First stop: Lily Dale

I'll warn you right now, this is a long post with many pictures. Proceed at your own risk.

Hi, yes, I'm back. I owe you guys a trip post. You asked for pictures and I took them. We started out around 8:00 am last Saturday and just went straight across Michigan to Canada.

The sky was pretty. I don't know how well this picture will show it.


We always go through a town called Hamilton on our way. Here's a shot of it. I have sometimes missed getting off the highway in time and we've driven around quite a while looking for it.


It's hard to spot in this photo but it's a picture of the ubiquitous Tim Horton's. I finally saw one in the US, but always before I've only seen these in Canada.


Thought I'd get this shot of heading back into the States. I liked that this guy was living in Pennsylvania but either was from Canada or just loved Canada.


Then we headed down South of Buffalo to a lovely little spot called Cassadaga. It's on Lake Cassadaga and has vacation spot written all over it. But there's really not that much for rentals around there. The economy is depressed and the homes in the area are a little worse for wear.

But in one small part of Cassadaga there's a little community called Lily Dale. It's a community of Spiritualists, mediums. We spent a couple of days there. They are on the lake and next to the woods. Their main two hotels have been around since the 1800s. In keeping with that tradition they have no air conditioning, phones, televisions. or elevators. Or internet!

This was the old dresser in our tiny room at the Leolyn Hotel.


Here's the bed that was shorter than 6' long. Poor Ichabod. Good thing we were only there for two nights.


The outside of the hotel was very old-fashioned, too, of course.



And the view from the back was gorgeous.


The Leolyn Hotel is just about 100 feet outside of Lily Dale. Here's a blurry shot leading up to it.


This is just inside the gate.


There were stores where you could buy crystals, books, clothes, all kinds of fun things like that. I didn't get any pictures of them. I also didn't take pictures of people's homes there, either. Felt kinda funny about that for some reason. But I did get some nature shots of Leolyn Woods.




This one's kinda blurry but you can see the shelf mushrooms on this tree.

This one appears to have pilleated woodpecker holes in it.

This one is of Inspiration Stump where they give free "readings" to people who sit in the audience.


In the Leolyn Woods there's also a pet cemetery.





And last, but not least:


They have a dock on the lake.

Here's the only picture I got of Ichabod during the entire trip.


I don't know what this is but wanted to get a picture of it anyway.


And, of course, I had to get some flowers. Here's some yellow hawkweed.

This is called nut grass.


There are plenty of cats wandering freely there, too. This is the only one I got a picture of. It had just cleaned itself when Ichabod whistled and it headed over to us. See its cowlick? (catlick?)


We also took a car drive and saw this really cool creek. We couldn't get down there but I got some pictures from the bridge.




Our first night there we decided we wanted to take a walk and get a drink. We had to go more than a mile to get to the little redneck bar in Cassadaga. We met this guy, probably in his mid-50s, who was quite a character. He'd been in Viet Nam, in prison, and drug rehab. We had a really fun evening talking with him. I have since referred to him as the "other" local color.