Thursday, September 16, 2010

Weekend in Rochester

Saturday morning we rode the scooter up to Pittsford, a suburb of Rochester where Greg and Tina live. We waited until about 10 AM to leave because it had been in the low 40's overnight and the fog didn't burn off until then. It was still only in the low 50's when we left, but our cold weather gear kept us comfortable. The trip was 88 miles by blue roads, and we arrived shortly after noon. After a quick sandwich we all went to a community fair in downtown Pittsford Village. It made Rushford Labor Day seem like the world's fair by comparison so we didn't stay long, but since we were there we took a long walk along the Eire Canal which flows through town. We returned to Greg and Tina's for Tina's yummy homemade pizza dinner and lots of football on TV.

After church on Sunday morning we went to a Lumberjack Festival in Macedon, a community not far from Pittsford. We had a lumberjack breakfast and then watched all kinds of lumberjack competitions. We had seen such competitions on TV but never in person before. It was fun. We then drove to the University of Rochester and parked in a nearby park at the point where the Erie Canal crosses the Genesee River. We hiked along the canal and then up the river to the university where we explored the chapel and library. Both were interesting buildings and the campus is also very attractive.

We returned to Greg and Tina's where we ate Greg's delicious Dublin Chicken. For those of you who don't care about calories it's a great entre. They both went to bed early as Tina had to get up at 4 AM to go to work. I watched football and Dianna read until bedtime.

We awoke Monday morning to a steady rain. Greg and Tina were long gone to work. I checked the radar and it looked like the rain would clear long enough for us to get south of it by about 9:30 AM, so we were ready to go as soon as it let up. We did have to ride through some light sprinkles for a few minutes at one point, but by the time we got to Geneseo it was fine. The rest of the ride home was uneventful.

Since Monday it has been cooler and wetter. The temperatures at night have been getting down to the low 40's and the highs have not been out of the 60's. It has rained most of the day today. Fall is definitely just around the corner.

5 comments:

  1. A mirror image of the weather here -- at the coolest it is still a little too warm here. At the warmest it is a little too cool there.

    Give us a month and we'll be the comfortable ones.

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  2. A little longer and the leaves may start to turn. Hope you can stay that long; it's one of the four most beautiful seasons of the year (the other three are Spring, Summer and Winter, of course.

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  3. And I bet a month from now, R&D will be back in the southwest where the weather is nice. You guys sure live the life, don't you?

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  4. I'm confused about the canals. I thought the Erie went to Buffalo, and the Genesee Valley went to Rochester. Where am I mixed up? There was a Genesee, wasn't there, as well as an Erie Barge? That was the one which went by our school, wasn't it? I need a map.

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  5. Mom,

    The Erie Canal went from the Hudson River near Albany through Rochester to Buffalo. The Genesee Valley Canal went from Rochester to Olean and through Cuba. The Genesee Valley Canal and the Erie Canal met in Rochester. Essentially they met where the Erie Canal crossed the Genesee River because the Genesee Valley Canal took off from the Genesee River just below that junction.

    By the way, in reading the chronological history of the Genesee Valley Canal http://www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/whitford/1906/Chron10.html I learned the Cuba Lake was originally called Oil Creek Reservoir. From another source I was also finally able to answer a question that Dale and I had about where the water left the lake to feed the canal which was at its highest point between Black Creek and Cuba. There were valves and a sluice box built into the dam that controlled that flow. Apparently there are still remnants of those works there and I will try to get pictures. They are near the southern end of the dam, near a cemetery that was moved there from a location that was flooded by the lake. The cemetery contains the remains of some revolutionary war soldiers from the Cuba area.

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