We arrived at Sampson State Park  after a short one hour drive that took us up the western side of Seneca Lake, over the top and halfway down the eastern side. The route we chose stuck close to the shore and offered gorgeous views of a sparkling blue lake on one side and miles of vineyards on the other. Easy to see why this area is so popular!

This park is huge. It’s located on over 2000 acres of land once used as a navel training station during WW II and later as an air force base during the Korean War. Today, instead of fighter jets and navy boats the area is teaming with RVs and pleasure boats. Lots and lots of RVs. Makes you wonder if anyone goes tent camping anymore? Since we arrived on Friday afternoon without a reservation our choice of sites was somewhat limited. Out of 264 sites only 6 were available for both Friday & Saturday night! The layout of the campground is pretty typical with 5 loops that have sites on both the outer and inner ring of the loop. The outer sites boarder woods and the inner sites back up to a swath of grass. Given a choice we would have picked an outer site, but since none were available we ended up with an inner loop site that had a few trees for shade. All the sites have a somewhat level gravel pad and a large grassy area. In fact, the grassy area was downright huge.

You can see that although we have neighbors on both sides, there is still tons of space between us. I feared that a campground this large would be noisy and cramped but so far so good. The most disturbing noise is from the training wheels on the neighbor kid’s bike. Those plastic wheels on a gravel road are quite loud! By the speed he’s traveling I suspect it might be time to take those babies off- but what do I know :)

On our last day at Keuka Lake we stopped at the Indian Pines Farm Market where I picked up some local blueberries and peaches. Feeling inspired I made sweet + spicy glazed chicken, corn + avocado tostadas with blueberry peach salsa. Grilled corn, sweet & spicy chicken and fresh fruit salsa all piled on a grilled corn tortilla! Can’t wait to eat the leftovers for lunch.

After dinner we walked down to the lake so Phineas could get in one last swim for the day (he already went twice earlier in the day). The shore is crawling with fragrant wild sweet pea vines.

Look at Tim wearing flip flops! A sure sign that the relaxation mode has set in.

Here’s our daily picture of Phineas in the lake with a stick in his mouth. We joked about re-naming the blog “Phineas in the lake with a stick”.

A beautiful end to a fabulous day.

Comments