Yes, today, Thursday 22nd - I drove quite a long ways through the
Adirondack Mountains today. There was an Adirondacks Museum that is
supposed to be quite good, but it is several buildings and they
suggest allowing three hours to tour it. We don't have that long ...
we want to be in Niagara Falls by tonight. The Adirondacks are still
beautiful just to drive through.
Eventually we got lost in Utica and
stuck in a long line of traffic (miles long) at a construction site.
We're just trying to find the Turnpike. Once we find the pike,
we're only on there one exit when we find an exit for Oneida.
(How do you pronounce it?) I've heard that the original commune is
still here, and they still manufacture the silverware here. We have
two sets at home (Mary's set is American Colonial and mine is
Colonial Boston) but there are a few pieces missing after serving at
too many church functions.
It took us quite a while, including stopping to ask several strangers
on the street for directions, until we found the factory outlet; by the
time we found it we had only 20 minutes left to shop. Both our patterns
are discontinued, but they have been replaced with a newer cheaper
pattern, 1620. But we were able to find a couple "server sets"
in American Colonial, plus a few sugar spoons, replacement spoons,
and repolacement knives in the "bins" at only 75 cents each. We lost
a serving spoon at church, but we bought several in the new 1620
pattern to replace it. All this cost us only about $50; everything
was discounted quite a bit.
Maybe I should look for the discontinued patterns on ebay; although
I've heard they are expensive even there.
Mary likes driving on the freeway, so I let her do the three-hour
leg along the turnpike to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The hotel
manager arranged a tour for us tomorrow ... it starts real early
for us (8:30 am) but it includes four hours on both the American
side and the Canadian side, the island, and several different
falls (shows what I know ... I thought there was only one.)
After the tour tomorrow, we hope to make it up to Toronto where we
will spend Saturday and Sunday. On Monday we'll drive down to
Chicago where we hope to take in a Cubs home game on Monday night
in historic Wrigley Field.
