Mom and I have a rule when it comes to our “See America” road trips. It is a rule that has developed from experience. Wherever we are going, the exploration stops before nightfall. Street signs are too hard to see and getting lost, although potentially fun during the day can turn un-fun after dark when one is tired and just wants to be someplace comfortable.
“Lick Street”, Mom says to me. “The bed and breakfast is on Lick Street”. You're kiddimg me, right? This is funny for a variety of reasons. One being that out of all the streets we drove past between New York City and Upstate New York, the one street sign we both mentioned out loud as we passed it was Lick Street. Great minds think alike I guess...or warped minds think alike :) Of course, our new bed and breakfast inn is on Lick Street. And as luck would have it, as nightfall approaches, we know exactly where it is.
The Bountiful Blessings Bed and Breakfast is just that....a blessing. Owned by a lovely innkeeper by the name of Terry Donelick, it is a Victorian style home that I only hope I have the good fortune to visit again sometime soon. Due to a last minute cancellation, we have a room adjacent to the swimming pool which is exactly where Mom could be found for the rest of our stay in the Finger Lakes area...when she wasn't at the Mackenzie-Childs House or eating at the Wheelhouse Cafe in Union Springs.
I felt bad getting to the B&B so late, sometime between 8:30-9p.m. but Terry could not have been more gracious. She gets us settled in and I decide to leave the tuffet in the car. After all, it feels very safe in this area and something tells me there are no tuffet thieves in the area.
“I think you should bring the tuffet in from the car'” Mom tells me. “I don't feel right about it being left overnight in the car. Someone could take it”.
“Mom, it will be fine. No one is going to take the tuffet.” I admit it. I am humoring her but the last thing I feel like doing after a very exhausting day is dragging the tuffet out of the car and into our room. “Besides, it is all wrapped up. You can't even tell what it is”, I tell her. But I guess my Mom is convinced there are Mackenzie-Childs merchandise thieves all around us because when I step out of the shower, Mom is nowhere to be found. That's strange, I think to myself. Maybe she went to have some tea with Terry in the main house. Then I hear tapping on the glass door to our room and when I draw back the curtain, who do I see but my Mom sitting on a pool lounge chair in the dark with the tuffet next to her. She looks so sad....because evidently in her determination to not leave the tuffet in the car overnight...she carried it out of the car and to the room...but forgot the room key and locked herself out. I should point out that I took a looooong shower that night as I still had Mackenzie-Childs dirt all over me from the barn sale and the barbeque-ladened smoke in the air. Oh, it was pitiful to see her sitting there...and I don't want to say I told you so but.....and I have to admit that I could not stop laughing. I know. I am wrong...but that wrongness comes from a loving place :)
The next morning we enjoy a wonderful breakfast prepared by Terry and her nephew John filled with food items that are totally recognizable unlike where we stayed our first night. Completely satiated we spend too much time in the pool and then dare I say it? We decide to head back to Mackenzie-Childs to visit the house on their grounds that we did not get to see yesterday.
I am glad we returned. Today I notice there is no line....I do not want to dwell on that too much. I do walk through the Barn Sale quickly and am delighted that the merchandise selection has dwindled to a paltry few items....and of course, there is no doubt in my mind that had we come today, the one-of-a-kind tuffet would not have been mine to take home.
The Mackenzie-Childs house is a Alice-in-Wonderland meets a big hallucination of sorts. There is a lot of everything going on. I think this is one instance where a picture or two or three is truly worth a thousand words so glance at the photos to the right and let them speak for themselves. I will say this much. I did not expect to find a shower stall behind a closet door in the master bedroom.
“Can I step inside of the shower and have Mom take my picture,?” I ask one of the house tour guides (even though it is a self-guided tour where we can stay as long as we like, sit on the beds...like a living museum). The tour guide tells me that is not a problem....so into the shower stall/bedroom closet I go.
“Hey, it's wet in here! And the soap in the soap dish has definitely been used”, I tell Mom as the hand-held shower fixture drips water on my clothes.
“This weekend some of the Mackenzie-Childs corporate executives are staying here during the Barn Sale so they use the showers, sleep in the beds and that's why we ask everyone to not open the dresser drawers because their belongings are in there”.
