My New York Camping Adventure...

This past weekend was my first solo camping adventure. Granted, it was what I commonly refer to as "wussy camping" - aka Campground with showers camping... Anyway... I took the senic route up to the Finger Lakes region of New York from Philly, taking no road bigger than a state highway. It took a while longer than the big highways would have - but it was so much prettier it was worth it. I got there just after dark, around 9pm, and set up my tent. I hoped for no rain being the ground was too hard for me to get my ran fly staked out well, I need to get some kind of mallet to pound those things in for future trips. I also made my first fire without help! Almost 24 years of watching my parents make fires, and I actually learned something - go figure! Anyway... I went to bed kind of early after a little reading. I woke up to light rain on my tent, but I was warm and dry. I hoped it would stop soon. So I sat in my tent and pouted for awhile that it was raining on my one full day of camping. Finally around noon, I got dressed and headed out to drive around the lake and see what was out there. After just a bit, it stopped raining. So, I drove around the lake, through all the farm land, and it was pretty. Then I got back and did some hiking around the gorge. The sun came out for the end of my hike, but it stayed kind of chilly, so I headed back to sit by a fire. I kept the fire going so long Saturday night that I went through 2 1/2 wood bundles. But I was warm. And I love watching campfires. Fire it so interesting... Anway, I also met this woman a couple sites over from me who was also camping alone. She had ridden down from Rochester, NY on her motorcycle. We sat by my fire for a couple hours and she shared her bottle of wine and we chatted. We had a lot in common for her being a good 30 years older than me. She was fun. Then, pretty sleepy, I went to bed. My sleeping bag is awesome. I stayed warm despite the fact it was FREEZING all night. Literally. I mean, I had a half bag of ice sitting out that didn't fit in my cooler. When I woke up in the morning, before the sun came out, it was still a bag of ice. It didn't melt until the sun was shining bright. So, I stayed in my warm sleeping bag until it got warm. Then I broke down camp and headed out. I checked out a few wineries on my way north. This area of New York is one of the best in the country for wine, and possibly in one of the best in the world according to some things I have read. The funny thing to me was that the winery that said is a "can't miss" according to the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die... well, they're stuck up and they don't have much variety. I left there fairly quickly. I bought some good wine from a couple other wineries. If you come to visit me, I'll share. :) I drove by Niagra falls and saw it from my car in the summer... maybe I'll get back there to see it in the summer. I've only seen it frozen and it's pretty cool then. Anyway - in Canada I bought some gas. A friendly Canadian man at the next pump noted that I was far from home and tried to help me figure out how much their gas was in comparison to ours. Neither of us could do it in our heads, but he COULD tell me that it's more expensive than US gas. When it's $1.09 Canadian per liter... it's hard to figure out how many US$ per gallon. But... it did come out to approximately $37 for 10 gallons... definatley more... we're not up to $3.70 per gallon yet. Ick. Trying to figure out that calculation and the accents of all those around me, who were all talking to me by the way becasue of my "foreign" liscense plate... really made me feel as if I was in a different country. But... when I got back on the road and saw all the signs for all the same stores, hotels, and resturants that we have and I remembered that Canada is after all, just a part of the United States. Anyway... so I finally got to Michigan.

I was going to show you pictures... but this is refusing to upload pictures today. Sorry!