Bucolic, Simply Bucolic

While our adventures have been many, so too have the hours driving east. Thus, we decided on Tuesday to alter our plans and savor a day of rest at a campground along Lake Erie in Ripley, New York, just a 1/4 mile past the Pennsylvania border. We relished a day without travel. We loved looking out our window and seeing Lake Erie. The morning was bright, sunny and a glorious 75 degrees. Having enjoyed a long walk along a country road bordered by miles of vineyards before lunch, I confess I indulged in the luxury of an afternoon nap.

Wednesday found us mounting up again, so to speak, heading to the Finger Lakes district of New York. After a longer day of driving, an exasperating wrong turn, and navigating through countless winding country roads with little to no signage, we arrived at the Castel Grisch Winery near Watkins Glen late in the afternoon.

Thankfully, wine tasting was still available when we parked our rig. Skip enjoyed the semi-dry flight while I favored the sweeter wines. The hassle of the travel quickly dissipated. Oh the views! We relaxed on the expansive deck of the winery, overlooking Seneca Lake. Quite interestingly, Seneca lake is among the deepest in the US, with its depth reaching to 618 feet. As fellow wine-tasters finally filtered out of the parking lot, we were thrilled to have the vineyard all to ourselves. We only had to share the grounds with a small herd of sheep.

As the anniversary of my father’s passing approaches on the 4th of October, I’ve been thinking about him more often. He had an amazing command of the English language stemming from his hobby of reading the dictionary during his elementary school years. He loved choosing just the right word to express a thought. As I looked again at the magnificent landscape of the vineyard before me, I pondered…serene, pastoral, idyllic, pristine, and then it came to me….bucolic. That would have been Dad’s word. Simply bucolic.