The vacationers arrived back from Cape Cod on Saturday July 21. They’d had a wonderful week. As is usual for the girls during the summer they had camps booked for most of the remaining time. This summer they were both slated for their first time at sleep over camp. The same camp their Mom attended when she was a girl. We wanted to be there when they went to Camp Stella Maris for the first time. The remainder of Saturday and Sunday morning were spent getting them ready to go. We tagged along Sunday afternoon to see them off. The camp has changed quite a bit since Jessica attended, new buildings for the mess and a bridge across the road and some other modernizations. The cabins were just the same but seemed so much smaller than I remembered. After getting the girls settled into their respective bunks (they were in different sleeping quarters) we bid them good bye. I had a laugh as we were leaving, one of Jessica’s friends told she and Craig to have an nice date week and then realized that “EGads, her parents” were staying with them. LOL we quickly told her we were going camping for the week! Scott and I took a quick trip around Conesus Lake before heading back to Rochester. It has been more than a few years since we lived on the lake. The places we had lived in were either gone altogether or so changed that it was hard to recognize them. The entire day made me a bit nostalgic.
We packed up our borrowed camping gear and headed out to Gilbert Lake for a week on July 23. We had never been to this campground and getting there turned out to be quite the adventure. Using the phone for our directions turned out to be not the best choice. After driving down what seemed to be goat paths we finally did find our way to the park entrance more by chance than anything else as we were out of cell range for parts of it. The campground turned out to be quite lovely and by luck we had a nice site with a somewhat level grass patch large enough to pitch the tent.
The campsites had plenty of room and were not crammed together. Lots of trees and nice facilities that were well maintained made for a pleasant stay. We soon found out if the tent was going to leak as it proceeded to pour our first night there. The tent fought off the rain well and the air mattress proved to be very comfortable. We were snug as bugs and enjoyed our outing. The Lake was small enough to hike around easily and had a small swimming beach with kayak rentals and a concession stand. We were soon back into the swing of tent camping, enjoyed s campfire or two and just being out in nature. This was definitely going to be something we would do again. The campground was close to the village of Cooperstown. You may recognize it as the home to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It also holds a great deal of New York history and was the home of James Fennimore Cooper. We spent a day at the Farmers Museum which I had visited in junior high. The museum is well worth the time to visit. In all it was a great week!
The picture is of our campsite, pretty sweet don't you agree?