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47

On June 17. 1911, we left for our first "auto trip" as my Mother refers to it in a diary she was keeping at the time. It was fair and cool. It was a Saturday and the trip lasted just one week. We stopped the first night in Cortland and found the hotel both "good and [[underscore]]cheap[[/underscore]]." Mother says they were delighted with the "fine pavements" in Cortland and wished Syracuse had as much enterprise. We spent the next night in Ithaca. The next day, went to Watkins Glen which "holds first place for beauty of scenery, excellence of hotels, and height of prices, which we felt resigned to; as everything was beyond criticism." The next stopping place was Dansville, where “we put up at the 'Jackson Sanitarium', a very good place but too much like a hospital to be very cheerful. On our way there, Forman was quite sick and vomited over everything but was all right the next morning." Coming into Dansville, we had our first and only puncture. Mother says we admired Keuka lake, which was a wonderful green—blue, almost iridescent, at whose foot was Hammondsport, the great wine center. We went on to Geneva via Geneseo and Canandaigua and stopped overnight at Geneva, where the hotel was "pretty poor." Thursday had a beautiful drive down the shore of Seneca Lake and across to Sheldrake, where we stayed until Friday noon although not pleased with the hotel, where the food was poor and the prices exorbitant. Friday was my birthday (9th) and my father and I went fishing in a pond near the hotel, catching a bass and some perch. Mother gave me some stamps for my collection and Father gave me $9. We Spent Friday night in Ithaca again and drove home Saturday, having dinner in Auburn, presumably the Osborne House, and got home at 5 p.m. Mother writes: "It was a very satisfying trip and did us all good. We enjoyed the riding and Sammy drove splendidly. We are all hoping to take another before the summer is past." Later, the diary says a trip was planned through the Berkshires to Boston the first of August but it didn't materialize for some reason, the diary stopping on July 12th. One of the interesting things about this trip is the fact that as of right now, you could probably take, the whole trip in one day as far as the driving is concerned. Another interesting thing to me, is the complaints about high prices just the same as we complain today.

Instead of taking the New England auto trip, we went to Rustic Lodge in August. It was a very nice resort hotel on Upper Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, the post office being Coreys, N.Y. It appears that Mother and I spent two or three weeks there with Father being there at the beginning and the end of the stay, returning to Syracuse during the mid—portion of the visit. One letter from Father to Mother indicates he has just returned to Syracuse on August 18th, Annie, the Indian maid, had cleaned the house, and he was sending Mother a supply of Zwieback and "bromo" (Bromo— caffeine), the former a toastlike biscuit made by Nabisco, and the latter, I think a headache remedy which Mother apparently relied on pretty heavily as I can remember it very well.