Well, after two weeks back in the retirement village in New Jersey I was starting to feel a little stir crazy again. And with the Memorial Day weekend over, it's safe to hit the road again. Wooohooo! For this road trip I decided on central and western New York, a region I’ve driven through several times on the way to someplace else like Canada or Niagara Falls but of which I have explored very little. I took a short foray to the Finger Lakes, Ithaca, Corning, and Watkins Glen with my parents in 2003, but somehow have missed most of the region in my travels from New York and New Jersey. And it seems like there’s quite a bit to see and do in the region ranging from museum and historical sites to natural areas with canyons and waterfalls, as well as the Finger Lakes and its wineries and artisanal food producers.

I headed northwest on Route 17 as heavy traffic was returning in the opposite direction to the New York City area from the Catskills . What good fortune I have to be able to travel at times other than when everyone else is traveling. The last time I was on this stretch of road was actually on my first family road trip to Niagara Falls and Canada in 1977. To a 10 year old who had never seen mountains before, the Catskills the seemed amazingly majestic. Nowadays I’d barely call the Catskills in Sullivan and Delaware counties hills let alone mountains. I stopped for the night for dinner and car camping in Oneonta, the largest town in rural Otsego County that has a branch of the state university system as well as an attractive downtown Main Street that was nearly deserted now that school is out for the summer.

Even more than other places in rural parts of the northeastern U.S., Otsego County, New York feels like a place left back in time half a century. It’s one of those places with a declining population that fits well into its existing housing and infrastructure which means almost nothing new has been built. It’s a place of small towns with quaint Main Streets and countryside with dairy farms with red barns and tall silos that looks almost exactly like the scenery I remember on family trips to the Hudson Valley when I was a kid in the 1970s . It’s kind of nice!

Cooperstown is Otsego County’s seat, a small burg of fewer than 2,000 people at the southern end of Lake Otsego. Situated at 1,200 feet altitude, quite high by northeastern standards, the lakeside location and cooler summer temps make it a popular resort even beyond its most famous attraction. But that doesn’t mean lots of chain lodging and restaurants lining the roads on its outskirts. The town center is full of Victorian homes that have been converted into B&B inns.

Cooperstown is sort of Baseball Town, USA as home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The town got chosen for the honor because at some later point in time it was decided that the first modern baseball game was played in Cooperstown according to rules laid out by Abner Doubleday. That’s not exactly accurate historically since baseball was played earlier by the same rules, the Cooperstown has taken the honor and run with it and calls the field where the official first game was played Doubleday Field . I’m not really much of a baseball fan, but I do like historical museums. And baseball is a part of history and current events I could not have avoided hearing about all my life even if I had tried, so I have a reasonable familiarity with the big names and events in baseball, much more so that other major sports. I actually found the museum to be reasonably interesting for a few hours. I don’t really care much about the autographed this or that or the jersey or cleats a player was wearing when he accomplished some great feat, but baseball is truly an important part of American cultural history.

There’s actually quite a lot to see and do in Cooperstown beyond the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I don’t just mean the baseball-oriented tourist traps like wax museums that have grown up around it. One of those is the Farmers Museum, a working village with heirloom animal breeds and old farm buildings from various parts of the state. And then there’s the Fennimore Museum of Art on a slope overlooking the lake a few miles north of town . I had not heard much about it, so it quite exceeded my expectations with many art works from the region, folk art, and display of American Indian art and artifacts.

Cooperstown is named after James Fenimore Cooper, author of "The Last of the Mohegans" and the series of books known as Leatherstocking, who is considered the first great American writer. The region is so thoroughly associated with Cooper than Otsego County and adjacent parts of surrounding counties are known as the Leatherstocking District after his books which were set in the area. Hmmm, I think I could live here! Well, maybe I could live here on a perfectly day like the one on which I visited, but I might feel differently about it in cold gray November or March.

And Cooperstown is a booze lover’s paradise as well, with a beverage trail including several breweries, several wineries, a distillery, and a cidery. The real attractions among them are two breweries. Cooperstown Brewery is famous for its baseball-named beers that are supposed to be top quality among microbrews. The second is Ommegang, a specialist in Belgian-style beers and rival to Colorado’s New Belgium Brewery. Ommegang has now been owned for over a decade by Duvel, a larger brewing company from the Belgian motherland. It’s apparently quite the party place as well on some summer weekends with music festivals and a big beer festival in August. Supposedly you can set up your tent in the field beyond the brewery for an almost Woodstock like hippie weekend of camping, music, booze, …..and other stuff. It sounds like a great drunkfest! I went on the brewery tour and did the tastings. The tasting cost $5, but at Ommegang you get real pours of at least six mostly strong beers that add up to having had at the equivalent of at least a full beer, a pleasant contrast to snootier winery tastings where you get only the tiniest of sips. Ommegang also has a vaguely Belgian menu available including mussels I settled for a burger, though.