Hello and welcome to the newest edition of From The Vault! The series where I go back and dredge up old, lost, or unwritten stories of my travels. In this edition I’m going to tell you about my relatively recent trip to upstate New York. This was a trip I crammed about 2 hours worth of planning into. (Kind of low when compared to the Rushmore or Carlsbad trips.) I’ve been wanting to knock out these last few parks for ages, but because of Covid restrictions everything has been closed.
I’m going off of memories, photos, my google timeline, and the Official Plan. Nothing will be left out! I hope you find this interesting!
Day 1
I got up at around 3:30am, which happens to be really early compared to my usual wake up time. I was going to finally tour the Harriet Tubman National Historic Park. It is about a five and a half hour drive from home so that means I need to wake up early. The tour started at 10am sharp and lately for super early trips I’ll leave 30 – 1 hour early so that I have time to take a break if I need it. If I don’t then I’d get breakfast or something.
About 2 hours into the trip there was a slight problem: it was really foggy and one of my wiper blades was broken. I’ve found when driving that there can be a few types of fog: wet, dry, and freezing fog. That morning I had wet fog. This is when you are driving through fog and it feels like it is sort of drizzling so you need to use the wipers to see. I was making good time so I stopped at a nearby gas station plaza and got breakfast from McDonald’s which turned out to be a stupid decision. I’m not a huge fan of how the egg / bacon / bread combo tastes heavily of sugary maple syrup. It was gross. I continued onwards and shortly before reaching Albany, NY I encountered another driving threat. I’d be traveling along at around 65mph when suddenly BAM! My windshield fogged up even though I had the defroster on. I was essentially blinded instantly, (it was a bit frightening I’ll admit), and I had to fool around with the defrost temperature settings to fix it. I saw one speeding pickup pull off the highway because he was probably so freaked out. Not me!
Eventually I reached Auburn, NY where the Harriet Tubman NHP was! The park is down what I’d describe as a country road in a nice urban park. This is an ‘affiliate park’ in the National Park system and it’s technically owned by a private group that allows the National Park Service to do tours and such. Anyways, I figured that nobody would be on the tour first thing in the morning in cold February so I didn’t bother booking a required advanced ticket to the tour. Turns out I didn’t need it because there was only two other people on it! (Most weeks they have large school groups). The tour consisted of an interesting lecture and a walk out to her house.
Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland as a slave, but was later freed when her father was freed. She traveled back and forth guiding people north to Canada in what is know as the Underground Rail Road. That’s about a 700 mile round trip walk and there were dire consequences for being caught. During the Civil War she was a Union spy/nurse and led troops in a raid on a plantation, which ended up freeing about 700 people. Later she bought a house in Auburn, NY and used it as a place to help escaped slaves. Although it’s a bit unclear how she raised the money to buy the house. She was also huge in the moment for women’s rights. (This is about all I remember off the top of my head from the tour.)
After the lecture we went to the house outside. It once burned down so the house in the picture is a reconstruction. The brick house was abandoned after she died and over the years it was looted for anything of value which would include furniture, the copper pipes, some of the bricks, and apparently everything else because now it’s being renovated. Eventually they will be renovating the (white) house as well. After I was finished with the tour I decided to cut my next park visit down by half an hour so I could fix my left wiper blade. The rubber part had been coming off the metal arm little by little for the entire drive so far and it was starting to be come an emergency fix. Luckily AutoZone helped me out and I was back on my way again.
The next stop was the Women’s Rights NHP in Seneca Falls. I sacrificed the guided tour for the wiper blades. It was kind of a tough decision because of my personal creed to see everything I can. In lieu of the tour I did my own self tour of the museum. It’s hard to live in the 21st century and not know anything about woman’s rights so I did have a base knowledge going into this. For the past few months I’ve been working on my family tree and most of the time it’s the guys that go to school and can read / write (pre 1920, which isn’t really that long ago.)
The Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention marked the beginning of the woman’s rights movement in the United States. The three biggest grievances at the time were that women couldn’t vote, had no voice in the government, and couldn’t own a house in their name (I think). Generally what I got out of this place was that no matter what game changing right was achieved there would always be another challenging hurdle to overcome. The church hall that the convention was held in is still standing (although it’s been reinforced) so I briefly checked that out before heading farther west into New York.
It took me about two more hours of driving to reach Niagara Falls. I’ve never been here despite driving through Buffalo about 4 times on my way to/from Philmont. It’s just a weeee bit too annoying to cram into a precisely timed out road trip, but it’s been on the bucket list forever so today was the day. I went over several ideas that would exhaust any of my friends to think about such as “is going to the Canada side worth the trouble?” “Should I do all the walking trails?” “Will I have enough time to see the falls from the observation tower in Canada?”… After a long brainstorm session I decided I’d try out Cave of the Winds.
It was fairly cold when I got there, but of course I had my red shorts on anyways. I brought my rain jacket and BB8 as well. The parking lot was pretty empty when I got there, which was surprising. To see the falls I had to watch a short video on its history. Long story short there is a hydro electric power plant at Niagara Falls that provide electricity to about 25% of New York State and Ontario.
After the video I had to take a short elevator ride to a tunnel that brings you out to just past the falls. It reminded me of a short NYC subway tunnel.
Once I was back outside I got my first look at the majestic partially frozen Niagara Falls! The US side is pretty lame I think because this is a place that has been hyped up for my whole life, but yet it really doesn’t seem that massive when compared to that one waterfall in Iceland.
