Summer vacation, part 1: history

Our 2,982-mile trip took us through nine states. We left July 17 and returned August 1.  The weather was sunny and hot most days.   We saw a lot, learned a lot, saw long-time friends and met new people, ate well, and returned home with great memories. 

A visit to Seneca Falls in western New York had been on my bucket list for years.  It's the site of the 1848 "Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of Women.  " Leaders Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote a list of grievances in the style of the Declaration of Independence: women demanded equality in property rights, marriage and family, employment, and education. It was the birth of the suffrage movement and, ultimately, of the 20th century women's movement.



The visitor center has excellent museum exhibits documenting the social circumstances that led to the 1848 convention.  There was also an exhibit about equal pay, which is one of AAUW's major initiatives.

The building in the photo is the Wesleyan Chapel (next door to the visitor's center) where the Convention convened. Until the Park Service acquired it it was, among other things, a restaurant and a laundromat.

Our motel was in Waterloo, next door to Seneca Falls. The Seneca County fair opened that night so we went!  The Presbyterian church had a food booth -- not only burgers and brats but homemade rhubarb pie for dessert.

The fair exhibits were mostly 4-H projects.  No quilts!  This red-and-white fund raising quilt was in the historical society that is in a wing of the Waterloo Public Library. Alas, it was not labeled. 
The wool quilt is made from swatches from a woolen mill that operated in Waterloo. (The town was also the birthplace of the "woody" station wagon and modern drain tile.)

(Story continues below pictures.) 

We left Waterloo Thursday morning and drove south (GPS took us along country roads) to Ithaca.   En route we stopped at Taughannock Gorge. They say "Ithaca is gorge-ous" and this is one of the reasons. We knew the campus was hilly but not until we were there did we realize how steep the hills are.  Stevens' father graduated from Cornell in 1930. We couldn't stay in Ithaca very long so that meal at Moosewood will have to wait for another time. (I have several Moosewood cookbooks, and I use them.)