Category Archives: Chautauqua

Chautauqua Summers (Part 1 of New England Road Trip)

The only way to get through writing about summer vacation is through. Or maybe to use Chat GPT, but nobody wants that. (Or do you?)

I don’t know why it’s hard to sit down and write sometime. I want to read blog recaps of my vacation. I want to have blog recaps of my vacation. I want you to read about my vacation. But, sitting down and writing about my vacation, it feels exhausting. Probably because I’m not on that vacation anymore, I’m back working, and working is exhausting.

In fact, simply existing in this country, this world, this is exhausting. I should stop checking the news, but I find it hard. BUT.

So at the end of July, Louie and I set out on our road trip. The plan: approximately one week visiting Leslie and family in Chautauqua as we love to do in the summer and then a camping road trip through Vermont, New Hampshire, and up into Maine towards Acadia, the final destination, and then turning back and driving two days to return to St Louis.

Easy peasy, if you like driving and mosquitoes. Which we do. Except the mosquitoes.

Any good road trip starts the day before with packing. I should do a blog post on packing for a camping trip, because we have it down to a science, if by science I mean, we have a list, and then we throw everything in the car and spend the next two weeks arguing over how we packed the car and disagreeing over where everything should go, and continually losing things and finding them again. And at some point, we will try to reorganize and decide that we have done a much better job than before but really it’s only because at that point half the clothes are in the dirty laundry bag and most of the food has been eaten…but that’s not important right now.

So we loaded up and added the bikes on the back, since this was also a trip with bikes. And we hit the road by 9 am, which was the plan.

We always drive in one day to Chautauqua, which says it will take 10 hours to get there and always takes much longer, so we end up stopping for dinner near Cleveland at a Mexican restaurant right off the highway. We’ve done this for the past few years and enjoy it.

And then we made it to Chautauqua! It was late, so Luca (my nephew) was already asleep but everyone else was still up.

The next few days don’t need a day by day, so I’ll just do highlights:

Pontoon boat ride: (Or “tonpoon” as Luca said later)

We rented a Pontoon boat for an afternoon on Chautauqua Lake. It was fun to ride around and then stop, drop anchor, and do some swimming.

We attended the weekly “Sunday party” and I saw an old classmate that I hadn’t seen in over a decade, which was fun. We attended several concerts and got to see Athena in something called Air Band as well.

Louie enjoyed a Louie IPA.

We went out to dinner at Pine Junction, which is a nice place to enjoy an outdoor meal, and on the way home saw some cows on the road.

It was a fun week. Weather wise, it started out really hot and humid, which you feel there because there is no A/C. By the end it had cooled off a little. It was great to see the kids, and I definitely felt a bit sad leaving, especially because I wished I had spent a little more time with Luca: he had camp all day and then went to bed early, so I felt like I got more time with Athena and less time with him, and the last night we went to a concert with her but left him…but it was still great to see everybody! We’ll have to get out to Phoenix this year somehow.

The kids and Peter (my BIL) were heading home for the summer since school was starting up pretty soon after we left, so it was the end for them, so it was bittersweet goodbyes all around. We loaded up the car and headed east to Vermont…

Chautauqua Time

Louie and I prefer to visit many different places in the summer: we know people who always do the same thing every summer with their families and it has never been our thing. Yet, we find ourselves visiting Chautauqua for the fifth year in a row, because it’s a lovely place, but it’s also a place we can go hang out with my niece and nephew and sister and brother in law and relax!

Though, when you are dealing with a 5 and 9 year old, relaxing isn’t as much of a thing as you might like. I’m just going to give you some of the highlights of what we did.

We had dinner out at a place called Pine Junction. I recommend the coconut shrimp!

We spent some time at the library on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. This lion tried to keep us from entering. My nephew really enjoys seeing the library, but he also loves riding the elevator in the library and pretending he doesn’t know it is an elevator and being surprised every time we get to a new floor.

I brought a few gifts, and the biggest hit seemed to be a game called “Cats and Boxes”. I recommend it!

One day Leslie, Louie and I did some kayaking. It was harder that we thought it would be!

Louie had the single kayak and was much more skilled at using his.

Some of the lovely homes overlooking the lake.

We went to Westfield one morning for brunch at the Parkview Cafe (sadly no picture of that, which is sad because Louie and I live in a neighborhood called Parkview), and their claim to fame is that Lincoln got a letter from a young girl who said he should grow a beard in order to win the presidency, and then he did, and visited Westfield later and met the girl. The story is printed on the mugs at the Cafe and then we noticed there was a park on the corner commemorating all of this.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer of February 20, 1861:

At Westfield, Mr. Lincoln greeted a large crowd of ladies, and several thousand of the sterner sex. Addressing the ladies, he said, “I am glad to see you; I suppose you are to see me; but I certainly think I have the best of the bargain. (Applause.) Some three months ago, I received a letter from a young lady here; it was a very pretty letter, and she advised me to let my whiskers grow, as it would improve my personal appearance; acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so; and now, if she is here, I would like to see her; I think her name was Miss Barlly.” A small boy, mounted on a post, with his mouth and eyes both wide open, cried out, “there she is, Mr. Lincoln,” pointing to a beautiful girl, with black eyes, who was blushing all over her fair face. The President left the car, and the crowd making way for him, he reached her, and gave her several hearty kisses, and amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd, he bade her good-bye, and on we rushed.

Louie and my niece reenacting the statue which was of the meeting. It seemed like a pretty big deal for something small, but I guess you make a statue when you can!

We watched Jurassic Park live in concert. I guess I hadn’t seen Jurassic Park in a long time, and it was a much better movie than I recall–have action movies gotten so much worse lately? Or perhaps it was always pretty good and it was the sequel that was bad? In any case, the music was too loud sometimes but we really enjoyed the evening.

My niece is in an opera this summer and we saw part of a rehearsal. She is in Hansel and Gretel as part of the children’s chorus and this was the rehearsal where they starting adding in the staging to the music. I’m sorry we won’t get to see the performance.

We had been doing some nice photos and some silly ones, and evidently nobody understood which was which.

Selfie at Bemus Point. I bought new sunglasses on this trip (I really needed a pair as my “good” pair had broken and I had been wearing a very scratched up pair) and I like the look of them!

Overall we had a lovely visit. Not pictured: time in the hot tub, walking around the farm land where they live. Lowlights: waking up early with the kids and sometimes a 5 year being a little whiny, but super cute and loving as well. The 9 year old was definitely more mature than ever, very skilled on the violin and piano, worked great with her little brother, and they both seem to be having a great summer! My sister and her husband are busy running around doing more than one job each and keeping the house running.

We got home then, and I got to truly sleep in yesterday: I slept till 9 and it was absolutely glorious. I always love spending time with my family, but it is also wonderful to get home. Oh! We got Taco John’s on our drive home, which was good. We like to get bean burritos and potato oles and then put some potato oles into the burritos to add texture and flavor. Delicious!