October | 2015 | Where the Robert Meets the Road

Milepost 10-13-15 Montour Falls, New York

… or flexibility is the mother of invention… or flexibility is the spice of life. Or something like that.

Anyway, for career wanderers, flexibility is an essential ingredient in keeping life moving along smoothly. The fact is, stuff happens, and sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men… get torpedoed.

Our tentative plans for the next year are already laid out, but they are not written in stone. They can’t be. Because life happens, and things change. There are changes in the weather, there are changes in family plans.

And mechanical repairs. We were planning to tour New England right now, virtually extending a trip to New York to deliver a load of furniture I had built for a customer there over this summer. I took the pickup in for a routine oil change… and ended up having the entire front end rebuilt when the technicians saw worn edges on the front tires. The work was scheduled for the following Saturday, the day we were to leave, and it extended into the next week as servicemen found more worn parts.

The upshot was that we didn’t have time left for the planned excursion to the east coast, since we wanted to be back to Michigan for a rendezvous of all of our kids in one place at the same time (they have become quite the traveling vagabonds as well and don’t cross paths but a couple of times a year).

So what do full-time adventurers do when their plans are destroyed?

They make new plans.

While checking the route to New York I had discovered some rugged features including box canyons and waterfalls not far from our drop-off point. Bingo! New adventure.

As someone said lately, “Never waste a good fiasco.” Or when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Or when life hands you grapes, don’t wine about it.

Anyway, we modified our plans and spent a couple of days climbing around the waterfalls at Watkins Glen, New York.

I loved it. Maine coast, eat your heart out. We will get to you another time when we have the time – and a red convertible – to do it properly.

50 states will wait for us. We are stuck for the time being at 43. And that is fine.

Here are some photos I shot while exploring the canyons of western New York.

Visitors enter Watkins Glen through a tunnel (right) and stairways onto the first of several stone bridges. — Visitors enter Watkins Glen through a tunnel (right) and stairways leading to the first of several stone bridges.

The first bridge spans the gorge over the first of 19 waterfalls and cascades.

Rainbow Falls has a magical quality that adds to the overall mystique of the canyon.

The trail leads behind this waterfall, then into a spiral tunnel with a circular stairs cut from the inside of the cliff. — The trail leads behind this waterfall, then into a vertical tunnel with a spiral stairs inside the cliff.

I liked that Eagle Cliff Falls was easily accessible after a short hike and a few steps. Warmer weather would have definitely precipitated a spontaneous shower under the torrent. — Eagle Cliff Falls was easily accessible after a short hike and a few steps. Warmer weather would have definitely precipitated a spontaneous shower under the torrent!

The Finger Lakes region of New York is wine and fruit country; roadside fruit markets abound.

Anyway, if variety is the spice of life ( and to full-time adventurers it really is), then flexibility is the mother of invention. It results in the invention of the next side trip… and more adventure.

Milepost 10-6-15 Cedar Springs Michigan. Parked in our daughter’s yard.

Today Kaye and I are leaving for New England on a spontaneous quest to add 6 more states to our collection for a total of 49 – leaving only Hawaii unvisited. We really did not have this on our bucket list until coming home from the south last spring. We had added several new ones while wandering across the south during the winter from Louisiana east to Florida and then north along the Atlantic coast heading back home in the spring. At some point along there it occurred to us that we were actually unintentionally tallying an impressive inventory of states visited.

By the time we turned west from the eastern seaboard we decided to make it a thing, and we would have to be really intentional about Delaware or we would miss it entirely. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere else like most of the states we had visited. We were camping near Washington D. C. and decided to make a quick day trip to score Delaware.

Now we are heading off to New York to deliver a trailer load of custom-built rustic furniture that I assembled during the summer for a client that I had built stuff for a few years ago. And we have time to continue on to New England and visit the last six of the continental United States. Maybe we will even see some fall color.

Visiting all 50 states was not a thing for us until we realized we were well on our way to doing it just by chance. Just by being travelers all of our lives.

Actually, two of our three daughters have already visited all 50 and they got their impressive start while riding in the back seat as kids while we explored the country as a family with a van and a tent years ago (photo at top shows our stop at the Tetons in 1991).

Our kids - with some of their cousins - inside a giant redwood tree in northern California. — Our kids – with some of their cousins – inside a giant redwood tree in northern California.

I am not sure what we will do about Hawaii. If it really is a thing for us, we will probably have to make it happen sometime. So is it a thing or not? I don’t know. If I have to choose, I might rather continue east and do Italy (one of my daughters is there with a friend right now). Time will tell.

Meantime, watch for a report from the coast of Maine in the next few days. See ya!

Postscript: We had mechanical trouble that prevented us from making the New England trip. Instead, we spent time in a service garage. We did get our shipment delivered to our client in New York, but our tour of the northeast will have to wait.

Travel and Life on the Open Road