East Coast Road Trip: From Clemson to Montreal

I haven’t written anything about it up until now because there wasn’t anything to report. But today, the start of October, was our first fall “leaf-peeping” day of the trip so far (albeit probably at least a week or so off from the peak) as we travelled from Essex to Cooperstown, NY.

Cooperstown, renowned for the Baseball Hall of Fame, is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Essex without any stops. But due to a gas refill and a quick lunch stop it took us a little over 4 hours.

Cooperstown is a quaint little community (population around 1,800) that has been heavily influenced by its claim to fame – being the questionable birthplace of baseball.

I’ve wanted to visit this Hall of Fame for awhile. Lorna not so much. I praise her for “humoring” me and spending 2 1/2 hours there this afternoon.

Some pics of our visit…

Some players who are in the HOF that I’ve watched over the years or have great respect for based on their influence on the game:

Carved statues of Babe and Ted…

The first HOF class in 1936…all icons in the sport.

Since we didn’t have lodging for the night, we found a Best Western a few miles down the road that was convenient. We checked in and we’re elated that they had laundry facilities available as we’d packed for slightly longer than a week and we were up against it. Laundry Victory!

Getting hungry for dinner, we found an Italian restaurant nearby that we just showed up at without a reservation. It turned out that they’re closing tomorrow for a 6 month renovation so they were doing a one-night, get-rid-of-everything, priz fixe, unlimited wine deal for a reasonable price. They referred to it as “The Last Supper”.

They served us several courses including a salad, linguine, fettuccine, spaghetti with seafood (when I told our waiter I liked fish), lasagna, penne Alfredo, meatballs, pizza, pork loin and we finished with sharing a molten chocolate cake and generous red wine pours. Didn’t photograph each course but here’s the seafood pasta and the molten chocolate cake.

Thank you, Bocca Osteria, for a memorable evening!