I may have to go work for the upper echelons of Mackenzie-Childs just so I can stay in the house overnight. I don't think I could live amongst all the fish motif chairs and checkerboard patterns but for one night? That would be very cool indeed.
Please appreciate that there is so much more to the Finger Lakes region than Mackenzie-Childs but remember this was our reason for returning to the area after 20 years or so. We spent the afternoon driving beyond the Barn Sale, exploring some roads with no names, taking in the Lake from different vantage points and saw a sign that has seen better days for “Lakeside Dining”. Never one to pass up a sign for “Lakeside Dining” , we turned left, passed an RV park, a playground and some private homes and then stumbled upon the Hibiscus Marina and the Wheelhouse Restaurant. It is one of those restaurants that if one has a boat, one could boat right up to it. The food was delicious...seafood being the order of the day. Mom had scallops: I had the tilapia. It definitely has that feel of This-is-where-the-locals-eat. When in Union Springs, do as the locals do and eat where the locals eat...the Wheelhouse Restaurant.
The next day was time to head home day. We took Route 17 a fair amount of the way since years ago it meandered through lots of small towns. It doesn't meander through those same small towns today and is more of an Interstate road and that's too bad. We didn't make it all the way back to New York City that day. Roadside ice cream stands and garden nursuries and a stop in the Catskills made us hit up against the “Stop Driving before Nightfall” rule.
We called it a night somewhere between Bear Mountain State Park and home. The tuffet is now more than half-way home.
Back home the next day, I think to myself, “1,000 miles of driving, wear and tear on the car...including a $500.00 repair bill for my car air- conditioning hose that burst the last 10 miles of our road trip when the temperature was a balmy 102 degrees on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn that afternoon...4 nights accommodations, gasoline, tolls, meals, incidentals...I could have just paid full retail for a tuffet at the Mackenzie-Childs retail store on 57th Street in Manhattan and it would have been cheaper in total...but to have missed this experience?” This 50th Birthday Group Gift and the fun that came along with it? Priceless.
The tuffet is now in its new home in my living room. I just look at it and it makes me smile. I still have the Paid tag on it because somehow it has become a part of the story and I like it.
To everyone who made this tuffet a possibility, thank you. I love it and feel free to come visit it and rest for a while anytime.
“Lick Street”, Mom says to me. “The bed and breakfast is on Lick Street”. You're kiddimg me, right? This is funny for a variety of reasons. One being that out of all the streets we drove past between New York City and Upstate New York, the one street sign we both mentioned out loud as we passed it was Lick Street. Great minds think alike I guess...or warped minds think alike :) Of course, our new bed and breakfast inn is on Lick Street. And as luck would have it, as nightfall approaches, we know exactly where it is.
The Bountiful Blessings Bed and Breakfast is just that....a blessing. Owned by a lovely innkeeper by the name of Terry Donelick, it is a Victorian style home that I only hope I have the good fortune to visit again sometime soon. Due to a last minute cancellation, we have a room adjacent to the swimming pool which is exactly where Mom could be found for the rest of our stay in the Finger Lakes area...when she wasn't at the Mackenzie-Childs House or eating at the Wheelhouse Cafe in Union Springs.
I felt bad getting to the B&B so late, sometime between 8:30-9p.m. but Terry could not have been more gracious. She gets us settled in and I decide to leave the tuffet in the car. After all, it feels very safe in this area and something tells me there are no tuffet thieves in the area.
“I think you should bring the tuffet in from the car'” Mom tells me. “I don't feel right about it being left overnight in the car. Someone could take it”.
“Mom, it will be fine. No one is going to take the tuffet.” I admit it. I am humoring her but the last thing I feel like doing after a very exhausting day is dragging the tuffet out of the car and into our room. “Besides, it is all wrapped up. You can't even tell what it is”, I tell her. But I guess my Mom is convinced there are Mackenzie-Childs merchandise thieves all around us because when I step out of the shower, Mom is nowhere to be found. That's strange, I think to myself. Maybe she went to have some tea with Terry in the main house. Then I hear tapping on the glass door to our room and when I draw back the curtain, who do I see but my Mom sitting on a pool lounge chair in the dark with the tuffet next to her. She looks so sad....because evidently in her determination to not leave the tuffet in the car overnight...she carried it out of the car and to the room...but forgot the room key and locked herself out. I should point out that I took a looooong shower that night as I still had Mackenzie-Childs dirt all over me from the barn sale and the barbeque-ladened smoke in the air. Oh, it was pitiful to see her sitting there...and I don't want to say I told you so but.....and I have to admit that I could not stop laughing. I know. I am wrong...but that wrongness comes from a loving place :)
The next morning we enjoy a wonderful breakfast prepared by Terry and her nephew John filled with food items that are totally recognizable unlike where we stayed our first night. Completely satiated we spend too much time in the pool and then dare I say it? We decide to head back to Mackenzie-Childs to visit the house on their grounds that we did not get to see yesterday.
