Looooooong Day Adventure

The original plan for today was to go to Cooprstown, but it turned out that this weekend is HALL OF FAME WEEKEND, and Cooperstown will be very crowded, so we needed a new plan.  Even though we had recently been to this same area, I decided that a visit to the Blenheim Gilboa Visitors Center might be a good place to start.  So, I set up an itinerary, found some geocache information and we headed out early Friday morning with a picnic lunch

    I think we arrived at the visitors center around ten thirty a.m.     The visitors center features interactive activities (which have to do with power and electricity) which the kids loved. .  
 It is housed in a restored 18th century dairy barn.   After we finished up with the visitors center, we went to LANSING MANOR, right next door, which is a  historic house museum.  The house itself is almost 200 years old.
     After that, we had lunch in a picnic area on the grounds.  Then, after using the rest rooms in the visitors center, we headed down the aqua trail to find two geocaches: GIANT TWINS and AT THE Y.  The giant trees are beautiful and I took a few pictures.  AT THE Y was a bit of a challenge.......very hard to get to, in fact, I got stuck behind some very unforgiving vines and could not even get to the cache, which Cassandra (Cachysandra) found easily.
     After finding those two caches, we headed back to the parking area.  A tractor pulling a wagon was coming through and they stopped and offered us a ride, which we accepted.  They were doing a "trial run" for a hay ride they are having tomorrow.  One of the guys noticed our GPS's and asked if we were geocaching and when we said "yes", he started pointing out geocaches along the trail.  He mentioned a "parks challenge".
     Once back at the parking area, Cassy insisted on looking for CURBSIDE, one of the caches we heard about during our wagon ride.  But without coords, she did not have any luck.

     After that, we headed to Gallupville to go to the OLDE CORNER STORE.    This old store (circa 1834)     is now a bulk food store and deli.  We all purchased Kutztown Sodas (delicious) and chocolates and chatted with the proprietor, who was very friendly.  The kids said they liked this store much better than the Breakabeen store.
     Our plans for the day included heading to Route 20 and going to The TEPEE, but we realized we were running out of time, so we scratched that and decided to just take Route 30 back to Stamford and then 23 to Oneonta and home.  We made several photo stops, though: first at a covered bridge and old home, then an octagon house, a farm stand (where Megan purchased a lot of berries) and in Grand Gorge, we stopped to go in an antique store.

ANTIQUES in Grand Gorge, NY, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

which was our last stop except for a stop at Stewart's in Stamford to use the rest room and purchase ice cream.   Megan ordered and picked up a pizza at Long Island Pizzeria for our supper that night, which was a good thing, since I was pretty worn out!  It was a great day.