 45 minute trip to take him home.