Fall in the Finger Lakes

Once again we made it out late in the season for a long weekend of family camping in New York's finger lake region. Although the weekend started out with a lot of rain on the first night this year proved to have no disappointments. This year we made stops at the Corning Museum of Glass and several wineries along eastern shore of Seneca Lake. I've posted about the virtues and the luck-of-the draw of fall camping before, always memorable and often great time!

2012 TCT NE Regional Rally

Another year and another Tin Can Tourists Northeast Regional Rally! We are amazed at how fast time seems to be moving along these dates. This was the 5th year this rally has been held at Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake in central New York state and for us this this rally has become a "must attend" annual event. We enjoy seeing friends, swapping stories, and checking out a range of vintage trailers that have been fully restored, renovated with modern touches, or have just been pulled out of the woods. We had fun prepping for the rally this year with a new "family game night" theme" that included an outdoor bowling ally, a handmade checkers board, vintage scrabble, and other card and board games. This year it seemed like the Airstream crowd was back after being down in numbers a bit for the last two years. I'm always amazed at how many nice vintage Airstreams there are in the area. There were a number trailers at the rally for the first time this year, some of our favorites included our friends 1958 Trotwood that we saw earlier this year in the ADK's, an perfect 1954 Aljoa, a 1961 Hi-Lo that you could crank down like a pop-up, a 1964 Shasta 1500, a tiny Metzendorf, and a 1972 Apache tent trailer. For a while now I've been thinking that we ought to start seeing a few more tent trailers showing up at  vintage events and am starting to see some hints that it's starting. Several recent issues of the TCT newsletter Tin Can Tales has included a multi-part article about the history of Popup campers. A big thanks goes out to the Fletchers who have organized this rally since it's start and to the others who've helped make this rally a success over the years.  This year as we saw last year there were quite a few day visitors who heard about the rally and stopped in to take a look. I've included a few photo's above but if you want to see more I've created a 2012 TCT NE Regional Rally set on Flickr.