Last night Julie and I headed down to the dock on Canandaigua Lake to watch the moon rise across the water. It was beautiful. The sky was absolutely clear and there was almost no wind. For those that know us, you might normally wonder what the heck we’re doing in New York at this time of the year.
If you take a look back on our blog for the last few years, you’d see that we retired at the beginning of 2018 and hit the road. Before we headed out, we rented out our home after putting our stuff into storage. That left us “homeless” and “jobless”. Of course it also allowed us to get out and travel, which was the plan.
For two years we’ve spent time living in other countries or just traveling. We also discovered cruising and caught the bug… the cruising bug. Unfortunately, the corona-virus has brought our travels to a crashing halt.
Detour
Just like everyone, our life and our plans took a detour this year. Julie and I feel fortunate that we have family to lean on, and that’s what brought us to the New York Finger Lakes. Julie’s brother and sister-in-law (Scott and Joanne) have a house on the lake. Spending a lot of time watching their grandkids in Western NY doesn’t leave them time to enjoy the lake as much as they’d like right now. That provided an opportunity for us to safely isolate ourselves.
Absent the pandemic, our next three months would have seen us in Tampa, then on a trans-Atlantic cruise. A month in Italy would have been sandwiched between Spain, Greece and Germany. Today, if someone suggested such itinerary to me I’d be wondering if they had a death-wish for me! Over two weeks on a cruise ship?! Probably not.
Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes are one of the awesome natural region of Upstate New York. We’ve had “Grandma/Grandpa Camp” here with our grandkids for several summers. Swimming, boating, hiking in the many local and state parks… the kids enjoy it as much as we do. Our son and his girlfriend live in a suburb of Rochester and the grandkids love spending time with “Uncle Shawn” and Suzy as well.
Well, the summer Canandaigua and early-April are two different dogs. Last night’s awesome display put on by the pink moon rising over the lake contrasted sharply with today’s overcast, gray skies and a late morning snow flurry. Julie and I have gotten soft spending our winters in warmer climes. A week after returning from Cape Coral, I thought our son’s thermometer was broken one morning when it read 28 rather than 82.
This lock-down can’t end too soon for us. Between the cabin fever and the cold, gray skies, we’re already set to head south.
Our son’s girlfriend made a skillet baked tortellini for us a few weeks ago and it was great! There isn’t an iron skillet where we are in lockdown, so we transferred everything to a 2 1/2 quart casserole dish prior to the baking step. I didn’t have all of the required ingredients, so I adapted. 
