Our journey from New Hampshire brought us to Warren, NY.  This stop was just for two nights and served as a halfway point (thereabouts) on our way to the Finger Lake region, specifically the town of Bath, NY.

Warren is located in central New York, among the rolling hills and farmland of this very rural area.  Though we hadn’t expected to really do anything at this location other then rest and clean the cottage, to our surprise, there was an ‘attraction’ nearby that we wanted to see.

Before getting to that exciting destination let me talk about the weather.  So far we have been blessed with extremely good weather. Though there was the very occasional shower or even some hotter then normal temperatures in Maine (though they still felt nice to us) our trip has been made easier by good weather.  That streak ended here in Warren.  Over the course of the 48 hours we were in this location we received over four inches of rain.  There were streams in the drive paths at the campground and a constant pounding on our roof.  I so pitied those pour souls that were out for the weekend camping… in a tent.  Thankfully the rain didn’t start until a good bit after we got the cottage setup, and there was a two hour break in the rain when we needed to tear down to leave, everything else we did outside involved getting a bit wet.

When I was researching the area, in the hopes of maybe getting in a quick kayak trip, I found that on the south side of a large lake near us there was something familiar, the Susquehanna River!  At 464 miles long I knew that river wound it’s way quite a bit north, though I didn’t know how close we would be to it, and more specifically, it’s starting point.

Located in Cooperstown NY, the home of the baseball Hall of Fame (no Dan, we didn’t go there) on the southern end of Otsego lake is the humble source point of that mighty river.  Resembling more of a brook, this familiar river starts out at maybe 30 feet wide and a foot or two deep.  We had hoped to kayak the first part of the river a bit, but with the weather doing what it was, that was out of the question.  Despite the downpours we made the 30 minute drive from our campsite to see the rivers beginning.  Ava was kind enough to jump out of the truck with me and hold an umbrella as we ran down a wooded and grassy hill for me to take some pictures, Wendy and Sam just looked at us like we were crazy as we jumped out.

The start point of the river was actually quite lovely, with a small bench located right along the bank.  Had the sky not been showering us with bucket loads of rain I could have imagined the view, full of blue sky and sunshine, being quite lovely.

The water surprised us the most, along the edges it was amazingly clear (we thought we gave that up as we left the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire) and toward the center it took on an almost odd blueish green color.

Having that under our belts we headed back to the campsite where we found a small break in the rain which allowed us to pack up the cottage and pull out.  On the road again we were headed to what I now know (as I write this) as our final campground of this amazing trip, Hickory Hill Family Camping Resort in Bath, NY.  From there we will explore the Finger Lake region, take a day trip to Niagara Falls and allow the kids to get in some serious swimming.