We recently had a chance to visit my old Naval Academy buddy Kelly and his multi-talented son Grant at their home in Cherry Valley up in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. We decided to escape the Annapolis steam pot and get away from the Daily News Dump of Doom. But traveling in the Age of COVID-19 can be a crap shoot. A vacation should not be life threatening, unless you happen to be into that risky sort of thing. So, Inna and I checked the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) handy-dandy interactive COVID-19 map and were pleasantly surprised to see the virus had pretty much bypassed all of the Mohawk Valley. That was reassuring. Staying on an isolated farm snuggled between the Catskill and Adirondack mountain ranges looked like a safe getaway plan. And not wanting to bring the virus with us, we quarantined at our home in Annapolis for a week before our departure. After five months of isolation, it was exciting just to think about taking to the road again.
It was only a seven hour drive to the Cooperstown area, with one very quick stop for gas and snacks (gas is about 30 cents more in Pennsylvania), and once we were north of Scranton, the countryside opened up like a flower as it followed the mighty Susquehanna River through lush farmland valleys surrounded by wooded hills reminiscent of the Shenandoah in Virginia.
It seems a bit odd to say this, but it felt really enjoyable and utterly relaxing to be in a place where there was no coronavirus — at least in theory. There had only been five reported cases in Otsego County since March. Visitors like us were by far the biggest threat.
But what we found most interesting was that the fairly conservative inhabitants of this rural farming area, pretty much untouched by the pandemic, still obediently followed the CDC’s distancing guidelines and everyone wore a mask. Compare that to places where there have been many COVID-19 cases, like most of the south. In those (Republican) parts of America, many people refuse to wear masks in spite of the clear and present danger, and it’s hard for me not to conclude the whole issue boils down to education. Where the schools suck, the people are incapable of determining fact from fiction.
The interactive map below, taken from the very respected group Save Our Children, paints a pretty sad, but obvious, picture. The Northeast puts a premium on education and they are wearing their masks, practicing proper social distancing, and slowly getting a handle on the virus, while the Confederacy and much of the western United States wallow in their ignorance, and do so at their extreme peril.
But enough preaching, here are some really cool things for you to do around Cooperstown. We basically did a a big loop, going clockwise around 9-mile-long Lake Otsego. And it was non-stop fun and games. So, let’s go!
Oh, and one more thing before we get going. All small towns in New York are referred to as villages, a habit that is both endearing and slightly pretentious.
- Park down at the lovely Council Rock Park, at the end of River Street, where Otsego Lake meets the headwaters of the Susquehanna River. Then walk a few blocks south to the city center, checking out the lovely historic houses, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Doubleday Field, and the baseball-themed shops and restaurants along Main Street.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperstown,_New_York
- Follow shady Chestnut Street past two of Cooperstown’s finest historic hotels, The Inn at Cooperstown and the Cooper Inn. Turn left on Lake Street and you will soon be greeted by the monumental Otesaga Hotel. The old lady is looking a bit shabby these days and appeared almost empty because of the coronavirus pandemic. The fancy pants bellmen that usually greeted visitors at the palatial front doors were gone and the lobby was empty but for a young woman staring at a computer screen by the front desk. She didn’t even look up when we entered. The place smelled like 1958. But the patio with its white, old time rocking chairs offered dreamy blue views of Lake Otsego. It remains a mystery to me why the Otesaga Hotel sits along the shores of Lake Otsego. Does the world really need such tongue-twisting confusion? I’ll bet you it was some rich guy’s clever idea to make the plebs feel stupid.
- https://www.otesaga.com/
- Take Lake Street (NY 80) just outside town on the west side of Lake Otsego and you will come to the Farmers Museum, depicting farming life in the 1840s. The place had just reopened the day before we visited and there were very few people taking the outstanding self-guided tour ($5 per person). The concept of the attraction is a familiar one. They moved historic houses from the surrounding countryside and put them all in a sprawling faux village. They have it all: blacksmith, apothecary, doctor’s office, tailor, general store, boarding house, church, printing shop, lawyer’s office, tavern, and cute little white wooden houses. And on the south end of the expansive estate, overlooking the exclusive Leatherstocking Golf Course, there is an actual working farm with horses, pigs, goats, cows, sheep, chickens, and a ginormous bunny rabbit, all interspersed with hops gardens, hay fields, herb gardens, reenactors playing fiddles, a happy fellow making square nails all day, docents explaining each structure, volunteers dressed in farming garb baling hay inside several large barns, and some excellent interpretive signs to tell you what the people of the Mohawk Valley grew and ate to survive in an unforgiving climate where the topsoil is thin and the underlying shale made agriculture — and anything else — pretty difficult.
