Fish Creek

We leave Rochester 

 

and head to the Adirondacks for the Memorial Day weekend.

A stop at Orbaker's for lunch and ice-cream.

 Well, if the house ahead of us fit under I guess we will.

We arrive at the campground

Our site is big enough we can pull in to get a view of the lake.

Camp is set up - time to enjoy a fire

and a nice sunset

Time for a cup of coffee and breakfast!

Everything tastes better cooked outside

Time to walk it off.  We go looking for Panthers.

It is a relatively short hike but it is uphill all the way.

The view is worth it

The boys take a break before heading back down.

and it's dinner time!

A relaxing few days and Gary gets to visit with old friends.

The Lake is pretty but also pretty cold. 

 Tucson of course doesn't mind

We move the chairs into the lake to cool off

The day we set up I got buzzed by a hummingbird so I set out my feeder

A final sunset.

A nice stay although the mosquitos got out of control after the holiday weekend campers left and the food source got cut way down. 

Next stop - Alpine Lakes

Rochester - Final Week

Doctors appointments all done and all looks good.  

Dinners with my friends Kathy and John and with my friend Cheri.  

Got to see my cousins Eileen, Donna and Nancy

A drive up to Charlotte Beach at Lake Ontario Beach Park

Tucson off chasing squirrels

Trees are flowering

Dinner at the Village Inn

 I ordered the wine sampler 3 wines of your choice.  I ended up with 3 full glasses.

The time has flown by.  Next stop is Fish Creek in the Adirondacks.

Rochester - Genesee Brewery

We make plans to meet a former Co-worker and Highschool friend, Darlene, who works downtown at the Genesee Brewery for Lunch.  We get a table on the upstairs balcony

 A really nice view of the Falls

 After a great lunch and visit, Darlene is back off to work and Gary, Tucson and I walk over to the High Falls District

 Brown's Race was constructed in 1815. Diverting water from a point about 500 feet south of High Falls, the raceway was 1221 feet long (later extended), 30-feet wide and five-and-a-half feet deep powering Mills along the raceway. Eventually the race was covered by a wooden plank roadway.  In 1991-92 portions of the original Brown's Race were uncovered; concrete planks delineate the original width of the raceway.

 The Triphammer Forge Building burned in 1977. As the rubble was cleared, a long-forgotten basement room was uncovered that held the buildings large (25-foot) water wheel, made of wood and iron.

A portion of the original Gorsline Building is now a terrace park for viewing the falls and river gorge.

 Site of the original wheel pit of Rochester’s early saw mill, and The Leap, a small balcony near the spot where waterfall daredevil Sam Patch took his last jump. More than half of Rochester watched as Sam took his fatal plunge on Friday the 13th of November, 1829

 It's a bit dizzying looking at the Falls from this perspective

 The Kodak Tower

 and we return back across the Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge.

Rochester - George Eastman House and Lilac Festival

Meeting my friends Kathy and John at the George Eastman house.  Plus we get to see another really good friend, Cheri who is an archivist  there.

The Beech Tree out front is beautiful

As is George's modest little home.  The house was built by Architect J. Foster Warner and gardens designed by landscape architect Alling S. DeForest,  creating an urban estate complete with working farm, formal gardens, greenhouses, stables, barns, pastures, and the 35,000-square-foot, fifty-room Mansion.  It was completed in 1905 and rests on 8.5 acres.

 So many film colors to choose from

 The current exhibits have the theme of Cinema and the tables inside are all decorated with a movie theme.

Ascot Opening Day from My Fair Lady

 Alice in Wonderland

 and Father of the Bride are just a few

 The Study

 Library

 Let's wander upstairs

 A good view of the Conservatory below and the Aeolian pipe organ - He added the Opus 1416 - in 1917 to the original one doubling the size to132 ranks of pipes (a rank is a grouping of a particular sound, each rank has a pipe for every key on the keyboard rank is usually 61 Pipes).   49 of the ranks were in the string family.  It was designed to make it sound like a real orchestra.  A Duo-art paper roll player mechanism to controlled it all. The pipes are installed in 9 separate divisions surrounding the conservatory.

Upstairs houses some of the photography collections

 Including a room-size camera obscura  projecting a view of the West Garden on the room's walls

Gary and John have a nice discussion in George's Sitting Room

 Then Gary has a little talk with George

 A great view from one of the Bedrooms

 We take a tour outside.  

George Eastman spent $335,000 (around $9 million today) to build the mansion.  In 1919 he decided to enlarge the conservatory in order to make the space oblong rather than square. To add 18" to the middle of the mansion cost $750,000 and took approximately three months.  You can just barely see the slight discoloration above the closest upper window on the short square section of the building

 Everything is just starting to flower.  

The Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden

Rock Garden and Grape Arbor

 The West Garden

We head over to the Lilac Festival to catch a quick view the first day.  It takes place in Highland Park which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted a completely planned—and planted—arboretum or “tree garden.” In addition to over 1200 lilac shrubs planted in 1890, the park has Japanese Maple collection, 35 varieties of sweet-smelling magnolias, a barberry collection, a rock garden with dwarf evergreens, 700 varieties of rhododendron, azaleas, mountain laurel and andromeda, horse chestnuts, spring bulbs and wildflowers and a large number of trees.

The park’s pansy bed features 10,000 plants, designed into an oval floral “carpet” with a new pattern each year.

It is the largest collection of Lilacs in the world