Upstate NY and Watkins Glen

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Hi folks, I have cut and pasted this blog from a few days ago as it doesn't seem to have published properly and some have said they haven't seen it. Didn,t realise that anyone would be that interested but there you go.

I know that many of you that get an email notification of blogs will probably have got this one but it did appear with some 'blemishes' so hopefully this one is correct.

This is just a short message to keep up to date.

We left NY on time yesterday and headed to Watkins Glen via Philadelphia and Elmira which is the closest airport to WG.
Flight was uneventful but we could see the countryside below us all the way and it changed as we headed north. We could see the brilliant autumn colours everywhere below us and this gave us a taste of what we have found in WG and surrounds. The autumn colours in this part of the country are incredible and have to be seen to be believed!!

Our hosts, Judy and Albert Pearce, as well as their daughter Becky, met us at Elmira. We hosted Ted, their son, in Waipukurau in 1991 when he was on a Rotary international student exchange . We have corresponded with them eve since but this was the first time we had ever met each other and it was just great to finally catch up with them. It was also great to meet Becky again as she stayed with us for a few days in 1991 over Christmas/New Year when she visited NZ.

We have been treated like royalty by these lovely folks who have shown us a completely different part of the USA than we have seen before. We are in small town USA and in many ways it is not unlike home.

We went to a nearby museum where they do a lot of gliding, or soaring as they call it here, when we got off the plane yesterday and that was interesting.

We ate Judy's homemade apple pie and also blueberry pie with vanilla ice-cream for dessert last night. and you can imagine how good that was.

This morning we tramped through the most amazing local park in Watkins Glen that was a large naturally wooded area with a large number of descending waterfalls running through it, some we even had to walk under on the track as they cascaded over the top of us. We saw squirrels and lots of chipmunks (they are a lot smaller than we thought, about the size of a small rat).

After lunch we headed to the Corning Museum of Glass and this was a real experience. Corning was the home of Corningware, the oven proof cooking ware that we have used at home. It is no longer here now but we discovered that Corning was also the manufacturers of many, many other glass products as well and the 2 hours spent there was amazing. We even saw a live glass blowing demonstration and met a kiwi glassblower originally from Hokitika who works at the museum and had quite a chat to him.

We then headed north for our overnight stop in Batavia from where we leave for the Niagara Falls in the morning. Albert and Judy took us to the most amazing restaurant for dinner just a bit south of Batavia. It was an 1840s old manor house in a large park area that has been a restaurant since 1914 when the original owners family sold the property. It was very posh and our meals came with mashed potato and baby carrots and for those who have ever spent time visiting and eating in places like Las Vegas and NY you will know how good it was to get into vegetables again.

Staying in a Best Western motel in Batavia which is very nice and really looking forward to seeing the NFs tomorrow. Hopefully the weather, which has been just fantastic everywhere we have been so far, will hold for the next day or so.

Catch you all later.

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