Long Weekend Anniversary Trip

There wasn’t a whole lot accomplished on the house this week. On Thursday, I worked from home so that we could get our framing inspection and electrical inspections completed. One was successful (the framing inspection) and one was not. We failed our electrical inspection because our awful contractor did some electrical work incorrectly and without a permit.

We just received a letter from the county threatening us with a fine of $100 per day and contacting the electrical company to shut off our power if we don’t get the problem corrected in 10 days. This doesn’t give us much time to amend the permit, find an electrician, get the work performed, and pass the inspection. Cross your fingers for us that it all works out in the end!

Since we were both off for Columbus Day and our first anniversary is coming up soon, we decided to take a trip to the Finger Lakes area. We drove up on Friday and stayed at the Idlwilde Inn in Watkins Glen.


Saturday morning, we hiked the Gorge and Rim trails at Watkins Glen State Park. We were very glad to miss a lot of the crowd – the parking lot was almost full when we were leaving.



We went to some wineries for tasting and had lunch at a Finger Lakes “Wienery.”



On Sunday, we drove up to the north side of the lake and went to a few wineries (starting at Belhurst Castle – pictured).


We drove down the East side of the lake and stopped by a pick-your-own pumpkin patch. We were asking our neighbors recently about Halloween trick-or-treating and what to expect. We were told that all the kids in the neighborhood have been scared to even step foot in our driveway because of the previous owners and their dogs. We feel like we need to compensate by making the house very “Halloween-y” and inviting. We ended up getting 7 pumpkins so that we can line our sidewalk with jack-o-lanterns. Hopefully that will make the fear disperse a little bit!


Our ultimate destination for the day was Ithaca and en route, we stopped for a couple hikes. One was a 4 mile hike on the Interloken Trail to Foster Pond.


We stopped briefly at the Taughannock Falls State Park.


And hiked the Gorge and Rim trails at Buttermilk Falls State Park. The foliage was beautiful everywhere and it was so nice to feel like fall is finally here!




On Monday, we started the drive home. First, we stopped and spent a few hours at the Corning Museum of Glass. It was a huge museum and we could have spent a lot longer but we wanted to get home at a decent hour. Tucker was very happy that we were home and has been following us around since we stepped in the door.