What can you do when there is lousy flying weather forecast for the weekend? Well, wifey and I took the opportunity to visit some fav places and visit friends. We are big believers in supporting your local businesses, especially with less than certain times, when your patronage is much appreciated. Our weekend started early Saturday morning at the Farmer’s Market in Glens Falls. We like the variety of offerings at the Market, and got some fresh veggies from a variety of vendors, excellent meat from the Lick Springs Beefalo Farm, fresh eggs and a fav of mine, Dilly Sweet Pickles from Puckers Gourmet.
The Farmer's Market on South and Exchange Streets in Glens Falls
A look at some of the vendors
Late morning, we decided to head out into Washington County for lunch and stop-at some of our favorite farm country retailers along the way. For lunch, we headed-out for Salem and Steininger’s, which is our all-time favorite place for lunch. Steininger’s is a place that offers great soups, samiches, and desserts. Plus, if you are a fan of chocolate, this is the place.
Time for lunch
The Cafe was pretty full, even at our 2 PM reservation hour.
The view out the window of Main Street at a sleepy Salem, NY.
After our tasty soup starters, lunch is chicken salid on a croissant for Tani, and chicken curry for me.
We topped lunch off with one of their tasty desserts - fresh peaches, strawberriy jam/coulis, on vanilla ice cream and a buttermilk biscuit.
On the way back to Queensbury, we stopped at the Battenkill Valley Creamery for some of their ice cream to take home, and their farm fresh corn for the corn relish we planned to put-up in canning jars for use through the year. And since we were going past The Gardenworks at MacClan Farms on County Route 30 after visiting the Creamery, we made a stop for wifey to check-out the plant sale going on for her gardens. I picked-up some farm fresh berries and peaches to take home with us.
The Gardenworks is housed in an old converted dairy barn.
Inside they have farm fresh goods, gift items and an art gallery that features local artists.
On Sunday after we finished making our corn relish, we headed off to Vermont to meet-up with friend and fellow balloonist, Rick Pollock from Shelburne. We met-up at Middlebury, home of Middlebury College, for lunch at the Two Brothers Tavern. We took the car ferry across Lake Champlain at Fort Ti.
The queue of cars waiting for the ferry.
The car ferry docking for the trip across Lake Champlain to Shoreham VT.
The view north, up the Lake.
Wifey had to stop and check this out on the way in to Middlebury.
For wifey, it's a plant thing. In reality, it's some type of free-form sculpture using sticks and branches
Meeting-up with Rick at the Two Brothers Tavern
Good Times, enjoying some local craft brews and good food.
The dam on the Middlebury River at the Main Street bridge, center of town.
Stopped for some ice cream before heading back home.
We took the car ferry across Lake Champlain at Crown Point heading back to New York, with a view of the new bridge under construction. On a small world type of thing, the company that is building the bridge, Flatiron Construction from Firestorm CO, their lead engineer for the project is a friend of our son Grant who currently lives in Edwards CO.
Well, that’s it for this posting. Time to get on to other things!! Oh, I almost forgot, the weather for the week…well, it ain’t good for ballooning until probably Thursday, possibly thru Saturday morning. Today we get a front this afternoon with scattered showers, then clearing overnight with a little high pressure for the morning, then more wide-spread rain late Tuesday into Wednesday. Weather Service is currently forecasting a large area of high pressure for the end of the week for Thursday, possibly into part of the weekend. The weekend’s weather currently is muddled due to forecasting models not agreeing on what it will be… so stay tuned for updates.