When I mentioned to people that I was going to Upstate New York, the response was, "Oh, the Finger Lakes!" Except for the Catskills and the Adirondacks, the Finger Lakes is probably New York State's best known resort area. Although I was all around the Finger Lakes region, I really didn’t spend much time on or at the lakes themselves. The natural history of the lakes is that they formed in depressions gouged out by glaciers moving from north to south and extend from the flat plains of the Great Lakes lowlands south of Lake Ontario well into the hills of the Allegheny Plateau, so their landscape becomes more dramatic and mountainous at their southern ends. The landscape is a bucolic one without any major cities and a pleasant mix of farmland, forest, and rolling hills leading down towards the long narrow lakes. Vacations here revolve around boating and other activities on the lakes but also wine tasting and gourmet dining since there are so many small artisanal food producers in the region.

How many Finger Lakes are there? Well, that’s debatable . When I was a kid I learned from my dad that there were five Finger Lakes and they were called that because that’s the number of fingers on a hand. I think he meant only the longer ones – Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Canandaigua, and Skaneateles. Or maybe one of those was Keuka. My father’s Uncle Tracy in Rhinebeck, though, insisted there were 14 Finger Lakes. He seemed very authoritative as an ancient newspaper reporter who lived upstate, but “How can that be? Hands have only ten fingers in total” I wondered. I believe the term applies to all the lakes with a similar geologic history, including the smaller ones as far east as Lake Otsego by Cooperstown.

Everything in the Finger Lakes region seems to be pretty much on a small scale – small towns, small farms, small wineries, small inns and motels. Like elsewhere in rural Upstate New York there’s very little newish looking in the countryside, and many places still have somewhat of a left-back-in-time feel to them. One thing is seriously different than it used to be when I was young and first past by Seneca Lake on a family trip to Canada, though . Forty years back in time there wasn’t much of a wine industry in the Finger Lakes region, the one thriving industry having been effectively wiped out by Prohibition in the 1920s. Nowadays, however, there are well over 100 wineries around the lakes with many of the vineyards extending right down to the shores of the lakes.

I visited several wineries along Cayuga Lake including Lucas Winery which claims to have been the first post-prohibition winery founded on what is now called the Cayuga Lake wine trail. Upstate New York’s cold winters and relatively short growing season favor white wine grapes that are associated mostly with Germany and Alsace, grapes like Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Seyval Blanc. Other whites and many red varietals are grown too, but those are considered the specialties. I tend to drink more reds and Chardonnays or Pinot Grigios but have to admit I enjoyed the ones I sampled enough to buy a few for the road.

I honestly couldn’t build a vacation around visiting wineries and tasting wines the way some people do . After two or three wineries and tastings I get bored of forking over a few dollars everywhere for a few paltry sips while having to endure the pourer’s spiel. I always find myself thinking, “Just shut up and pour!” The wines at small wineries are usually significantly higher priced that what I’m willing to pay anyway, so I’m not inclined to do much shopping. And the wine tasting experience always feels quite pretentious. I found the tasting experience to be much more fun at Ommegang Brewery a few days before with a fun young dude doing the pouring and the beer samples in decent portions that amounted to at least a full beer in total.

I love the names given to many of the towns in central and western New York. While in the New England states almost all the towns are named after places in England, in Upstate New York many of the towns were settled in the early years of the American republic and were given names associated with ancient Greek democracy or the Roman Republic. There’s Greece, Rome, Utica, Syracuse, Attica, Ovid, Scipio, Romulus, Marcellus, Macedon, Mycenae, Albany, and Cairo to name but a few .

One of the few relatively few National Park System units in Upstate New York is the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. “What the heck is that?” I wondered, having not heard about it before planning this trip. Well, Seneca Falls was the location of the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 and the region was the home of several of the early campaigners for Women’s Rights including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Mary Ann McClintock. Several sites associated with the movement are scattered around town and in neighboring Waterloo, including the homes of the Women’s Rights campaigners, the Wesleyan Chapel where the first convention was held, and an interesting museum on the movement. I knew the name Susan B. Anthony and her involvement with the Women’s Suffrage movement but knew very little about the broader women’s rights movement before the women’s lib days of the 1960s. I guess I’m old enough that I learned most of my history before it was determined to be important to include something about the women’s rights movement in high school history classes.