1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (31 page)

Kids gravitate to the Glass Innovation Center, three pavilions that explore the fascinating nexus of glass and science through exhibits like a 200-inch telescope, a walk-on glass floor that illustrates the story of strengthened glass in the 20th century, and a tower made of casserole dishes telling about the lucky accident that made the famed oven-proof dishes possible.

Glassblowing demonstrations go on all day as master glassworkers take gobs of hot molten glass and transform them into beautiful bowls and vases on a stage floating above the Steuben factory floor. Steuben glass—everything from miniature animals to large ornamental pieces—commands high prices because each piece, entirely handmade, is considered a unique work of art.

To experience the thrill of glassmaking yourself, don a pair of safety glasses at Walk-in Workshops and make your own glass flowers, paperweights, or Christmas ornaments. The Studio, one of the finest glassmaking schools in the world, also offers classes taught by master glassmakers and artists and ranging from one-day workshops for families to two-week intensives.

The Sculpture Gallery presents large works of contemporary art in glass and mixed media from the late 1960s to the present, including artists like Dale Chihuly (see p. 903). Finally in the GlassMarket, you can purchase glass objects ranging from trinkets to masterworks.

W
HERE
: 74 miles west of Binghamton; 1 Museum Way. Tel 800-732-6845 or 607-937-5371;
www.cmog.org
.

A Slow Float Through History

New York

The magic of piloting your own canal boat on the Erie Canal means moving at a 19th-century pace—6 miles per hour, to be precise. Opened in 1825, the Erie Canal was a 363-mile engineering marvel with 83 locks
connecting Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to Albany on the Hudson River. The brainchild of Govenor DeWitt Clinton, the canal was initially derided as “Clinton’s Ditch,” but once built, it spurred unprecedented economic development in both the Great Lakes region and New York City, and along its entire length.

The mules (immortalized in song “I’ve got a mule, her name is Sal”) that once pulled barges are gone, but the canal and 34 locks are still there, intersecting with three lateral canals—the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca. Today, pleasure boats, tour boats, cruise ships, canoes, and kayaks ply their waters.

When the Erie Canal was first completed, it had 83 locks, each 90 by 15 feet.

Mid-Lakes Navigation—a family-owned company that has been running cruises since the 1960s and began making its own European-style canal boats in the 1980s—runs a popular three-day cruise. Up to 42 people sightsee by boat during the day, eat on board, and sleep on land at hotels.

But the most adventuresome way to experience the canal is to captain your own rented boat for a week, piloting it through locks where the water level is raised or lowered before you enter the next section of canal. Powered by a 50-hp diesel engine, canal boats float calmly past fields and woodlands and 19th-century towns with museums and shops
to explore. The mirror-still waters reflect bridges and farmhouses, as herons fly overhead and kids wave from small-town landings.

You can hike and bike along most of the old towpaths where mules once hauled the barges. Whether by foot or by car, the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway follows both the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River from Schenectady to Waterford (north of Albany). The Erie-Champlain Boat Company in Waterford rents out European-style canal boats for explorations of the eastern stretch of the Erie Canal (from Waterford to Oneida Lake) and the Champlain Canal north to Lake Champlain.

C
ANAL
I
NFO:
Tel 800-422-6254 or 518-436-2700;
www.canals.state.ny.us
.
M
IDLAKES
N
AVIGATION:
Macedon Landing. Tel 800-545-4318 or 315-685-8500;
www.midlakesnav.com
.
Cost:
$598 per person, double occupancy, for 3-day cruise, includes meals and hotels; charters from $2,100 a week.
When:
June–Oct for cruises, May–Oct for charters.
M
OHAWK
T
OWPATH
S
CENIC
B
YWAY:
Tel 518-383-8565;
www.mohawktowpath.homestead.com
.
E
RIE
-C
HAMPLAIN
B
OAT
C
OMPANY:
Waterford. Tel 518-432-6094;
www.eccboating.com
.
Cost:
from $380 a day.
When:
May–Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: June–July; Sept–Oct for foliage.

World-Class Wines and Small-Town Americana

New York

The Iroquois attributed these long, relatively narrow lakes to the Great Spirit, who laid his hands in blessing on this particularly beautiful area of upstate New York. Unless the Great Spirit had eleven fingers
, though, it’s more likely that glacier activity carved them out eons ago. Most are deep—Cayuga and Seneca, the two largest, are 400 and 632 feet deep respectively and about 37 miles long and framed by steeply sloping banks. The parallel lakes cover an area no more than 100 miles across in a bucolic region where farm stands still work on the honor system, and the sleepy Main Streets of 19th-century towns like Geneva, Skaneateles, and Hammondsport invite strolling and antique-hunting.

The American women’s rights movement was born in Seneca Falls on July 19, 1848. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a local mother of three, organized the first Women’s Rights Convention (whose Declaration of Sentiments declared that “all men and women are created equal”); today the town’s Women’s Rights National Historic Park includes Stanton’s house. A whiff of the region’s countercultural tendencies can be found in Ithaca, home to Ithaca College and Cornell University on Cayuga Lake. Boats crisscross the lakes, and you can jump aboard the 48-foot postal boat that services Skaneateles Lake, one of the country’s last water routes for mail delivery.

