Weddings, Wells, and Warren (Part 1 of our latest East coast vacation)

Last year around this same time, Jason and I had a wedding to attend in Boston. We took advantage of the trip and made it a vacation by taking a week to travel around the area (you can read about the trip here).

This past week we had a wedding in Erie, PA and decided to do the same thing - take a week of vacation after the wedding and tour around the area. We started by heading out last Friday and flying to Buffalo, a two hour drive from Erie. The wedding in Erie was amazing! The groom was a great friend of mine from college - Justin. He and I have been friends since our freshmen year at Mines and he was an usher in our wedding. His gorgeous fiancé (now wife!) Rachael was a spectacular bride and we are so glad we got to be a part of their wedding!

After the wedding, Jason and I headed south to Titusville, PA. What's is in this small, seemingly insignificant small town you say? Only the most important historical landmark ever... the first oil well!!! As soon as I knew Justin and Rachael were getting married in PA I called and inquired about the hours at the Drake Oil Museum. It was like February. The person thought I was crazy! BUT - we visited the museum on the LAST day it was open before winter hours began. And I literally planned when we were taking our week of vacation (before or after the wedding) based on this visit to the museum. I am that big of a dork. :-)

Here is Jason and I arriving in Titusville. Please note the matching "I heart pumpjack" shirts that I made us wear. Yep, I am climbing the nerd-dom scale as we speak.

I was literally sprinting around the museum and the grounds. The workers there thought I was nuts. They were absolutely correct... nuts about OIL!

Jason sprinted too...

This is the site of the first well!! They have it setup to simulate what the original well would have looked like and even have a barrel of oil circulating through for effect. It was glorious! The well was drilled in 1859 by Colonel Drake and Uncle Billy to a depth of 69'. (We were tested on this in school... I promise.)

Outside were pumpjacks! I am pretty sure we weren't supposed to be climbing them, but oh well. I like to live dangerously (sidenote- these were obviously not operational. It is still a dream of mine to ride a real pumpjack someday...even though it's dangerous and against every company policy out there...)

This was an old drilling technique that Jason and I didn't know about until we visited the museum. In the old days, the original wells were "drilled" by two men slamming down a metal pipe. On a good 12-hour shift, two large men could "drill" around 3 feet...yikes! Good thing we've improved that in the modern oil industry!

Look more matching shirts!! ;-)

After Titusville, we headed to Warren, PA just north of the Allegheny National Forest, to stay the night. We went hiking the next day all around the forest and enjoyed the amazing colors of the leaves and the perfect fall weather!

There is lots more to share from our trip, but unfortunately it's WAY past my 9:00 pm bedtime so the rest is to be continued...

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Ovid and Ithaca - good friends, wine, and hiking (Part 2 of our latest East coast vacation)

Welcome to Part 2 of our recent vacation. You can catch up on the first part here.

After spending the day hiking in Warren we made our way east and slightly north to the small town of Ovid, NY. It's sandwiched between Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake, two of the five Finger Lakes. When I was very little (ages 1-4) I used to live in Ovid while my dad was minister at the Ovid Federated Church. Jason and I thought it would be neat to see where I used to live (and if it looked like I remembered it to look). This area also has a lot of wineries and B&Bs so it was a neat place to just relax (don't worry, there is proof below of me actually doing that since the capability of me relaxing is in question...).

My mom has stayed in light communication with some of the people we used to know when we lived there and we were able to connect with them while we were in town. We spent Monday at Priscilla's house and on Tuesday she took us to some of the places I used to know. We even got to tour my old house!

Here is the Ovid Federated Church:

Ovid is a completely different world from Houston. Priscilla didn't even know where her house key was located and she leaves her car keys in the ignition in the driveway. Ah, small town life! The first thing we did when we moved into our home was to install an alarm system and even THAT didn't prevent it from being broken into! I cannot imagine leaving my house unlocked much less leave the keys in my car! Jason and I could see ourselves retiring in some place like that though - it was so peaceful and quiet and beautiful!!

