Epic Summer Adventure 2019 (Days 31-34): Southern Cayuga County, New York State

As far as the title is concerned for where we stayed the last few days, I decided to put this down as “Southern Cayuga County” instead of Aurora since very few outside of central New York know where Aurora is.  To those of you who have never been to Southern Cayuga County, I simply advise you to use Google to see exactly where it is.  I can’t tell you that I’m from Central NY since half of you will think I’m talking about Manhattan.  I can’t say that I’m from upstate NY since another quarter will think I’m talking about West Chester or some other suburb of New York City.  No matter what, those of us from Southern Cayuga County have very little way of describing our home other than saying, “An hour SW of Syracuse” or ½ hour north of Ithaca.  Even when we say that, the person that asked the question usually goes a little cross eyed for a fraction of a second before saying, “Oh, yeah…  I know where that is.” When, in fact, we know that they have no clue what we’re talking about or where in New York State Syracuse or Ithaca is.  Our location is, in essence, indescribable.  This is why I’m putting down Southern Cayuga County.  Anyone can look up a county name in Wikipedia and get some basic information and by putting “Southern” in front of it, I’m giving a direction sense when they look on the map for some extra help!  I’m sorry that I assigned homework, but I’m tired of trying to describe it. 

So, how to you describe the indescribable?  My hometown, like every hometown, is one of a kind.  The ability to know all the quirks, hidden gems, hangouts, local history rarely gets understood unless you grew up there.  No transplant will fully appreciate the understanding of your hometown more than those of you who were born and raised there.  I say Southern Cayuga County was the best place to grow up on earth simply for the fact that I know no other place.  I can only guess what other hometowns where like.  For me, the last few days were filled with a sad sense of nostalgia as I visited childhood haunts, drove down long stretches of back roads, and enjoyed visiting historic figures in my life as they have aged and matured (for the most part).  This trip, for me, was really about sitting back and taking it all in.  No real agenda or planning was made other than making sure to meet up with a few high school friends on one particular day. 

Wendy, Olivia, Drew, and I arrived at my parent’s house on Pumpkin Hill just south of Aurora after battling a harrowing 7 ½ hour drive from New Hampshire due to crazy rainstorms a slight detour in Massachusetts due to a navigation miscommunication between spouses, and pee breaks.  Ya gotta go when ya gotta go!  Dad was there to greet us about 5pm and fed us dinner before everyone needed to go to bed.  Mom wasn’t there because she’s in Vancouver, BC (~3 hours from Seattle). Yes, the timing is perfect and yes, I clearly forgot when she had shared this information with me back in February.  I feel I will have to drop out of the race for Son of the Year award. 

The next day we woke up late and dad recommended buying some sandwiches from the local deli/convenience store/department store/sandwich shop called Wilcox General Store.  Everyone was jealous of my Rueben.  That afternoon we headed down to the Gunderson’s dock located next to now-closed-and-closed for-many-years Mac’s food & drug store which sold candy and ice cream (that’s what I remember it as!).  The Gunderson’s bought the property after the railroad, which ran alongside Cayuga Lake, started selling the property to land owners who owned property next to the lake.  Along with the property they bought an old train station which they’re currently converting into a 3 story house since buying it in 1982.  Talk about an extended renovation!  This is when you hire family as contractors.  Honestly, the train station looks really good.  I met up with my high school buddies, Matt and Dustin, for a boat ride on Cayuga Lake along with Wendy, Dustin’s wife Kelly, and all the kids.  It was great to catch up and learn about how the Aurora houses along the lake only have ~30% of their residents around the whole year.  Most of the houses are rented out or owned by out-of-staters.  Aurora has turned into a tourist destination and with it comes a new service industry which the locals are really starting to capitalize upon, though not by their own design.  It is really interesting to see the local economy shift from the time that I lived there to where it is now.

After a nice swim in the lake while boating, we headed up to Dustin and Kelly’s house which happens to be the house that I grew up in.  We began the evening walking through the property, though it barely resembled the land that I remember due to tree and shrub growth.  I love the property how they have it, but it will never compare to how I remember it.  Even after walking through the house, the only place that I truly felt as a child was wandering through the barn across the street which wasn’t even part of our property, but a place that I loved to explore as a kid.  It hadn’t changed a bit and I even started recalling vivid childhood dreams I had about the barn!  Dustin and Kelly are good souls and were helping out a neighbor who is in the hospital, so we walked down the road to give the daily feedings to the pets (cats, dog, horses, etc.).  It was a great visit for catching up.  We even found the old rotary dial phone that used to hang in the kitchen, out in my dad’s old shop!  It will be my souvenir from the NY stop.