I didn’t spend a lot of time here. Just enough to get a BB8 shot and view Canada from across the river. I think the picture from the gift shop looks better. Also it was advertised that I’d get soaked. That is not the case in the winter I guess because I hardly got a drop of water on me. After seeing the falls I grabbed some McDonalds and then headed to my hotel! It had been a long day and I wanted to rest. Next time I will have to visit St. Catherine’s in Canada because apparently it has a few pretty legendary bars.
Interestingly enough my hotel had an art auction. I’ve never seen that in a hotel before!
Day 2
Today I had a plan, but I decided to re-write it since I wanted to get to the hotel before midnight. Seemed reasonable to me. Instead of a 1:30pm tour in Buffalo at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Home National Historic Site I decided to get there when they opened to see if I could get the first tour of the day: 11:30am.
It just so happened that I did get it since I was the only person there and it was indeed a worth while tour. The tour guide was dressed a bit differently from a normal National Park Ranger because the park was more of a partner park like the Harriet Tubman one. The tour walked me through how Mr. Roosevelt became president.
One day the 25th US President, one Mr. William McKinley, was shot in Buffalo in an assassination attempt. He was immediately transferred to a local hospital and treated with the best medical knowledge at the time. Roosevelt was vice president at the time and was away in Vermont. He had the choice of coming back right away, but didn’t because of two reasons. One was that he was worried that coming back too soon would put doubt into the doctor / reporter minds that the prognosis wasn’t good. He didn’t really want that negativity so he went with option 2.
The second choice was to go on a big family trip up in the mountains. They had been planning this for a long time and it would be not ideal to cancel it so soon. Unfortunately for him he had to leave a few days early because the situation changed fast and he got word that McKinley might die within the night. Roosevelt rushed by stage coach and private train to be at the President’s side, but by the time he got there the President had passed away. So it was time to swear in the Vice President.
He was sworn in at this very house in Buffalo instead of Washington D.C. because all the cabinet members were already here and the US needed a President fast. The house itself is pretty basic although it has its own rectangular oval office complete with a giant globe and a desk. I got to take a picture at the desk as if I was the President signing bills. Very cool!
Next on the daily schedule was to drive to Corning to see the glass museum. I wasn’t really sure what to expect since I’ve never been before, but it was actually pretty cool.
For valentines day I got to choose my favorite piece of art as part of a contest. Whichever piece had the most votes by the end of the contest would be declared the winner! (Although I’m not sure what the winner gets). I walked around for a bit and then at 3:30pm I headed into the theater for the glass blowing show.
The glass blowing show was really cool! There were two glass blowers and a commentator that helped to guide you through the process. First the lead artist gets a lump of glass from the furnace. (Inside the furnace there is a crucible of glass that is melted and waiting as well as a camera to show you that process.) Once he had the glass on the metal poll he started shaping it into a large vase. Midway through he stuck it into a different furnace to heat it back up then pulled it out, blowed into the pipe some more, added some pretty glass shards, and put it back into the furnace again. Eventually he ended the process by scoring the bottom of the vase and gently breaking it off onto a nearby table. His assistant then moved it to an oven to “cure” for a few hours.
After the demonstration I took a look around the gift shop, which was massive by the way. I eventually decided on something small for the souvenir drawer. The last stop of the day was Connecticut. I can drive from Buffalo to Corning to Stanford to Boston in one day, but I wouldn’t have enough time to see everything I wanted to plus I’m not a huge fan of hitting upper NYC traffic in the middle of a 9 hour drive. I would be staying at another Marriott. For dinner I tried to go to an Outback Steakhouse in Norwalk, but no one payed attention to me and so I walked out. The second place near the hotel didn’t work either because the kitchen had closed so I ended up angrily going to a Yard House about 10 minutes down the highway. Overall it was a great decision, but eating alone so close to Valentine’s day was a bit unnerving.
Day 3
On Sunday I left the hotel at 9:40am and drove straight to the Weir Farm NHP. It’s in a pretty rural part of Connecticut, but that’s exactly why Mr. Weir chose this location!
He wanted a quiet place to paint and sculpt. The farm is in fact a farm, but it’s more of a small “I have a few pigs and a small vegetable garden” rather than a “heh I live in Kansas and have a massive field of cows. Beat that!”.
The national park was doing a local art exhibition at the time with some painted bears. To get the Junior Ranger badge you needed to find all the bears and explain why they were so cool (as well as talk about general Weir farm facts).
I decided to walk to the pond nearby before I left since there wasn’t a lot to do on the main property in winter. It was about a 10 minute walk into the woods. Because it had been so wet recently I discovered that much of the trail was slick with mud.
About 40 feet in I almost fell into the mud! That would’ve sucked because I pride myself on my clean car. The pond ended up being a bit uninteresting apart from all the geese in it.
On the way back out I passed by a portable art shed that Weir could take wherever he wanted, although it was really really small so I’m not sure how he got away without back problems.
On my way back home I took a quick stop at a famous pizza restaurant in New Haven called Frank PePe Pizzeria Napoletana. It was amazing! I didn’t have to wait long for my large pizza with fresh mozzarella / pepperoni. When I couldn’t finish it I took the rest home with me. I had an awesome time cruising back home on the highway and for once I wasn’t the fastest car on the highway. A bunch of crazy CT drivers passed me at what must’ve been 95-100mph.
I’d say overall this trip was pretty cool. I really only have a few more (non National Park) things to do in northern New York near Canada, also some stuff in Long Island and in NYC. I hope you enjoyed this short post! See you next time!
Trip Stats
- Estimated Trip Milage: 1112mi
- Actual Trip Milage: 1098mi
- Henry’s official opinion on Niagara Falls: It’s lame!
- Best souvenir: Buffalo Bills suit tie
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