Yesterday we drove the 430 miles from Cookshire Eaton, Quebec, through Ontario, across the Thousand Islands Bridge to the Finger Lakes area of New York. When hitched the trailer, Real noted that the ball was very loose. Had we gone much further without correcting it, we might have lost the trailer. Later, we noted that one of the trailer tires was very low on air. We refilled the tire at a gas station. We were thankful for these gentle reminders to be more diligent on our safety checks.
This was our first encounter with inclement weather, and we handled it well enough. Coming into Syracuse we ran into a rain cloud about 20 miles long. We drove north of it, running parallel to the massive system and could see the torrential downpours that we just managed to miss. We arrived at the home of our friends Pat and Peter Gregoire at about 8:20 PM. They have a beautiful old home and gardens situated on scenic 89, just across from Cayuga Lake. Their property abuts on the Knapp Vineyard. Cayuga lake is 40 miles long, 4.5 miles wide at its widest, and 435 feet deep. The lake has good trout fishing and rivers feeding Lake Ontario feature salmon.
The Finger Lakes are a series of deep lakes, oriented north-south, just south of Lake Ontario. Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are the largest of the Finger Lakes. Cayuga lake, where the Gregoire’s live is just south of Lake Ontario and southwest of Syracuse. The land between Cayuga has a special microclimate conducive to growing grapes. I was last at the Gregoire’s home about 25 years ago and the area has undergone some changes, mostly for the better. Mennonite and Amish farmers have bought up a lot of the farmland, retaining the area’s agricultural base. Peter Gregoire is fond of referring to this area as the Eastern Napa Valley in its adolescence. New vineyards have cropped up and the quality of the wine here has really come along nicely. There is also a lot of specialty farming done here, growing free-range chickens and beef, organic fruits and vegetables, for example.
Peter and Pat have recently retired from medical life and are enjoying their retirement in good health. Pete’s daughter Maryse is teaching English in Japan, Christine and Jim live nearby, and Michael is an engineer on the West Coast. Grandchildren round out their full, beautiful lives. The Gregoires have been very hospitable to us, not only sharing their home with us, but taking us to see the local points of interest in the area.
One of them, was the Taughannock waterfalls, the highest waterfall in the Eastern US. Niagara, of course, is the largest in volume. Along the way we sampled some yummy ciders made with the Northern Spy apple, and lunched at the Thirsty Owl vineyard where we enjoyed excellent fare their fine, Reisling, Pinot Noire, and Pinot Gris wines. Excellent!
The air was cool and misty, but that did not dampen the pleasant times we spent together. We spent the late afternoon in the kitchen. Peter canned strawberry jam and made a BBQ. I baked a country style Italian bread, a panni rustica. As dinner smells began to pique our appetite and vintage Paul Simon wafted around us in the background, we stirred up old memories of temps perdu. There were some very good years.
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