Back to the Finger Lakes, Day One

Decoy Owl, Hampton Inn, Penn Yan

29 September 2016

Summer was too busy, too stressful, and too fleeting for me and Jack to get our act together and go somewhere for vacation. We didn't get around to making plans until Jack started teaching again, and by that time the lakefront bed and breakfasts had no vacancies. After poking around for a bit, we found a hotel with a lake view. I figured we'd be up on the seventh floor with a parking lot and highway between us and the water.

We drove to Penn Yan, New York, on a murky day. When we checked in, we entered a room easily twice the size any bed and breakfast would have given us, with a sofa, table, kitchenette (no stove), and a door leading straight to a patio overlooking the lake: 

Jack, whose laptop had melted down first thing in the morning, immediately opened his computer to finish restoring what had been lost. I grabbed my camera and took a walk along the gravel path next to the lake.

The little dot on the grass near the center of the picture is a decoy owl, of which there are several:

It's not Maine, but it is rocks with algae:

I don't know if I'll be able to achieve the state of zen that I found in Maine, but I do hope I can forget the rest of my life for at least a few minutes.

Hey!  A groundhog! I thought it might be a beaver, but when it turned to run, the tail said otherwise.

There's a dock at the Top of the Lake restaurant next to the hotel. If you zoom way in, you'll see a decoy owl on the piling to the upper left of the front of the boat:

Rocks and cement debris at the water's edge:

Jack eventually got his laptop back into working order, and then mine started acting up. Temporarily unable to blog, I picked up a book and started reading. That was weird.