I am glad we returned. Today I notice there is no line....I do not want to dwell on that too much. I do walk through the Barn Sale quickly and am delighted that the merchandise selection has dwindled to a paltry few items....and of course, there is no doubt in my mind that had we come today, the one-of-a-kind tuffet would not have been mine to take home.
The Mackenzie-Childs house is a Alice-in-Wonderland meets a big hallucination of sorts. There is a lot of everything going on. I think this is one instance where a picture or two or three is truly worth a thousand words so glance at the photos to the right and let them speak for themselves. I will say this much. I did not expect to find a shower stall behind a closet door in the master bedroom.
“Can I step inside of the shower and have Mom take my picture,?” I ask one of the house tour guides (even though it is a self-guided tour where we can stay as long as we like, sit on the beds...like a living museum). The tour guide tells me that is not a problem....so into the shower stall/bedroom closet I go.
“Hey, it's wet in here! And the soap in the soap dish has definitely been used”, I tell Mom as the hand-held shower fixture drips water on my clothes.
“This weekend some of the Mackenzie-Childs corporate executives are staying here during the Barn Sale so they use the showers, sleep in the beds and that's why we ask everyone to not open the dresser drawers because their belongings are in there”.
I may have to go work for the upper echelons of Mackenzie-Childs just so I can stay in the house overnight. I don't think I could live amongst all the fish motif chairs and checkerboard patterns but for one night? That would be very cool indeed.
Please appreciate that there is so much more to the Finger Lakes region than Mackenzie-Childs but remember this was our reason for returning to the area after 20 years or so. We spent the afternoon driving beyond the Barn Sale, exploring some roads with no names, taking in the Lake from different vantage points and saw a sign that has seen better days for “Lakeside Dining”. Never one to pass up a sign for “Lakeside Dining” , we turned left, passed an RV park, a playground and some private homes and then stumbled upon the Hibiscus Marina and the Wheelhouse Restaurant. It is one of those restaurants that if one has a boat, one could boat right up to it. The food was delicious...seafood being the order of the day. Mom had scallops: I had the tilapia. It definitely has that feel of This-is-where-the-locals-eat. When in Union Springs, do as the locals do and eat where the locals eat...the Wheelhouse Restaurant.
The next day was time to head home day. We took Route 17 a fair amount of the way since years ago it meandered through lots of small towns. It doesn't meander through those same small towns today and is more of an Interstate road and that's too bad. We didn't make it all the way back to New York City that day. Roadside ice cream stands and garden nursuries and a stop in the Catskills made us hit up against the “Stop Driving before Nightfall” rule.
We called it a night somewhere between Bear Mountain State Park and home. The tuffet is now more than half-way home.
Back home the next day, I think to myself, “1,000 miles of driving, wear and tear on the car...including a $500.00 repair bill for my car air- conditioning hose that burst the last 10 miles of our road trip when the temperature was a balmy 102 degrees on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn that afternoon...4 nights accommodations, gasoline, tolls, meals, incidentals...I could have just paid full retail for a tuffet at the Mackenzie-Childs retail store on 57th Street in Manhattan and it would have been cheaper in total...but to have missed this experience?” This 50th Birthday Group Gift and the fun that came along with it? Priceless.
The tuffet is now in its new home in my living room. I just look at it and it makes me smile. I still have the Paid tag on it because somehow it has become a part of the story and I like it.
To everyone who made this tuffet a possibility, thank you. I love it and feel free to come visit it and rest for a while anytime.
I will be the first to comment
ReplyDeleteThe reason I adore you so much is that you spend quality (albeit tuffett?)
time with your mom.
Too few americans spend quality time with the ones who brought us up!
Ken and Keng
San Francisco