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I'm planning a big road trip to explore Upstate NY a bit.....Ive been through NY, but on the Throughway. This time I want to see more of the countryside up close.
Plan is to travel from Rochester to Utica via US 20 (mostly, understand I need to drop down from Rochester to reach the road, and then drive up to Utica). Idea here is to hit the northern tips of the Finger Lakes and experience the upstate countryside, and stop at Seneca Falls to see the womans history sites.
I note there are number of towns on these lakes. Any of them particularly cute or nice? I did see a bit of the Southern Finger Lakes (Hammondsport and Bath and Watkins Glen), so am wondering if any of these places are more like Hammondsport vs more like Watkins Glen.
Also, what do you all know about Cazenovia. It looks like the only larger place when you get beyond the Finger Lakes area.
Also, what is traffic like on US 20. Busy or more open-road. I expect congestion in the towns, but am wondering about cross country traffic conditions.
20 is a piece of cake to travel Traffic usually isn't a problem. I gave some more ideas in the Rochester forum too, but I highly recommend seeing Canandaigua especially if you are interested in Women's history. The trial for Susan B. Anthony was the Ontario County Courthouse.
Are you also going to visit her home in Rochester as well?
When do you plan on doing this? I'm asking because there are quite a few apple orchards/stands along or near Route 20 in LaFayette and Onondaga south of Syracuse that are open during the Fall. It is also in between Skaneateles and Cazenovia.
US 5 and US 20 are the same route through the Finger Lakes. From I-90 head south to Canandaigua on 332, join US 5 & 20 and head east until Auburn where the two routes split, 5 going north into Syracuse and 20 going east/southeast through Skaneateles to Cazenovia.
Stop in Canandaigua to see the City Pier and Sonnenberg Gardens (buy some wine in their wine shop). Geneva is an historic little town that's the home of the Woman's Rights Museum. Both towns have gorgeous Victorian architecture. Auburn has the state prison, and you used to drive right up to the gate practically and then the road followed along the side of the wall for a while. Now, there's an arterial that takes you past it, but local streets still run along 3 sides of it.
You might also want to extend your trip a little further east and south to take in Cooperstown, which is about an hour and half past Cazenovia, if you've never been. In addition to the Baseball HOF, there's the Glimmerglass Opera (if you're into opera which I am not), the home of early American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, and the NYS Agricultural Museum which is an interactive museum with restored buildings, collections of farming tools, etc.
If "cute"ness is a key value you may also want to use NY 12B from US 20 north to Utica, to pass through Oriskany Falls and Clinton, rather than NY 12 which is a more workaday route.
Auburn, still the largest town on this route, has some jewels (such as Seward House Historic Museum and the Harriet Tubman sites that are becoming a National Historical Park, and the old houses along the stretch of South St/NY 34 that connects them) although not prosperous enough to be "cute" overall. If you are sticking to the signed route of US 20, watch carefully for the turn off the 20/5 (signed that way, though any local calls it "5&20") arterial to jog over a block then strongly diverge. (Sorry, I had to laugh a bit reading post #4 about how the route used to go right by the prison - the arterial was built in the late 1970's - but the prison wall does make quite an impression if you turn off the current route to go past it, especially on Wall St.)
If you only go as far as Utica you will be turning off 20 in Bridgewater which is the armpit of NY and missing the best part of 20 which is Cherry Valley. 20 is after all the Cherry Valley Turnpike.
Just curious, since you mentioned it in another post, would you be interested in checking out ethnic neighborhoods in nearby communities along this route?
I am planning on doing that for Utica for sure....just finished reading a book on ethnic geography of Utica, and it sounds really interesting.
Quote:
If you only go as far as Utica you will be turning off 20 in Bridgewater
which is the armpit of NY and missing the best part of 20 which is Cherry
Valley. 20 is after all the Cherry Valley Turnpike.
Hmm...maybe a side trip to Cherry Valley! I just read about Cherry Valley in an old WPA Guide! It seems what is now US 20 was one of the major migration routes from New England into Upstate, so a lot of history on this road! Good! I am a big history buff too, tho my main reason for this route was more to experience the landscape and terraine....
I am planning on doing that for Utica for sure....just finished reading a book on ethnic geography of Utica, and it sounds really interesting.
Hmm...maybe a side trip to Cherry Valley! I just read about Cherry Valley in an old WPA Guide! It seems what is now US 20 was one of the major migration routes from New England into Upstate, so a lot of history on this road! Good! I am a big history buff too, tho my main reason for this route was more to experience the landscape and terraine....
Seneca Falls and parts of Auburn's West Side have a pretty high Italian influence. There's also a strong Slavic concentration in Auburn around/near Casey Park in the NW section of the city, with the Polish Falcon club and the Ukrainian National Club across the street from each other. There is also an Ancient Order of Hibernian club(Irish) in that area of Auburn. Geneva has a Sons of Italy on Prospect Ave east of Main Street and just west of Route 14.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 02-19-2015 at 08:18 PM..
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