We had two (no three) New York experiences that I want to share with you.
First, we knew that we wanted to see the area around the St. Lawrence Seaway so we headed North once again to see the final journey of the water from the Great Lakes. 30 years ago my sister Carol (who was living in NY at the time) took me to see some of the homes (often mansions) that were built on these islands during the industrial revolution. The area is called 1000 islands but there are actually more like 2000 - some are Canadian and some are U.S. The owner of Waldorf Astoria built the largest  ( the castle you see at the bottom) for his wife. She died before it was finished so he never went there again and left it unfinished. It's one of the largest castles in the world - the children had their own huge castle on the property to be used as a play house.The whole thing is now owned by the parks department.
Their are teeny, tiny homes (one called Tom Thumb) and everything in between. We love to kayack and this is one place you could never completely explore. Also it is a shipping lane and I wouldn't want to be in a kayack as one of these giant ships went by!
The second thing we experienced was the first noreaster of the season - it rained for about 60 hours with out let up. As we traveled across the state we saw the affects (including snow). We were pretty tired of the rain so to celebrate I baked a chocolate cake - really fancy and we celebrated the fact that we kept our sanity after hours and hours of wind and rain!
Jon and I continue to enjoy the large old homes that are everywhere and even more the barns. The picture of us is in a huge barn turned into a winery. After we had visited awhile our hostess took us upstairs to show us the construction - this is a Sears mail order barn. How did they mail all those huge rafters? It was beautiful and we didn't know they had mail order barns along with the homes that are so well documented.
We are soooo ready to get to the East Coast waters - so on tomorrow a beautiful drive through the Adirondacks - destination Lake Placid! TTFN