nice weekend

Late Friday morning Dave and I joined an old friend and his new wife for lunch at Bristol Harbor Resort, just east of here above the shores of Canandaigua Lake.    Steve and Mary Kay are finishing up a month  long dog sitting gig at a huge and beautiful home nearby so we followed them back for a tour and a cup of tea.

The home is truly a gem, spectacular location high above the shores of the lake with views that take your breath away.    The walls are covered with interesting art gathered on the owner's frequent travels, silky cherry floors and woodwork everywhere, family heirloom antique furniture and rugs, and huge windows in every room.     

We decided to begin the tour down at the water's edge so Steve began to load us in the "tram" that runs from the house's patio down a seriously steep incline to the shale covered beach.    One look down that cliff and I decided there must be another way to make the trip! 

Penny waits for others to join her on the tram

I enjoyed the long walk down at least a million stairs,  perhaps even more.      My somewhat slow descent gave me time to take in the views and the little details in the shale hillside along my route.

almost there

Needless to say, they all arrived at the bottom before I did.   I bet I had a better time though......

Once we were all on the same level we walked along the shore to the end of the property.   It was a long way and since Steve has just recently had both knees replaced he decided to find a nice place to sit and wait for us to return.    Good idea Steve!  

 Penny raced along with us barking and biting at the waves.  That cute girlie lives the good life to be sure.

Steve waits.

Some of us decided to take the stairs back up, some of us (wimps) took the tram.

Sweet Dave waits for me to catch up

view from one of the landings

We finished our tour with a good visit and a cup of tea.   All in all it was a lovely day.

Last night we were invited to the Pond's for dinner to celebrate Walter's birthday.   We had a very pleasant time and got a chance to visit with mutual friends we haven't seen in a long time.

Today, Sunday, we got back to work.   We have a busy week and Jesse is coming for a quick weekend visit on Friday so we had a few things to take care of before the weather closes in on us.

Those aren't mountains on the horizon in the picture below.    They are a bank of lake effect clouds to our west, today they only spelled rain.   In a few more weeks, however, a sky like that means serious snow.....Yikes, did I say a few more weeks?

lake effect clouds to the west

Dave was busy upstairs trying to convince a beautiful old Danish made Teak bed to accept today's thick mattresses.    It wasn't designed to hold these behemoths and it took quite a bit of  Dave's gentle persuasion to finally play nice with our tempurpedic.

I finally gave in and emptied my window boxes and crocks of their beautiful summer finery.   Its really hard to shove geraniums and licorice vines into a box and toss them over the fence when they still have life in them.     Ah well, tis pumpkin and mum time and I better give in.   

One good thing about this colder weather is that I feel like cooking more and lollygagging around the lake less.   I made a dutch apple pie for Walter's birthday and today we had maple mustard pork tenderloin with pears for dinner.     Oh, and a few left over Northern Spy apples turned into an apple betty for dessert.    

pay no attention to the empty spot in the apple betty.   Dave couldn't wait for dinner.....