- https://www.farmersmuseum.org/
- Continue driving up NY 80, heading north until you are three miles out of Cooperstown and you will see a poorly-signed wooded lane on the right, leading down a steep gravel hill to Three Mile Point, a peninsular park jutting out into the lake like a stubby finger. The free park is owned by the Village of Cooperstown. There is parking for about twenty vehicles, a small boat launch, sandy beaches, bathrooms, and a place to change into your swimsuit. This is by far the best place to swim along Lake Otsego because it has a firm gravel bottom. Everywhere else, it’s muddy and teeming with seaweed, often up to your waist, which makes for a kind of creepy swim.
- Bring along your golf sticks and play an unforgettable round of golf at at the Otsego Golf Course. Built in 1894, Otsego is one of the oldest golf courses in America. It’s an authentic Scottish links course (mostly 350-yard par 4’s) on the edge of the picturesque lake and it rings all the bells. The 9-hole course is normally only busy in the late afternoons when they have league play. And after you finish your round, cool down on the shady back porch overlooking the lake. On this last visit I caught a quick nine with Kelly and Grant and it was like playing golf in heaven. Great views. Good beer. Golden oldies on the club’s satellite radio. The smell of summer, distant rain, and freshly-cut grass. It was paradise in a nutshell. And I will treasure those dreamy hours the rest of my life. If you decide to play a round at Otsego, please be sure to tell Jeff, the friendly Club Manager, who always sports a Hawaiian shirt, that Steve sent you. Remind him I’m the writer from Maryland who loves to drink a wee dram of his Rogue Deadman’s Whiskey after a pleasant round on the links.
- https://www.otsegogolfclub.com/
- Otsego Golf Course sits at the north end of the lake, so it’s time to check out the east side on your way back to Cooperstown, following NY 31. The east side of Otsego Lake is almost all privately owned by the Clarke family.
- According to Wikipedia: “The Clark family, whose fortune originated with a half-ownership of the patent for Singer Sewing Machine, have lived in Cooperstown since the mid-19th century. The family’s holdings include interests assembled over a century and a half, which are now held through trusts and foundations. Their dominance is reflected in Clark ownership of more than 10,000 acres of largely undeveloped land in and around greater Cooperstown.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperstown,_New_York
- The one big chunk of public land along Lake Otsego is Glimmerglass State Park ($7). James Fenimore Cooper called Lake Otsego, “Glimmerglass”, in his popular book “Leatherstocking Tales” and it has a hoity-toity ring to it, for sure. And to accentuate that point, there is the Glimmerglass Festival every summer at the Alice Busch Opera Theater (as in the Budweiser beer Busches) which attracts the rich and famous like moths to a flame. The park has a wide range of shiny things: boat launch, beach, visitor center, snack bar/store, campground, playground, cabins and lodging, showers, fishing, biking, picnic pavilions, hiking trails, a covered bridge, a beaver pond, and lots of meadows and woods. We went swimming in the shallow, seaweed clinging lake with a horde of swimmers on a very hot 90-degree day. But we were able to walk down to the far end of the muddy beach; get away from people; and the water was cool, clean, and refreshing.
- Lording it over the swimming beach at Glimmerglass State Park is the historic Hyde Hall. Hyde Hall is a neoclassical country mansion designed by architect Philip Hooker for George Clarke, the first laird of the land. The original house was constructed between 1817 and 1834, and designed initially in the Palladian style, with future wings and additions following Federalist lines. We hiked up the steep road to the buff-colored field-stone treasure on the wooded flanks of Wellington Mountain. The view across Lake Otsego resembled a magnificent painting and we were the only ones there, other than an old docent who hated Trump and worried about some COVID-19 contaminated touron infecting the locals. He told us the 50-room Hyde Hall was probably the largest single family home in America between the Revolutionary and Civil wars. And when the state of New York purchased it in 1963 from the Clarke Family, who had lived there for over two hundred years — well, purchase is really not the right word, because the state appropriated the property through eminent domain on behalf of the people of New York and against the wishes of the Clarke Family — and then announced they were going to demolish the structure and build tennis courts. Can you imagine the donnybrook that ensued?
- https://hydehall.org/
I will leave you with the following two overarching realities governing the life in the heavenly Mohawk Valley.
I tend to see the layout of the land through the lens of a bicyclist and hiker. The Mohawk Valley is really a collection of lakes, ponds, streams, and valleys. The valleys are all narrow and flat — essentially lush, wet bowls with steep hills rising up to forested ridge tops on each side. So, if you go left or right in any valley, it’s straight up.
Historically, the summer temperatures rarely ever climbed as high as ninety degrees, but now it happens all the time. The local corn and dairy farmers definitely believe in Climate Change, though there is disagreement as to whether it is man made. So, when you visit in the summer, expect warm weather and make sure you are constantly hydrating yourself.
Please be safe, and remember that when you take to the highway in these uncertain COVID Times, you need to do your homework and be prepared. It aint just fun and games anymore.
As of July 21, travelers to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut from 31 states are required to self-quarantine:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Indiana
- Kansas
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Missouri
- Mississippi
- Montana
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Nebraska
- New Mexico
- Nevada
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wisconsin