July 25 - 26, Rochester NY

Bryn: We drove from Rome, arriving at cousins Lynn and Tim's house near Rochester after lunch. They took us to Lake Ontario (our first Great Lake on this trip). We walked to the end of the pier, there were lots of clouds and a brisk wind (more on this later). Then we strolled along the boardwalk to Abbott's Custard, where we tried our first local food tradition (more on this later too). Lynn also gave us a brief driving tour of Rochester.

Back at their house, the boys enjoyed rousing games of pool, ping pong, and wii. The sky was getting darker, then Tim's sister called - turn on the tv, there's a tornado warning! We watched tv and had a huge dump of rain. We all jumped when lightning hit nearby, Randy had a great view of the bolt out the sliding glass door. The tornado did touch down and caused damage in Corfu, a few towns over from where we were. Whew! We decided to order pizza and buffalo wings (more traditional Rochester area food), then played some board games and some wooden toys and puzzles that Lynn's father made.

Sunday - see next post!

Sunday dinner - Garbage Plate! Randy's friend Dave told him about this truly traditional Rochester food. Tim said that Randy was their first visitor who ever asked about one. Bravely, the men in the group all tackled one. The basic consists of a couple of cheeseburgers topped with fries, macaroni salad, then spicy meat sauce. Tim went with the basic. Randy varied by having cheeseburger and hot dog, and substituting baked beans for mac salad. Reed went with cheeseburgers, home fries and baked beans. Lynn, Bret and I went with more traditional sandwiches.
I'll let the boys add their comments....
Randy: A garbage plate is (at least where we went -- apparently each restaurant has a slight variation on the theme) three cheeseburger patties covered with macaroni salad (?) and french fries. This whole concoction is covered with mustard, a meat sauce (kind of like a beanless, not-very-spicy chili) and onions. It is both as good and as bad as it sounds. It is very greasy, but tastes ok until all the fat catches up with you. Our host Tim has it once a year and that's probably enough. My frequency is about once every fifty years and I expect that frequency to decrease with time.