Tag Archives: Seneca Falls

Riding (and Strolling) Routes 5 and 20

A couple of days after Christmas, feeling the need for a getaway, we took an overnight in Geneva, stretching our visit in both directions along Routes 5 and 20.

*Our family has a long history with the long road that has two numbers. In 1939, during the Great Depression, my father-in-law and his cousin drove down 5 and 20, heading from Vermont to Oklahoma, trying without success to find work in the oil fields. At each diner or gas station where they stopped, people were huddled around the radio, listening to news of the German invasion of Poland. It was the first week of the Second World War.

*Little did he know that he would one day have a daughter, and that 53 years after that trip she would be living within sight of 5 and 20, along with her husbnad and their two sons.

*We lived back then in “The Bloomfields,” and as part of our trip we took a drive through Holcomb/East Bloomfield, to find that not much has changed. The green, the church, and the cemetery still welcome visitors. But the Wireless Museum has now moved out to newer facilities on the edge of town, and the historical society is in the old place next to the church.

*One of the reasons we like Canandaigua is because Main Street has a needlework store (Expressions in Needleart) AND a comic book store (Pulp Nouveau). This, we find, is a perfect arrangement for domestic harmony! The Chamber of Commerce has a visitor’s center on Main Street, in case you want directions and information (or a public rest room).

*There’s a new and used bookstore, and the Ontario County Historical Society museum. You can see the lovely courthouse where Susan B. Anthony was tried for daring to vote. (“I will never pay one penny of your unjust fine,” she told the judge, and she didn’t, either.) The business district is busy. There are fine churches, interesting downtown commercial architecture, and a great view of the lake (though in January, you may feel the wind). We had lunch at The Villager, which is where we usually wind up when we’re in Canandaigua, because we like it so much.

*Sonnenberg Mansion and Gardens is closed this time of year, and so is Granger Homestead (historic mansions and carriage collection). But the library is open, with armchairs to sit and read, and rest rooms open to the public. If you have a card in the Pioneer Library System (as I do), you can borrow books.

*In Geneva we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, and in the mroning explored around the visitors center on the edge of the village, at the foot of Seneca Lake. Even with rain and snow lightly in the air, and wind whipping up whitecaps, we wandered the waterfront (where we once watched a mink dart around, but not that day). Our courage in the face of the weather was as nothing compared to that of the two parasurfers sailing along, zooming across the surface, occasionally losing their progress to sink completely below the waves, then rise again to full height and even higher, lifted high by the hydrofoil.

*The Finger Lakes Welcome Center wasn’t open yet, but we enjoyed the outside, with its benches and playground, and plaques set into the sidewalks recognizing inductees of the Finger Lakes Walk of Fame. Why isn’t Glenn Curtiss there? I must find out how to put in a nomination.

*Waterloo prides itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. We strolled Main Street, enjoying the turn-of-the-century commercial architecture as far as the Presbyterian church and back, then turned down North Virginia Street to see a church that we’d spotted. This led us to the breathtaking 19th-century library, looking for all the world like an English manor house, replete with high stacks and warm lovely woodwork, and worth a visit all by itself.

*The Christmas decorations were still nice, and a hotel had a countdown set up for New Year’s Eve.

*In Seneca Falls the national sites were closed by the government shutdown, but the Christmas windows still brought smiles as we strolled Main Street. Christmas in senecal Falls means celebrating the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” said by some to have been filmed locally (it wasn’t), or to have insored the setting of Bedford Falls (possible.)

*We walked as far as Van Vleet Lake and the stone Gothic Episcopal church, where our friend Brad Benson has recently transferred from Bath to become the rector, then spent some time in the museum and visitors center, and got a good overview of the village’s development, the canal and industrial history, and changes in the watercourse. But I have to confess that I only saw one staff person, and she was just hurrying through to get to the office area.

*We drove past Montezuma National Wildlife refuge (also shut down, we suppose) to the edge of Auburn, where we finally visited Bass Pro Shops… I get numerous e-mails from them every week, but have no idea why. We enjoyed the visit, then turned back to Seneca Falss for pizza. We had headed up to Bloomfield through Prattsburgh and Naples, and now headed hime by way of Geneva, Pre-Emption Road, Bellona, Penn Yan, the East Shore of Keuka Lake, and finally back to Bath.

*Routes 5 and 20 run from Auburn to Avon, following Indian paths. Later the same corridor would carry the Erie Canal, the New York central railroad, and the New York State Thruway. It’s the Route 66 of western New York. We like to drive it. We like to visit.

Glorious Montezuma — Our Own National Refuge

Leave a reply

Couple of weeks ago, on a beautiful fall Saturday, we rolled on up to Seneca Falls (and beyond!) to visit Montezuma Wildlife Refuge.

*For the visitor, perhaps the greatest thing about Montezuma in the fall is the huge numbers of waterfowl and wading birds. Another fellow who was there volunteers at Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge in Vermont, on Lake Champlain. When asked what brought him down to our area he answered simply, “This.”

*The fact that a fellow who spends his days in a National Wildlife Refuge would make a 300-mile trip to see THIS refuge speaks volumes.

*Montezuma and Missisquoi are both on major tracks of the Atlantic Flyway, that broad sky path from Greenland and the Arctic Ocean down to Mexico and the Caribbean. It’s an exhausting journey, and refuge is he right word. They are safe spaces where the birds may touch down to rest and recover for a night, or for a few days.

*Although other birds and butterflies use the flyway… we saw a monarch, and a monarch caterpillar on the milkweed… Montezuma managers engineer the site to maintain and expand the Cayuga Marshes, where shore birds and waterfowl have landed for millennia.

*After admiring osprey nests along Routes 5 and 20, we stopped at the very first pool, just past the entrance. The pool was packed, and immediately I spotted some green-winged teals. Not to mention mallards, black ducks, Canada geese, greater yellowlegs, and multitudinous gulls.

*Climbing back into the car, we headed down a short distance to the visitors’ center, where a birder had a spotter scope set up on a bald eagle perched on a distant branch, and was kind enough to give anyone a view. Here on the deck of the center you’re raised up a bit, giving you a better view of the pools and of the surrounding countryside. Sometimes we’ve watched deer from here, but not today.

*Today there were all the friends that we’d seen at the first pool, plus redheads, plus lots of small waders including snipe, plus killdeer… hundreds on hundreds of birds, mostly on their way to the south, coming in honking or quacking or squawking, then spreading their wings and shoving out their webbed feet as they glided the last few yards, splashed down, and within seconds were slowly and serenely sailing along.

*On this gorgeous day we walked the mile-long Seneca Trail, past a lone guitarist serenading the world from an observation tower. There were still blossoms, and there were still butterflies, while songbirds flitted in and out of the reeds and tall grass. A great blue heron strutted through the Cayuga-Seneca Barge Canal. Catbirds, robins, and blue jays vociferated in the trees. Back at the visitor center a northern harrier glided just above the reeds, creating a rolling stir among the birds in the water.

*We drove out on the long loop through the refuge, seeing coots, egrets, and cormorants as we drove, then doubled back to Seneca Falls for pizza before beginning our drive home to Bath.

*Bald eagles were established at Montezuma in hopes of repopulating them in New York, and the eagles we see in the Southern Tier today very likely descend from that flock. We also have the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge within driving distance. Back in March we spent three days at Pelican Island – the very first National Wildlife Refuge, created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. The island itself lies in the Indian River Lagoon, which has just been lashed by Hurricane Matthew. As I write, we still wait for news. We hope that that wonderful place, so foundational to our nation’s history, has not been badly scathed.