Albany- Saturday, October 7, 2023

      For the last couple weekends we have been touring around Western New York, exploring places featured in the booklet "Haunted History Trail of New York State."  We discovered the brochure last year, and did a little driving around Western New York, not really expecting to see any ghosts because most of our driving was in the daytime but having a lot of fun exploring.  [Although maybe we did end up encountering someone from beyond on a porch down in Salamanca. That's a different story for another time, though.]  We found this year's edition and decided to use it to explore again.  We found that it takes us to fun places, like cool places to eat, even without any spectral encounters.  Two weekends ago, we went north to Niagara County, had lunch where "Jim" and "Pam"got married on The Office, and explored along the Erie Canal to Medina.  Last week, we went out to Rochester and had a delightful day.  We were in the pretty park that sits alongside Lake Ontario where the "White Lady" is supposed to appear, let Abby play on some playgrounds in the great weather, ate dinner at Union Tavern and heard some stories from the staff there, let Abby ride a carousel on the beachside, and ended up at a lighthouse that we hadn't ever visited before.  It was a great day, and Julie hoped to extend our luck by exploring further afield during this 3-day weekend.  After some research, she found some interesting listings in Saratoga Springs.  Hotels were expensive there, so we ended up making some reservations for Saturday night at a place north of Albany.

     We spent Friday night at home as Emma was doing some work for school, and we were recovering from a crazy week.  We left for Albany a little around 8:30 this morning, Saturday.  We got to Albany around 2:30 in the afternoon.  We decided to go to New York State Museum, which is across the plaza from the state capitol building.  We had visited with Anna and Emma before back in 2012 (and Scott had come here once for some professional development before that).  There weren't any spooky stories associated with the museum in the booklet. [Scott seemed to remember that there were some sacred Native American objects in storage that had some stories associated with them, but he didn't remember any details.]   We drove around a while looking for parking, but once we got into the building, we headed to the 4th floor where the antique carousel is.  Abby loves riding merry-go-rounds, and this one was the 4th one she has been on this year [including Canalside in Buffalo, Dutch Wonderland, and the one in Rochester last week].  She could hardly wait the few remaining minutes until 3:00 for the next time it would operate.  Her sisters had ridden this one back in 2012, and it had been built in North Tonawanda.  After her ride, we looked at the view of the capitol building across the way, and then went down to the first floor where the main exhibits are.  There wasn't a lot for Abby to do here, so she and mom passed relatively quickly back to the corner to "Discovery Place" where there was more for her to get her hands on.  Emma and Dad worked slightly slower through the exhibits.  Scott lingered for a while on the Fort Orange exhibit because he had seen videos about the archeological artifacts on display there.  He also spent a little longer around the Native American exhibits, with the life-size model of the longhouse that was being built here when he had his teacher-training back in 2008.  Only this week, he discovered how his 7th graders have an Iroquois-shaped hole in their knowledge.  When they usually would have learned about New York's Native Americans, in 4th grade, we were in our COVID schedules, and very little teaching or learning was done.  Scott took a few more clips of video than he normally would have, fully intending to use them in class this coming week.

     After the museum, we drove a short ways north to our hotel and checked in, and then looked for a place to eat.  Julie wanted somewhere fun, so we ended up going to a place called "The Tipsy Moose."  It was a small place, but was quite full and very busy.  Even though it was raining and chilly, we ate out on the patio where plastic sheets and heat lamps helped keep us warm.  The service was a little slow, but Julie was most surprised by her food.  She had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, which seemed like a pretty easy, standard order.  When it came, the sandwich had been deep fried.  It was not what she expected, so Scott ended up eating a lot of it, along with his Buffalo chicken sandwich and Schenectady brewed beer.

     We were then ready to go back to the hotel.  Abby had been asking about it all day because to her, hotels mean pools.  This pool's water was a little cold, but she was excited to spend some time in it anyway.