His next present was a super birthday breakfast of bacon and eggs (Mom helped ;-).
The girls had made him really cute cards.
Elena's card says, I love your jokes. She thinks Daddy is the funniest guy around. Vivian gave him props for his singing skills. He also got a special card from his dad, a classic baseball card.
I got him a shirt to show off his Finger Lakes pride.
Unfortunately, Mom and Dad had to leave after breakfast, so we hugged them goodbye, and then got on with the birthday. Step one was the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge which is at the northern end of Lake Cayuga.
It was free, which was very nice, and it had a small but excellent education center, with a ranger there who was happy to teach us all about the reserve. Our first question was why on earth it was called Montezuma. She said that the original land had been a personal estate. The owner had lived in Mexico, and the swampy terrain reminded him of it, so he named it Montezuma. When he donated the land and it became a reserve, the name stuck. While Jeff and I found that very interesting, the girls were more into the hands on displays.
OCD Elena even completed the entire print matching activity.
After the education center, we did the one mile walking trail.
There was periodic fussing, but generally speaking, the girls were good. The final part was a three mile drive through to the other side of the reserve. We drove very slowly and kept our eyes peeled for birds. We spotted quite a few. One of our first sightings was a bald eagle from what Jeff estimated to be about 500 meters. We used major zoom to get a picture.
We also saw lots of heron and geese.
Plus some cute water birds.
There were also beautiful red winged blackbirds that showed off their colors in flight, but we couldn't get a good picture of one. The girls had a bingo game to play as we drove through. It was a lot of fun.
Our next stop was a vineyard called Americana. It had been recommended on a website as kid friendly, and it had a cafe, so we were hoping for some kid friendly options, but the most important part was that they had beer as well as wine, and Jeff wanted beer for his birthday. The winery itself was very cute.
And they had a covered, open air cafe section, which lent an interesting shading to our photos, but Jeff got his beer, and I got my wine.
We were hoping for some dogs for the girls to play with, since that was their main source of entertainment at these places, but there were none out and about, so we sent the kids to run the grounds.
The food was pretty good, and we bought some fudge to take home. The most important part of the birthday, was being home to watch sunset on the patios. We started the sunset with leftovers for dinner.
The girls opted to stay inside and play war.
There were clouds, but it made for a beautiful show.
We finished on the upper deck with some of our local wine.
It was a great way to the end the day of Jeff's birthday, but it wasn't an end to the celebrations. We hadn't been out on the lake yet, and the only day I could book a boat for was the day after Jeff's birthday, so we counted it as more birthday presents for him. There was a local man with a pontoon boat who gave history tours, wine tours, and sunset tours. We opted for the history tour, which left from the Aurora Inn dock at 11am. We knew our day was going to be great when it started with a duckling sighting off the porch.
We had gone past the Inn several times, but we had never gone into it. It is beautifully decorated, and the land behind it is a slope of green grass leading to the lake. It is beautiful.
We were early, so we explored a bit and got pictures of the girls.
There was another group of two couples on the boat with us. Two of them were originally from the area, so the history part of the cruise was very interesting. Plus, it was just fun to be out on the water.
When we told our guide we were staying along the lake, he sailed over to our rental house and took a picture of us with it.
It was a great way to spend a couple hours. Afterwards, we went back to the Fargo for lunch. This time, we sat outside.
It started raining shortly after we got home, and since we were all tired from spending the first half of our day out of doors, we decided there was nothing wrong with a quiet, rainy afternoon. We even watched an episode of Our Planet that had narwhals in it, and decided we need to go up to Canada at some point to see them. The rain came down quite hard.
The sun came out to sparkle for a bit.
But, in the end, sunset was mostly overcast.
I suppose it's easier to leave a place when the weather isn't being good, but we love the Finger Lakes, so it's always hard to leave, no matter what.
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