With soil and topography that mimic the best of the German winegrowing districts, the Finger Lakes “boutique” vineyards—today numbering more than 100—are recognized as some of the country’s best, especially for their Rieslings and chardonnays. Six wine trails lead visitors to wineries and picnic areas with spectacular lake views, but the most heavily traveled is Keuka, considered by many to be the prettiest of the lakes. Keuka
Wine Trail includes the pioneering Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Vinifera Wine Cellars, outside Hammondsport, and nearby Pleasant Valley Wine Company, whose eight historic stone buildings and lavish visitor center add up to one of the best tours in the region. Taste with abandon on the Wine Tour Trolley of Seneca Lake, a seven-hour romp leaving from Geneva, with five stops including Standing Stone, one of the region’s best wineries, and let the trolley’s designated driver get you back to your lodgings.

The Finger Lakes area is New York’s largest wine-producing region.

Seneca Lake is the location of Geneva on the Lake, a 1910 hotel inspired by a rural Roman villa with a beautiful expanse of parterre garden leading to the lakeside pool. At ice blue Skaneateles Lake—the highest of the Finger Lakes and among the cleanest in the country—the Mirbeau Inn and Spa is a Francophile’s dream of mud wraps and Vichy-water scrubs, with an exceptional restaurant and lily ponds straight out of a Monet painting.

Along Cayuga Lake Scenic Byway, which rings the lake, lies Aurora, a postcard-perfect town of 650 that is experiencing a multimillion-dollar renaissance thanks to Pleasant Rowland, creator of the line of American Girl dolls. In partnership with local Wells College, her alma mater, Rowland purchased MacKenzie-Childs, which makes wildly fanciful majolica dinnerware and whimsical furniture on a nearby 75-acre former dairy farm. The unusually fine 15-room Victorian farmhouse made over as a MacKenzie-Childs showcase is open for tours. Rowland also restored the Aurora Inn, a redbrick Federal-style inn from 1833. Standing center stage on Main Street, its ten luxurious guest rooms and suites are perfectly appointed, and its restaurant dishes up American classics like a mouthwatering pot roast.

W
HERE
: 20 miles southwest of Syracuse.
Visitor info:
Tel 800-530-7488 or 315-536-7488;
www.fingerlakes.org
.
W
OMEN’S
R
IGHTS
P
ARK:
Tel 315-568-2991;
www.nps.gov/wori
.
When:
Mar–mid-Dec.
F
INGER
L
AKES
W
INE
C
OUNTRY:
Tel 800-596-9322 or 607-936-0706;
www.fingerlakeswinecountry.com
.
D
R.
F
RANK’S
W
INE
C
ELLARS:
Hammondsport. Tel 800-320-0735 or 607-868-4884;
www.drfrankwines.com
.
P
LEASANT
V
ALLEY
W
INE
C
OMPANY:
Hammondsport. Tel 607-569-6111:
www.pleasantvalleywine.com
.
When:
daily, Apr–Dec; closed Sun–Mon, Jan–Mar.
S
ENECA
L
AKE
W
INE
T
OUR
T
ROLLEY:
Tel 315-521-0223;
www.winetourtrolley.com
.
Cost:
from $45.
When:
Sat, June–Nov.
G
ENEVA ON THE
L
AKE
R
ESORT:
Geneva. Tel 800-343-6382 or 315-789-7190;
www.genevaonthelake.com
.
Cost:
from $190 (off-peak), from $317 (peak); dinner $60.
M
IRBEAU
I
NN AND
S
PA:
Skaneateles. Tel 877-647-2328 or 315-685-1927;
www.mirbeau.com
.
Cost:
from $160 (off-peak), from $225 (peak); dinner $75.
C
AYUGA
L
AKE
B
YWAY:
www.byways.org
.
M
ACKENZIE
-C
HILDS:
Aurora. Tel 888-665-1999 or 315-364-7123;
www.mackenzie-childs.com
.
A
URORA
I
NN:
Tel 866-364-8808 or 315-364-8888;
www.aurora-inn.com
.
Cost:
from $125 (off-peak), from $225 (peak); dinner $40.
B
EST TIMES
: late July for Finger Lakes Wine Festival in Watkins Glen (
www.flwinefest.com
); last weekend of July for Antique Boat Show in Skaneateles (
www.skaneateles.com/boatshow.html
); early Aug for NASCAR in Watkins Glen.

Where “America the Beautiful” Began

New York

In 1609, Dutch explorer Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name, looking for passage to the Orient’s riches. He didn’t find it, but he did uncover one of the most scenic waterways in the world. Two hundred years
later, Robert Fulton first launched the steamboat on its waters in 1807, and as the centuries rolled by, the Hudson exerted such a profound effect on American history, art, literature and environmental policies that Bill Moyers dubbed it “America’s First River.”

It begins as a tiny brook spilling out of Lake Tear of the Clouds, 4,322 feet up in the Adirondack Mountains (see p. 140), flowing 315 miles down to New York City, but it’s not until the Hudson meets the Mohawk River at Waterford just north of Albany that it becomes the mighty waterway that helped link New York City to the west via the Erie Canal (see p. 148), opening up the Great Lakes states to America’s first westward expansion. This stretch between Waterford and Yonkers has been deemed such an important cultural and recreational resource that a 4-million-acre area with 90 significant sites on either side of the river has been designated a National Heritage Area by the federal government.