The next day was spent exploring a couple of old haunts from my childhood such as Long Point State Park where we used to walk to as a camper from Camp Gregory and spend the day swimming, skipping rocks and collecting lucky stones from the beach.  After lunch I persuaded Wendy and the kids to take a walk up to Moonshine Falls.  Everyone was reluctant at first since we accessed the creek from my parent’s property and includes having to navigate down a pretty steep gully.  It also didn’t help that we started walking right in the middle of a rain shower which immediately turned Olivia into a a bit of grump.  By the time we made it to the falls, the rain had stopped and the sun came out.  Drew immediately started stripping off clothes and asked to jump in.  I decided to see if I could hike to the top of the falls where I used to camp out with friends in high school.  I made it to the top, but I remember it being a lot easier and never having the feeling that I could slip down the hill and kill myself.  By the time I made it back to the bottom of the falls, both kids were playing in the water.  I decided to strip down and jump in! 

Moonshine Falls

Moonshine Falls is pretty much inaccessible now unless you know the land owners well.  There used to be a bridge above the falls which connected Moonshine Rd, but it was taken out years ago due to the number of deaths (at least 3) that occurred when I was younger.  My next door neighbor drove his jeep over the falls in the mid-eighties and died.  No one really knows if it was an accident or not as no skid marks were found.  One of my dad’s students at Union Springs High School accidently fell over the falls and died after running from a parent who came to break up a party.  The horrible thing about that story is that the parent who came to break up the party was actually the girl’s father.  The last death that I’m aware of was of a high school classmate of mine who fell over the falls while partying with friends.  Unfortunately, after he fell his friends took off because they were afraid of getting in trouble (drugs & alcohol) and left him.  It wasn’t until they got back to Auburn or some neighboring city to call 911.  Since then, Moonshine has pretty much been blocked off with less and less locals aware of it’s location or even it’s existence.  As I told the kids, it’s one of my favorite places on earth.

After a nice dinner of grilled London Broil, we took the kids to Cream of the Top which is the local ice cream parlor/shack and sugared them up before heading back to my parent’s house for bed.  The next day I set off after breakfast to say hi to my old track coach, Bill Mullarney, and then pick up some supplies over in Union Springs.  It was great catching up with Bill, his wife Cathy, and their visiting son, Mark from Ohio.  They both have a keen sense of what’s going on in the community and provide a good perspective of some of the struggles that the area is facing.  Namely, the phenomenon of corporate farming, an influx of migrant and central American workers, and just general brain drain as kids leave the area for better paying jobs elsewhere.  It was hard for me to drive through back roads and see some of the beautiful homesteads and farm houses now abandoned and dilapidated.  That’s the problem sometimes when coming back to your childhood home and seeing change when you really want to envision everything as you saw it as a kid.

Lucky stones @ Long Point SP

I arrived back to the house to be pleasantly greeted by my sister, Heather, and her two kids Laura and Noah. We immediately fell into old schtick and started teasing Mom because she wasn’t there.  Of course, we would have done the same thing even if she was there!  My mom loves to make lists.  It gives her a sense of organization, control, and the self-satisfaction when crossing something off of a list.  She wrote up a list for dad which included things to do, eat, and see while we were there broken out by day and meal.  Heather and I gained supreme enjoyment making fun of the list and kept asking Dad how well he was following it.  Unfortunately, Mom only got up to Thursday morning because the only thing written down for that day was, “cereal” which was underlined for some reason.  We wondered if there was a meaning to the underline and tried to guess at it’s meaning.  I’m sure there wasn’t any meaning, but it was fun coming up with ideas and Mom wasn’t there to defend herself. 

That afternoon, I headed down to the Fargo on my bike (local watering hole in Aurora) for a drink with a new/old friend of mine, Ginger Varga.  Ginger had lived out in Seattle and we never got in touch while in Seattle so we caught up and talked about mutual friends and life in Southern Cayuga county.  I rode back up the Route 90 hill (exhausting) to the house and started preparing dinner.  Dad had marinated some pork for a classic Central NY delicacy of spiedies which are typically sold at the NY State Fair (we had salt potatoes the previous night).  Heather, Dad, and I reminisced and did a pretty good job of not talking over each other.  I think it was a great reunion even if Mom wasn’t there.

The next morning we loaded up the truck/camper and were one the road by 9:30.  I apologize if this post is long and didn’t provide a ton of adventure or high octane sightseeing, but I really wanted this stop to just happen without a set itinerary or a long list of people to visit.  I apologize to those of you who I wasn’t able to meet up with, but that’s OK.  I’ll be back at some point.