July 8 – Skaneateles, NY

Allan H. Treman State Marine Park

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today we drove over to Skaneateles Lake, a finger lake east of Ithaca, to check out the Finger Lake Lavender Festival. This area of New York is beautiful...rolling hills, green pastures, beautiful tall trees, red barns and amazing views. The festival was at Lockwood Lavender Farm, which overlooks the lake. The farm is open daily in June and July for people to pick lavender bouquets, wander through their beautiful grounds taking pictures and shop for lavender products in the drying barn. But this weekend they also offered an arts and craft show, music and food. It was a great experience, but photo ops would have been better when the crowd was smaller. 

Pictures from the Finger Lakes Lavender Festival

When we left the festival we drove north along the lake to the town of Skaneateles...what a beautiful, very wealthy, little town. The houses along the lake were huge...VERY large estates with manicured lawns and fancy boathouses. The main street runs along the lake filled with high-end shops and old homes. The water in Skaneateles Lake is very clear and we found out later it's a spring fed lake, it was simply beautiful and reminded me of where my grandma lived on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.

Landscape in the area

Skaneateles