Our post-race travel included a visit to the Watkin’s Glen State Park and a stop at the Finger Lakes Distillery. I highly recommend both, particularly the cherry liquor at the distillery. (liquid cherry pie filling – honestly!) We stayed at a B&B in Geneva for the next two nights. Serious mistake. B&B’s are always chancy – so much of the experience depends upon the host and the other guests. Plus the typical B&B decor is antique tacky at best. What I hadn’t accounted for was the abnormally hot weather and the lack of central A/C in an old, historic home. Yep, our room had a temporary A/C unit in it that barely managed to keep the temp under 80 degrees most of the night. The main areas of the house, including the dining room where breakfast was served, had no A/C at all. So after finishing a 9 AM breakfast we were pretty much ready for another shower.
Since the temperature and my heat rash didn’t really lend itself to more time in the sun, we spent the day driving to a number of wineries in the area and moving from the car to the tasting rooms as quickly as possible. We got a little crazy buying wine (ending up with about a case). In theory this wasn’t a problem since we had a car and would eventually be driving home. However, our trip involved a flight detour to Phoenix via Buffalo and the car would be sitting in a parking lot for 6 days. In the 90 degree heat. This would pretty much ensure that the wine was undrinkable by the time we got home. So on the way to Buffalo, after our second night in the sauna suite, we made a stop at a UPS store. $90 later and our wine was on the way home. (For those of you who can’t bear the suspense, it arrived safely at my mom’s house where she was kind enough to look after it until we returned)
Whew! After one night at a blissfully cool hotel next to the Buffalo airport, we were bound for Phoenix.
