Beginning of Summer 2019 Adventure

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Monday, 15 July

After over 5 weeks of rest from golf courses and other adventuring, Sprinty was more than ready to get out adventuring again.  So were Kris and Darrell - partly to get more variety on golf options.  After all, Sprinty uses golf as the incentive to get Darrell and a Kris our and about.  😀

June was a wet and rainy month (as was the month of May) in Western Maryland, so we played the only course that drains half decently, Thousand Acres, all but once.  It is a nine-hole track that is convenient, and in great shape for as wet as it has been.   However, after over 31 rounds this year, we were hankering for some variety.

Our sailing season ended a week ago with the Firecracker Regatta (which we placed 3rd in), and last week was spent putting the summer toys away, like the Flying Scot sailboat and our powerboat.  With both of them in winter storage, we turned to getting Sprinty packed up.

With our many travels, we have a lot of stuff that just stays in Sprinty, so we are partly packed all the time.  Of course, we still have to make sure to pack the essentials:

Sprinty was on the road just before 8am, and meandered northeast to Everett, PA for Kris and Darrell to play a different golf course.  The Down River Golf Course was a nice track, family owned and operated.  We both hit nice tee shots on the first hole.  Darrell was able to convert his to a par.  On the next par 3, Darrell made birdie, and was up by 4 strokes.  At the turn, he was ahead despite finding the out of bounds on the sixth hole.  Kris upped her game on the back, and we were tied for the back nine score on the 18th tee.  Darrell made a birdie to have honors for the first time in a week.

We finished the round in under three hours, leaving us some time for stops.  After golf, we headed north on I-99 to State College, PA for Starbucks.  We took advantage of city’s retail shops by also getting haircuts (got to love Great Clips) and grocery shopping.

Darrell had done his usual Option A, B and C for places to stay for the night.  Since we got done with golf sooner than expected, he made up an Option D, then later called an audible to select Hills Creek State Park near Wellsboro, PA.  In part to position us for a possible early tee time tomorrow to try and play golf before the afternoon thunderstorms arrive.

We picked an electrical site so we could exercise Sprinty’s new air conditioner.  As our previous early test indicated, it is colder and quieter than the original one, and it worked very well.  It moves cold air towards the front of Sprinty better, and is quiet enough to be worth running.  Although the low temperature was forecast to get into the mid-60s, we ran the air conditioner anyway to see how well it performed for a whole night.  And we enjoyed the dehumidified air as well.

Tuesday, 16 July

Looking at the golf options last night, we were faced with a weather forecast indicating thunderstorms starting at 12:15pm.  In nearby Wellsboro, PA, the earliest tee time available was 9:30am, and the tee time sheet indicated they were going to be quite busy, making finishing by 12:15pm unlikely.  We decided to play at Twin Hickory Golf Club located in Hornet, NY, about an hour and 15 minutes away.  It was less than half the price, so less sting if we got rained out.

We arrived about 9am, and lacking a practice range, they offered for us to tee off right away.  The men’s league was going off at 10am, so getting out before them was appealing.  We did manage to chip and putt for about 10 minutes.

Both of us pushed our first tee shots right, which we naturally attributed to the lack of range practice.  We were happy to each make bogey.  Our scores remained close through the first nine holes, with Darrell up by one stroke at the turn.  Kris was absolutely bombing her tee shots, including a stretch of three consecutive tee shots over 170 yards.  And closer to the center of the fairway than Darrell was able to do.

On the back nine, we went back and forth again until Kris made birdie on the 15th, and she rode that to taking the day by 2 strokes.

We enjoyed the course although it was a hilly course with lots of elevation to deal with.  On one hole, Darrell hit a 5-wood uphill to the left side of the fairway that had a sharp dogleg near the green for a short 250 yard par 4.  The ball kicked right and rolled down the fairway coming to rest about 10 feet from the front edge of the green.   A 244 yard drive!

Despite bumping into a 5-some on the back nine, we still finished our golf round in under three hours.  More importantly, we finished before the thunderstorms arrived.  With more of the afternoon available than originally planned, we headed north to LeRoy, NY, home of the Jell-O Museum.  The Jell-O museum was established during the hundredth anniversary of Jell-O in the summer of 1997.  A rather small museum with various artifacts form Jell-O’s history.

Jell-O had a similar beginning as Coco-Cola and McDonalds.  Someone came up with the product but was not able to make it a commercial success.  They then sold the rights to someone who mastered the marketing and advertising.  And the rest is history.

The museum had a number of trivia about Jell-O - the one we thought was the most interesting was that a bowl of Jell-O gelatin and the human brain have the same brain waves on an EEG.

In the lower level of the museum is a transportation display, with the newest vehicle being a 1908 Cadillac.  It included several horse drawn carriages and sleighs mostly from carriage makers in LeRoy, NY.

We learned the purpose of sleigh bells - to announce an oncoming sleigh.  

Upon finishing the museum, Darrell checked the Offbeat Attractions app and found that LeRoy, NY also had a human-sized Statue of Liberty a block away.  We just could not bear to leave LeRoy, NY without checking it out.

We then headed for Letchworth State Park where we were staying for the next two nights.  Along the way, the forecasted thunderstorms made their arrival.

Letchworth State Park is known at the “Grand Canyon of the East.”  The park is 17 miles long along the scenic Genesee River. The steep Genesee Gorge Walls, the river winding below, the plunge and spray of dramatic waterfalls and lush forest all contribute to make the park one of the most notable examples of waterfall and gorge scenery in the eastern United States.

After getting checked in and checking out our campsite, we decided to visit one of the Visitors Centers.  As we departed the campground, the skies opened up again.  We continued heading to the Visitor Center near the falls in the hopes that the forecast of “scattered thunderstorms” meant it would be short lived.  By the time we got to the Visitor Center, the rain had diminished to a light drizzle.

With rain forecast for the next two hours (according to the Accuweather app), we decided to just do a short hike to the Lower Falls, and save the longer hikes for better weather.  The hike down to the Lower Falls was worth it.  And Accuweather’s forecast of impending rain turned out to be pleasantly wrong.  Maybe because Darrell lugged the umbrella for the whole hike.

As we made our way back to the campground, we stopped at most of the scenic pullouts and took in different views of the canyon.  Kris even remarked that she thought the canyon was better than the one at Palo Duro State Park near Amarillo, TX.