A Wee Vacation: Part Two

By drawing this out into two posts I’m hoping you kind of feel like you’re traveling along with us. Plus it gives me time to recover from my rest and relaxation enough to come up with some new content for you!

After our day in Niagara we headed south across the border to Cooperstown, which is about four hours away. It’s a beautiful drive on the back roads, especially with the fall colours shining in the sun. The weather was totally amazing the whole time we were there, about 22°C most days, so all the sweaters I packed went unworn.

Cooperstown was founded by American literary great James Fenimore Cooper‘s dad and is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s chock full of beautiful old buildings and colonial houses and everything is pretty as a picture.

Great food can be had here.

It sits on the shores of Otsego Lake, otherwise known as Glimmerglass for its smooth surface and high reflectivity. There’s an opera house and a state park by that name in the neighbourhood.

We stayed at the absolutely delightful Landmark Inn, right downtown in Cooperstown and loved every minute of being pampered by the staff there. The Pie adored all the baseball touches around the place like baseball checkers, a hat from every team in the front hall, and I loved the peanuts and Cracker Jack on offer  on the front hall table. I highly recommend staying there – they even have wheelchair accessible rooms and will make any accommodations they can to any of your dietary restrictions.

Landmark Inn, built 1906

If you’re into baseball memorabilia, then this is your mecca. Every store is full-to-bursting with signed baseball cards, photos, bats … you name it. The Pie and I are much more into picking up locally crafted artisanal items when we travel so we were a little disappointed that there wasn’t more of that in Cooperstown itself (or even a bookstore for the literary travelers), but it was still fun.

One thing we really did appreciate about Cooperstown was that everything was locally made and sourced. All the restaurants served products that were raised locally, or beverages distilled locally (there are a ton of breweries and distilleries around). At the Inn we were treated daily to hot apple cider from the Fly Creek Cider Mill, just a few miles out of town, so we had to go and check it out for ourselves.

The Pie thinks the sign is inaccurate. I think he’s just shrinking in his old age.

We liked it so much we went back again the next day. The place is a giant store of goodies, each one with a little sample plate so you can taste before you buy (booze too). And they had ducks you could feed!

These ones looked like Donald Trump.

This duck looks better than Donald Trump.

We also found an epic antiques place in Milford called Wood Bull, which is a giant barn converted to be a repository of absolutely everything you can think of. I only took the one picture but if you watch the intro video in the link above you’ll get an idea of how insane this place is. It seemed like absolute chaos until you walked around a corner and found a room that had been perfectly curated to contain only tin trucks from the early 20th century, or only Fiestaware. Or a room entirely filled with white objects only.

I almost bought my dad this tin pig but it was a bit pricey for my taste. Plus apparently he already has a tin pig.

So if you’re looking for a relaxing place to putter and appreciate the beautiful scenery, you’ll want to check this little gem out!

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