I had a three-day weekend coming up and four unvisited counties in western New York staring me in the face. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are, but how could I sell it to the family?
County Counting
It’s getting more difficult to reach those unvisited counties to add them to my County Counting map. Now it takes a good six hours to reach those empty pockets. Then, as a reward the goalposts move even farther away from home with each new set! Anyway I set my sights on Lake Ontario and billed it as a visit to Niagara Falls. A thousand miles in three days? Yes, that seemed doable. I could push my count up to 1,579 or about 50.2% of counties in the United States.
National Warplane Museum
My usual county counting buddy (my older son) is away at college so he wasn’t available. Unfortunately, my younger son doesn’t much enjoy road trips. I had to find a new set of bribes and motivations to get him engaged. Actually, he didn’t have a choice — he was going along regardless — but I didn’t want to have an unhappy passenger for three days either.
He happens to love military museums and vintage airplanes and I saw something attractive along the way. A small jiggling of the route would take us past the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, New York (map). It specialized in warplanes from conflicts during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. So that became our first target on the drive up.
We arrived just after lunch on a Saturday, which meshed nicely with activities happening there that day. A swarm of volunteers had removed all of the airplanes from the expansive hangar and parked them along the turf runway. They were working on the equipment and in some cases firing up engines. They also let us climb into a couple of planes. My son really loved this visit so score a point for dad!
Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse
Then we headed another forty-five minutes up the road into Rochester. It was still early enough in the day to tour the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse. That’s not as easy as one might imagine. Well, it’s easy to visit the grounds because there’s no fence or anything stopping anyone. However, the keeper’s quarters and the tower open only three afternoons per week during the summer and early fall. And it’s really just a half-visit if you can’t climb the tower. So I felt pretty good about this one as I added it to my lighthouse visit list.
We got a tour of the quarters and the tower from a couple of nice volunteers. Just as we climbed the tower, the skies opened up and it poured rain. Then it stopped just as quickly once we were ready to leave. Usually my luck works in the opposite direction so I was happy to stay dry for once.
The octagonal tower dated to 1822, guiding a path into the Genesee River from Lake Ontario (map). This marked the entrance to the port of Rochester. The tower wasn’t particularly tall, just 40 feet, but it sat atop a bluff so it had a much higher focal plane. Nonetheless, authorities replaced it with a light at the end of a nearby pier in the 1880’s. More than a century later it went back into service again, in 2014! That must be some kind of record.
The Jog
Then it came time to focus on the real objective of the day, filling a true doughnut hole on my county list. It required minimal effort, actually. We left the lighthouse and simply drove about fifteen minutes due east of Rochester. I crossed into Wayne County, made a U-turn at the first available opportunity, and we went on our way. Maybe I spent five minutes in Wayne; we did have to wait at a stoplight so that added a minute or two. After that we returned to Rochester and checked-in at our hotel. Kind of anticlimactic actually, but it still counted.
Irondequoit Beer Company
Dinnertime came soon enough and I knew just where to go. I conducted some research ahead of time and of course I focused on brewpubs. After all, I had yet another list I wanted to grow, my brewery visits.
This time I had very specific criteria in mind. Hopefully this will be the last series of articles where I ever have to mention the COVID pandemic. Nonetheless I still have concerns so I wanted a place with plenty of outdoor seating. The led to Irondequoit Beer Company where they converted a big section of their parking lot into a patio. By total luck, we also arrived during their 2nd anniversary party so that was nice bonus.
Just don’t ask me to pronounce Irondequoit. Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway it’s a suburb of Rochester just to the northeast of the city (map). Supposedly it’s an Iroquois word meaning “where the land meets the water.” Sounds good to me.
I’d call Day #1 a success. A new county, a new overnight county, a new lighthouse and a new brewery. That’s quite a haul.
Articles in the Niagara Weekend Series
See Also: The Complete Photo Album on Flickr.
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