Finger Lakes or Bust!

Megan graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges back in May 2010. Due to her busy work schedule and family events, she hasn't really been able to return to the campus or Finger Lakes region since! That all changed when she received a Facebook message for a mini-reunion to take place the weekend of July 23 - Megan requested the Saturday off of work right away!

Friday evening, Megan and I departed from the Battlefield with hopes of reaching the Finger Lakes by 8:30. We would be meeting up with Megan's college friends Lis, Jill, and Katelyn - from what I was told a real fun bunch! After 3 hours on the road, some awesome music, and some bad drivers, we arrived at the Ramada on the lake - let the festivities begin!

Megan's has owned her car for 1 year, it reached exactly 14,000 miles as she pulled in to the parking lot of the Ramada - pretty cool I must say!

First order of business was to order wine ice cream - ice cream that actually has wine in it, and requires proper identification.

Megan had to share her ice cream, she ordered a small, but as you can see one scoop is bigger than my whole head!

We all went to bed early to rest up for a big day of wine touring, only, we never got that early start we were hoping for!

As it had been blazing hot temperatures throughout NY all week, Megan thought this trip would be the most opportune moment to finally make that jump into Seneca Lake. Most graduates of HWS jump in the lake prior to graduation - Megan never did and now was her chance.

As you can see, I'm wearing my life jacket - you can never be too safe near the water!

To do the jump traditionally, you need to jump in from the HWS boathouse - as the girls were all lined up to jump in, campus security came down the hill to find out what we were up to ... after all, we weren't really supposed to be there.  Luckily, Megan had a Hobart shirt with her so security assumed we were all students staying on campus for the summer - we didn't correct him, we were hot and needed to cool down!

Unfortunately, the girls wanted to jump in together, so there is no photographic proof Megan jumped in.  You do have my word, she did it!

After cooling down, we had some time for a photo shoot of myself on the HWS boathouse:

I'm that small black dot in front of the garage door!

Beautiful Seneca Lake in the background

Perched atop the railing

Is it possible to take a bad picture at the lake?

Katelyn had suggested Megan tie me down to the tracks - that would be wrong!

View of the lake from South Main St.

After a refreshing jump in the lake for the girls, we decided it was time to find something to eat before embarking on the wine tour.  We decided on the Captain's Room, food ended up being pretty delicious!

The design inside the restaurant - can you name all the Captains? We couldn't!

When Megan told her parents she was going out to school for a mini reunion and wine tour, their immediate reaction was to give her money for their own wine!  So as you can see, wine tours are important, and the girls were on a mission to drive around the entire lake - due to our really late start, this was not possible, but we still had a lot of fun!

First stop, Fox Run Vineyards!

Megan and Katelyn posed me for this photo, I did not drink any wine on this trip - not old enough yet!  After posing me for this photo, Katelyn decided she wanted to have her own photo with me - we pretty much bonded on this trip:

New BFFs!

Group shot of all the girls!

Jeff, Lis's roommate our senior year, so kindly took on the role as our designated driver and photographer.  He got a lot of special treatment while we went to all the wineries: complimentary foods, and non-alcoholic slushies - as one of the wineries said, if it wasn't for designated drivers, the wineries wouldn't have drunk people to serve to!  Again, many thanks to Jeff for dealing with us all afternoon, hope you enjoy your bottle of wine!

I love pretzels!

As we stopped at Seneca Shore Winery, we saw a sign for the grand opening of a Serenity Vineyards.  The place is perfect for those of you who like dry wines, but they did have one semi-dry Riesling  that was really good - Megan picked up a bottle for her parents to try.  As you can see in the above picture, I am sitting on a table with a lot of writing on it: upon opening the winery, the owner decided it would be nice to have people sign the tables - we made sure to sign our names before we left!

Outside of Anthony Road Winery

Group shot at the final winery of the day, Glenora

The final stop of the day was Glenora, I think this was Megan's favorite since she bought 3 bottles of wine from them! We had great servers, who gave us cheese AND wine! There was even a wedding going on while we were there - they were at the back of the hotel in the lawn, which had a gorgeous view of the lake.

All in all, the day was successful!

Sunday was the last day of the mini-reunion - all good things must come to an end right? The girls went to Water Street Cafe for old times sake - they used to go a lot at school after a good night of partying!

They let me order my own food!

Before parting ways, the girls and I went shopping at the outlet mall in Waterloo. This was a successful trip, but Megan spent enough on wine that she really couldn't do much spending on clothes! I was glad Megan brought me along on this trip: I met new friends, got to see a new part of NY state, and had a lot of fun!

Stay tuned for the next adventure - not sure what it will be yet!