Side story - Jason and I planned to go to Niagara Falls on this trip and realized when we landed in NY that we left one crucial thing that we needed in order to visit the Canadian side (which is SIGNIFICANTLY better than the American side)... our passports. Fortunately, some good friends of ours were watching the house while we were gone and were able to mail our passports to us in Ovid. We weren't sure if they needed to be signed for when they were to arrive on Wednesday and Priscilla and Phil were both going to be at work. Priscilla said the UPS guy usually comes around 11:00 am and that if they weren't home to get it, then he would take it to Phil at the auto parts store. Man, you have to love small town life! Sure enough, Wednesday around 11:15 Phil called us and told us the passports made it! Hooray for our friends Robert and Kristin!)

Tuesday afternoon we met some other friends, Carol and Peter, from long ago for lunch and got a chance to hear all about their mission work in Haiti. It was so neat to see how this retired couple has dedicated so much time and energy into a great cause and it was neat to just visit with them!

After our lunch we headed to our quaint B&B right on Cayuga Lake and sipped a bottle of wine on a bench overlooking the water. It was probably my favorite part of the trip! We just sat there enjoying the quiet atmosphere, beautiful surroundings, and each other's company (and here is the documented proof that I do indeed know how to relax!!)

Wednesday we drove along the Caygua Lake visiting winery after winery and slowly making our way south to Ithaca.

We stopped and spent time hiking around the Taughannock Falls, 33' taller than Niagara Falls making it one of the largest single-drop waterfalls east of the Rocky Mountains.

We walked around Ithaca's common area and had a AMAZING dinner at a tapas restaurant called Just a Taste. The next morning we got up and went hiking at Buttermilk Falls. It was gorgeous weather and beautiful scenery!

Afterwards we headed to Lucifer Falls and hiked there. It was also gorgeous!

Then we headed north back through Ovid up to Rochester, NY and stopped quickly at the George Eastman (Kodak Museum) house. Fortunately Thursday was their late night so they were open until 8:00 pm and we got a personal tour of the house since the museum was empty! Then we continued north and made our way to Niagara Falls!

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Niagara Falls (Part 3 of our latest East coast vacation)

The continuation of our fabulous trip blog post... Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 here.

We arrived in Niagara Falls late Thursday night. We checked into our hotel and then walked over to the connected casino and got some good gambling time! (We are GREAT at finding those! ;-) )

We splurged a little and treated ourselves to a room that had a view of both of the falls.

The room also had a jacuzzi tub that you could see the falls from thanks to a glass window with a retractable cover.

Now you see the falls...

Now you don't!

There was even a fireplace inside the dresser!

Friday we played tourist around the Falls. Again the weather was gorgeous and Jason got some beautiful pictures of the Falls. We walked along the road taking pictures until we arrived at the tourist center of Horseshoe Falls.

We did the Journey Behind the Falls and got to go down up close to the powerful water.

Afterwards we drove a scenic route along the water up to Niagara-on-the-Lake and walked around the quaint little town of shops. Friday night we had dinner at a fabulous Brazilian steakhouse and walked along the falls at night taking shots of the water before heading back to the casino for one final round of gambling before our journey home the following day.

I think Jason was trying to freeze me...we spent a good 45 min in 40 degree weather standing around taking pictures. The falls at night require a tripod and patience. Fortunately we own a tripod and Jason has abundant patience. The lights of the falls were changing colors too so Jason made it his objective to get the colors as they were changing. He did a fabulous job!

He also had to improvise when the tripod wasn't enough...(note the camera is stacked on a pile of coins...)

Finally, at one point I heard a rustling and turned to my left and watched with wide eyes as a raccoon climbed out of a trash can and over the fence where he began to enjoy his tasting find.

It was a fabulous trip and VERY hard to come back home and back to reality. We had a blast on the trip and feel very blessed at the opportunity to take such an amazing trip and see so much of God's beautiful creation!

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