After an early morning rise to close up our summer cottage, we were on the road! Our cross-country road will have stops in Backus, MN to pick up our camper, then down to Boulder, CO to visit Katherine. We hope to continue west to see Matt and Meghna, but it looks like wildfires will scuttle those plans. We’ll keep an eye on that situation and will be ready to go if we can do so safely. If not, there will be another road trip as soon as we can get out there.
It was a beautiful fall day, and an easy drive to Elmira, NY. Our first stop was to visit Mark Twain’s study on the grounds of Elmira College. Being an early Saturday morning, the picturesque campus was almost deserted. The octagonal study, built in 1874, was where much of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court were written. In 1952, the study was moved from its original home to the college campus. Check out this link for more of the history.
Back in the car and on to the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, NY. Many of us grew up with the blue Field Guide to the Birds, written by Peterson. His system for identification was based on grouping similarly shaped birds together and highlighting the differences, making identification easy for amateur birders. This system was then expanded to other animals and plants, resulting in 52 field guides. Not only did Peterson compile these field guides, but he made all of the illustrations by hand. The institute displays many of these original works, as well as an extensive exhibit of bronze bird sculptures by Stefan Savides. We now own a new copy of Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Our binoculars are packed, so we’ll work on a list of bird sightings along the way – I did see a bald eagle as we were driving through NY!
Our final stop was in Chardon, OH to pitch our tent for the night. Until we pick up the camper, we are tent camping. Not being fans of big, crowded campgrounds (and they are crowded these days!), we decided to give Hipcamp a try – it’s like Airbnb for camping. Our first night was at Regenerative Farm Stay. We had a nice tent site in a big hay field, and fired up our Coleman stove for a pot of veggie soup with paneer. We were tired and it was really cold, so we crawled into our sleeping bags early.
