since Great Falls is only about 10 miles from Reston we decided to try it again. It is a really wonderful restaurant, Alsatian in style, but they serve too much food. We actually couldn't finish our meal.
We then proceeded to Hornell, where we visited Kathy's sister Susan and her husband Walt. We also got a chance to see their grandchildren Lia, Ava and Sam, children of Walt and Susan's son Walter and his wife Kelley, from who he is separated unfortunately. Also, Toni Argentieri, Walt and Susan's daughter, was there, for her 30th high-school reunion, and we got a chance to hang out with her.
After visiting in Hornell we spent a couple of days checking out the Finger Lake wine district. We spent one night in Canandaigua, having lunch at the famlous resort Geneva on the Lake and having dinner at the New York Wine and Culinary Institute, a truly exceptional experience. I can recommend it to anyone who gets to that area.
Our first pictures are from the Air and Space Museum. First is a view from the balcony. As you can see they have planes of all types and all vintages hanging from the ceiling. (The one to the right is a WWI trainer, the Jenny I think.)
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| The
longish plane below is a reconaissance aircraft that flew at around
80,000 ft. It coule see far into a country from outside its borders. To the right is an early plane. | |
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| Right below Air France Concorde. I flew it from Paris to New York. Kathy and I also flew the BA Concorde between London and New York five times. | |
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Paul Tibbets, named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. (Imagine!) Three days later a different plane dropped a
plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. We were overwhelmed by the huge size of this plane.
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| Another view o f Enola Gay. To the right a trimotor, used by Hitler during WWII. | |
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| Below views of a space shuttle. I had no idea how huge it was, or the size of its engines! | |
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| There were also Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space capsules on display. The balloons provide flotation after a landing in the sea. | |
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| They
also had a numnber of simulatos. I rode in the space shuttle simulator,
and rode to the Space Station and back. It was plenty realistic! The picture to the right below shows the simulator in action. Below you see me exiting the simulator, and next to taht a plane flown in the 30's by Wiley Post, a famous aviator who was killed, along with his passenger Will Rogers. I was in first grade at the tikme, but I still remember the consternation the crash caause,d, as both men were very popular with the general public. | |
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| From
Reston we drove to Hornell, where we visited Susan and Walt. We spent a
lot of time on the front porch watching the people passsing and hanging out with Susan and Walt's grandchildren (and Kathy's grand nieces and nephew) as well as Susan and Walt's daughter Toni who was down from Rochester for the high-school reunion. The grandchildren are Lia, the older girl, Ava the younger and Sam. We got Va Tech shirts for all the kids: | |
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Toni appears in some of the following pictures:
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| Here are some pix of Susan, Walt and Kathy: | |
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To the right Sam appears with Walt. He came late, as his mother had taken him fishing.
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| We visited several graveyards. First, the one in Hornell where Gramma Kay, Kathy's mother. and her great-grandparents the Wallaces are buried. As you can deduce from then inscriptions, Kathy's great-grandmother's maiden name was WIlliamson. | |
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| Then we drove to Greenwood, about 20 miles away, to visit the graves of Gramma Kay's parents, the Costons and her grandparents, Kathy's great-grandparents. The maided name of Kathy's great grand-mother on this side of the family was Williamson; there are actually a number of Williamsons buried in this cemetery. | |
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| On a nice, bright Sunday we did some touring. First we visited the National Cemetery in Bath, where
veterans are buried. It was a beautiful, inspiring sight, as much so as
Arlington National Cemetery near D.C. The last picture in this group of
four is of the "living sign" in Canisteo, a group of trees planted on
the hillside above the high school spelling out the name of the town. | |
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| We also went by Loon Lake near Hornell, where Kathy had spent many happy days and hours as a child and a teen-ager. (One of her aunts had a cottage on the lake.) It hadn't changed a lot, she said, except the place where they used to go and drink beer and hangout seemed to be in disrepair. It wasn't clear that it was even still open: | |
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| Just outsude Hammondsport, a major wine town on nearby Keuka Lake, we stopped to visit the Glenn Curtis Museum. Glenn Curtis was one of the pioneers of aviation, along with the Wright brothers, and built some of the earliest airplanes, including the Jenny shown above from the Dulles Air and Space Museum. In 1929 the two competitors merged to form the Curtis-Wright corporation which manufactured a number of famous airplanes including the WW II fighter, the P40, which is best known as the airplane of the Fighting Tigers who fought defending China against the Japanese, under Gen. Claire Chennault. This squadron became famous for its bravery and daring, and brilliant flying skilles. Another Curtis-Wright product was the twin-engine C46 which most of the flying "over the hump" in WWII. "The hump" is what the Allied pilots called the eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains which they had to cross in flying from India to China, with supplies for the Allied forces there fighting the Japanese. The Curtis-Wright coprporation is still in business, althoght it no longer makes aircraft. The musem contains aircraft, automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles (a Curtis invention), a collection of Civil War photographs and much, much more. It is well worth a lengthy visit. Some pictures. The first is a so-called "horseless carriage." The first attempt at making automobiles was to convert a horse carriage by attaching a small engine. The second is a Buick convertible from the 1930's, beautifully restored, | |
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| To the left below is a Model T Ford from about 1920. To the right the plane (possibly a replica) with which Curtis won a cash prize from Scientific American for a flight of over 1 km. This happened around 1911. | |
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| Two more early planes, one a seaplane. Note the construction, deliberately chosen to make the aircraft as light as possible. | |
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| Here
is Kathy beside an old Buick. To her right, Bully Hill , one of
the famous vineyards on Keuka Lake, that we visited after leaving the Curtis Museum: | |
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| Below, a view of the Lake and some vines. If you look closely you can see the grapes on them, which are of course a long way from maturity in June. | |
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| The next day, the last of our vacation, we headed to Canandaigua and Geneva. We had lunch at the lovely Geneva on the Lake. The last two pictures were taken there. Beautiful gardens! | |
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