Second Friday of summer vacation 🏕️
Last two full days in the Finger Lakes. Continued hot and humid today, with another significant risk of thunderstorms come the afternoon. In other words, summer.
Today’s agenda is to go up to Sampson State Park and maybe later on to Geneva State Park if time and weather allows. 🏊♂️ Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake has the only state swim beach on the lake, plus opportunity to kayak if the water is not too rough, and all those miles of old Sampson Airforce Base roads to ride around mostly traffic free along with a rail trail. 🚵♂️
Yesterday, I went down to Corning, rode around the city for a bit and sampled the farmers market, checked out the pedestrian bridge and Corning Glass headquarters. I really did not feel like heading inside and spending all day and $30 in admission to look at a bunch of glass. 🫗 A bunch of unburnable trash doesn’t excite me much. Instead I checked out the Houghton Land Preserve, the Springbrook Nature Preserve at Corning Community College and then spent the balance of the day down at McCarthy Hill State Forest and the former Pinnacle State Golf Course. 🐸 Honestly, I really enjoyed the Pinnacle Golf Course, now that it’s slowly but surely rewilding itself, the buildings and golf holes gone, but the area is still mostly grasses and milkweed, 🌸 with excellent views of the surrounding hills and valleys.
Thunder came rumbling through most of the day, but outside of a few drops that hardly got me wet, it seemed to miss me all day. ⛈️ I am not sure if I can count on such luck today, indeed the roads were wet driving back, and it was so humid that I had run the windshield wipers to keep it clean. Drove back via Cowansque Lake, 🚤 and then Tioga Junction over to Elmira and then back to Watkins Glen. Not the most direct route but I’m on vacation 🩴 and I had hoped to spot some more burning barrels 🛢️ in Pennsylvania. Didn’t see anybody burning shit but that part of PA 287 is more urbanized though I got stuck behind a pickup towing 🛻 another junk truck that had something dragging and burning along the way. Yuck. 🤮
Had a little fire 🔥 after getting a peanut 🥜 butter cup sundae 🍨 at Glen Dairy Bar and ice 🧊 and some olive 🫒 oil. Gassed up the SuperDuty hopefully the last time for the trip in Edwin, and outside of ice should be good for the rest of the trip. ⛽ $115 in fuel. Roughly $295 for the trip but outside of ice cream, food and beer 🍺 I’ve not had a lot of extra expenses. My September credit 💳 card bill will be up there though. Mostly needed the fire to get caught up on the garbage 🗑️ it was unreasonably hot 🫠 with the humidity but still fun to watch the flicker from the hammock.
Soon enough though I’ll be heading home 🏘️ on Sunday. I got to see about selling Big Red it’s been quiet lately but I’ve not been pushing the listings. Maybe I need to cut the price. At this point I want to get rid of the truck 🚛. I need to get an oil change done on the SuperDuty and I want to get the undercarriage oil covered before winter. Then there are three weekends remaining until Labor Day Weekend, need to see if I can get to the Potholers one other long weekend and maybe to Mine Kill State Park Pool 🏊♂️ one more time. Labor Day Weekend will be Speculator most likely as long as the weather is reasonable.
