![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wherein Liz's mother visits!
Nov. 2nd, 2013 01:57 pmMom came up yesterday for a brief visit, even though both she and I were still fighting the dregs of our respective Colds of Doom. She is a morning person, so she left New Jersey around 6:30am and arrived at my apartment shortly after 10:30am.
We then drove up to Syracuse (with a brief detour to the shoe shop in the mall, which had received a pair my shoes in my size since last week, yay!!!) to visit the Erie Canal Museum, which is housed in the only remaining weighlock building from the old canal. It sits on Erie Boulevard, which runs right through downtown Syracuse. It is fascinating to realize that the city was literally built around the canal -- the main street was made of water. The linguistic legacy of the Erie Canal is all over northwestern New York, actually. The number of towns with "port" in their name -- Lockport, Gasport, Middleport, Brockport, Spencerport, Port Gibson, Weedsport, Port Byron -- which are not on a lake or a river is completely inexplicable until you realize they are all canal towns.
And the canal itself still exists! The route has been shifted a bit to take advantage of natural bodies of water, which helps it accomodate boats with deeper drafts. Also the boats are now self-propelled instead of towed by mules. *wry* The Erie Canal is mostly used for recreational boating these days, since commercial transport has become the bastion of trucks and highways. I think this is a shame, since water travel is a more fuel-efficient transport option than overland methods, but I guess the canal just wasn't fast or versatile enough to compete anymore.
Anyway, after the museum we drove west to Camillus where there is a little volunteer-run museum at old Lock 50 (IIRC). It turns out to only be open on weekends, so we just looked at the old canal. It was left abandoned and dry in 1917 when the new route opened, but these days several stretches have been refilled with at least a little water and are maintained as a state park.
We came home on NY-5 and US-20 over the tops of Skaneateles and Owasco, and NY-89 down the west shore of Cayuga. We stopped at two wineries near the north end of Cayuga, just for the heck of it, then took half an hour to rest and regroup at my apartment before setting out in search of dinner around 7pm. We had no reservations because we hadn't known how long our excursion would take, and the first two places we tried (Madeline's and the BoatYard Grill) both had half hour waits, so we headed up the lake a bit to Rogues' Harbor, which is one of our fallback places. I had a bleu burger (which is basically a bacon cheeseburger with Gorgonzola substituted for a more standard cheese), Mom had fish and chips, and we split a bowl of French onion soup because, while delicious, it was far too rich for one person to eat alone.
Today we had breakfast at Friendly's, taking advantage of some very nice coupon deals I recently got in the mail, after which I bought groceries for the week, we stopped by the Salvation Army store in search of stray lids for some Corningware baking dishes I have (alas, no lids were to be found), and we hit Home Depot to buy a plastic weatherproofing kit for my livingroom windows. My windows are stupidly large -- I have to use old twin bedsheets for curtains, because standard curtains simply do not come in the necessary length! -- and they are also single-pane and somewhat loose in their frames (it's an old house; these things happen) so they lose a LOT of heat in the winter. Hopefully the plastic will counteract that a bit. :-)
I am debating whether to do laundry this afternoon. I probably ought to, but it's kind of gray out and I feel lazy after this morning's spate of errands, so... eh.
In the meantime, I am off to do more background research for my Yuletide fic, since Mom brought a couple useful books with her. (There are occasional benefits to having a father who used to teach college history and who almost never prunes his book collection. *fond*)
We then drove up to Syracuse (with a brief detour to the shoe shop in the mall, which had received a pair my shoes in my size since last week, yay!!!) to visit the Erie Canal Museum, which is housed in the only remaining weighlock building from the old canal. It sits on Erie Boulevard, which runs right through downtown Syracuse. It is fascinating to realize that the city was literally built around the canal -- the main street was made of water. The linguistic legacy of the Erie Canal is all over northwestern New York, actually. The number of towns with "port" in their name -- Lockport, Gasport, Middleport, Brockport, Spencerport, Port Gibson, Weedsport, Port Byron -- which are not on a lake or a river is completely inexplicable until you realize they are all canal towns.
And the canal itself still exists! The route has been shifted a bit to take advantage of natural bodies of water, which helps it accomodate boats with deeper drafts. Also the boats are now self-propelled instead of towed by mules. *wry* The Erie Canal is mostly used for recreational boating these days, since commercial transport has become the bastion of trucks and highways. I think this is a shame, since water travel is a more fuel-efficient transport option than overland methods, but I guess the canal just wasn't fast or versatile enough to compete anymore.
Anyway, after the museum we drove west to Camillus where there is a little volunteer-run museum at old Lock 50 (IIRC). It turns out to only be open on weekends, so we just looked at the old canal. It was left abandoned and dry in 1917 when the new route opened, but these days several stretches have been refilled with at least a little water and are maintained as a state park.
We came home on NY-5 and US-20 over the tops of Skaneateles and Owasco, and NY-89 down the west shore of Cayuga. We stopped at two wineries near the north end of Cayuga, just for the heck of it, then took half an hour to rest and regroup at my apartment before setting out in search of dinner around 7pm. We had no reservations because we hadn't known how long our excursion would take, and the first two places we tried (Madeline's and the BoatYard Grill) both had half hour waits, so we headed up the lake a bit to Rogues' Harbor, which is one of our fallback places. I had a bleu burger (which is basically a bacon cheeseburger with Gorgonzola substituted for a more standard cheese), Mom had fish and chips, and we split a bowl of French onion soup because, while delicious, it was far too rich for one person to eat alone.
Today we had breakfast at Friendly's, taking advantage of some very nice coupon deals I recently got in the mail, after which I bought groceries for the week, we stopped by the Salvation Army store in search of stray lids for some Corningware baking dishes I have (alas, no lids were to be found), and we hit Home Depot to buy a plastic weatherproofing kit for my livingroom windows. My windows are stupidly large -- I have to use old twin bedsheets for curtains, because standard curtains simply do not come in the necessary length! -- and they are also single-pane and somewhat loose in their frames (it's an old house; these things happen) so they lose a LOT of heat in the winter. Hopefully the plastic will counteract that a bit. :-)
I am debating whether to do laundry this afternoon. I probably ought to, but it's kind of gray out and I feel lazy after this morning's spate of errands, so... eh.
In the meantime, I am off to do more background research for my Yuletide fic, since Mom brought a couple useful books with her. (There are occasional benefits to having a father who used to teach college history and who almost never prunes his book collection. *fond*)
