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It was a beautiful drive north through the hills of
Pennsylvania. The skies were bright
blue and it was warm. We touched the
corner of New Jersey before heading due north into New York state. Farmland, small towns, and amazing vistas
graced our journey. Once off the
interstate, it was an hour’s drive along a two-lane road and into the small
town of Cooperstown. The village of
course is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the homeland of James
Fenimore Cooper, America’s first novelist.
The village sits on the south shore of Lake Oswego. Ten miles further north along the shoreline
brought us to our campsite for the next seven nights.
Cooperstown Deer Run Campground is a huge, sprawling park with
flatland sites next to the nearby farmland, and long-term holiday home sites in
the trees and along the hillside. All
around are small farms, forests, and rolling hills. We set up our rig on a site with a few large trees. We are getting better at this whole unhooking
routine and were up and running with 15 minutes or so.
For the next few days, we laid low staying away from the
tourist areas for the weekend. We
wandered into town and walked the few streets admiring the 19th-century homes…many converted into luxury B&Bs.
Cooperstown has less the 2,000 residents and it is all about the Hall of
Fame and the Fenimore Museum. There are
upscale golf courses dotting the landscape, a massive chateau on the
waterfront, and beautiful, manicured streets with loads of flower gardens. The entire downtown area was under a
mandatory mask ordinance, and thankfully everyone was complying with the
rule. A lot of tourist shops were
closed, a few open and accepting customers.
There were a few restaurants and cafes offering outside seating. What a pretty place.
On Monday, hoping we had missed the weekend crowd, we visited the Hall of Fame. It is a large complex housed in several buildings and contained three floors. Guests were allowed in at timed intervals and of course with masks. There were hand-sanitizing stations throughout. We felt relatively safe until we got into the museum where people were too close and really not paying much attention to the social distancing guidelines. We waited patiently for one group to depart a display case before attempting the view the contents. The museum is a sanctuary to baseball, with displays featuring key players, stats, and of course the history of the game. Bobbie, being a huge baseball fan, assumed she would be there all day. I made tentative plans and thankfully there was good cellular service. However, the displays quickly became repetitive and our visit only lasted a little over two hours.
We visited the Fenimore Museum housed in the original Cooper family mansion, it was a lovely collection of American art and artifacts. The lower level was devoted to a private collection of Native American art and the quality of their Alaskan collection was superb.
The balance of our stay was sitting under those great big trees, talking long walks and a few bike rides through the country. The last three days were during Hurricane Laura. We were surprised by the weather forecasts and the amount of wind and rain that made it all the way up to us. For a few days we had no choice but to stay inside. I celebrated my 70th birthday on our late night and Bobbie made me a homemade lemon pie.
Having a renewed interest in getting back to painting, I
completed a landscape of the fields and farms in the distance. It was a lovely stay and we are looking
forward to heading on to New Haven, CT where we will hook up with Bobbie’s
sister Becky for a short, Covid-19 balanced visit.
