Last day in Schenectady

Mostly I wanted to take advantage of our last day there to get some photos in areas I hadn't been able to stop for before. But this was also a fun day because it started out with meeting a buddy from San Diego - a totally unexpected treat! Turned out that my friend, Barbara, was out visiting her mom in the Syracuse area, and while we were kind of a long drive away from there at this point, it was a lot closer than San Diego! It was nice to see a familiar face finally!

Downtown Schenectady, nicely refurbished.

A kind of cute neighborhood in town.

Schenectady is home to GE.

The "First (or Dutch) Reformed Church." Founded in 1680, it was the first church in the Mohawk Valley, but I stopped because...it was pretty. This building was constructed in 1863 and then rebuilt after a 1948 fire!

One of the two Ellis Mansions, found on Union Street in the Stockade Historic District. John Ellis, the founder of the Schenectady Locomotive company, had them built for his two sons.

While driving on another day, I passed by this very picturesque horse farm, but it was rainy so I didn't stop. But I had to return and get a photo or two...

And a pretty pond/creek near there...

And most people don't stop for this sort of thing, but some of you know that I do! Yup, graveyards! There are some very pretty ones out there...!

And last but not least - we'll end on this note, with a smiley, well-fed Billy. On a different day, Bill and I had stopped for lunch at an obviously popular outdoor fast food place called Jumpin' Jack's. The food was good enough, but it was seeing how they worked it and hearing about what this little place undergoes almost annually that made this worth a picture and a story! When ordering, you stand in the long line. You are asked, way before you get to the actual ("ordering?") window, what you want. Then they yell that back to the cooks. When you get to the window, they have your food already! Those kids were really on the ball! We were very impressed! And then, while chatting with some locals, we were told about how that whole area is often inundated by feet of water in the spring, when all the river ice melts!! So yeah, I guess that explains why this classic drive-in is only open seasonally!