We woke up between 6 and 7AM, and immediately deployed our Starlink satellite – priorities, eh (Getting in a little practice for our next stop in Canada, eh?).  Since we were near a fairly open field but the camper was parked under a tree, we used the ground quad pod, making it fairly easy to set up.  It was immediately working and pretty fast.  We downloaded our email and Tom and Scott dutifully addressed several burning problems at VideoRay that required our assistance.  Tom cooked delicious scrambled eggs and sausage, and Scott ate a dry toasted English Muffin.  At 9AM Scott and Steve walked the short distance to the store and bought a pound of butter.  The very nice lady running the store gave us excellent tourist advice as other patrons waited patiently to purchase their items.  We used this to plan our day – the morning in the Northern section, lunch at the Glen Ivy Inn, then a bit more sightseeing (if possible) before arriving at the US Army Corps of Engineers Mount Morris Dam for the once-a-day tour at 2PM.  We were warned that tours were limited to 25 people so we should get there early so we didn’t miss the tour.  Tom remembered that his college class had toured this very same Dam in 1976, though he did not remember much about it (memory is something all OWGRV folks struggled with.)

Interestingly, Scott and Steve normally suffer from allergies – with sneezing and runny noses from sleeping overnight.  Despite the fact that we had the windows open all evening, neither of us suffered from any of that.  Go figure?

We each have one key for the RV, but there is only one key for the Jeep.  We immediately started having collective trouble keeping track of who had which key and where they put it.  However, we managed to figure out where the Jeep key was (Scott left it in the cupholder overnight when moving the Jeep after we arrived the previous night,) but that was far from the last “key” issue this day.

Letchworth State Park has the Genesee River canyon the “Grand Canyon of the East”.  We enjoyed stopping at several scenic pullovers, enjoying not just the great views, but also the fact that the park was relatively quiet and empty. 

We noticed a lot of old folks like us – despite the fact that school in this part of the country has not yet started so we expected more families.  We did see both some Menonite/Amish folks and some monks of some variety.  As it warmed up we put the top down on the Jeep and enjoyed the convertible experience.  Around noon we showed up at the Glen Ivy Inn, and were very pleasantly surprised that it was not crowded at all even though the parking lot looked full), and our delicious food came pretty fast. We were out of there with plenty of time to see the best views of the Upper and Middle falls.  At the Upper Falls, Steve took some time to put a new strap on his heavy camera.  Scott was driving and had the key to the Jeep.  As Tom and Scott moved away from the Jeep (too far to talk to Steve,) Tom said “just lock it – his door is open, and the Jeep will be locked when he closes it.”  When Scott hit the lock button on the Jeep, the horn beeped and Scott worried that it would startle Steve.  It did not.

Scott and Tom walked to the Upper Falls, and, in typical OWGRV style did not even notice that Steve never did show up for the 20 minutes it took us to enjoy the falls and take pictures.  When we returned, we noticed Steve talking to a young couple and not even trying to join us or see the falls.  Turned out Steve tested how well the Jeep security worked when locked but with the top down.  While sitting in rear seat Steve noticed the Lady in the car next to him was trying to get into her car.  Steve courteously closed the door so she could get by, unintentionally locking himself in the car.  He also discovered that he could not open the rear doors. Not wanting to look like a car thief by climbing out the roof, he opened a front door and set off the alarm.  He then noticed the nice couple who were deciding whether to call the police, and convinced them he was not a jeep thief.  If Tom and I had not arrived he would still be talking to them.  If Tom and I had not arrived he would probably still be talking to them. 

There were two more scenic outlooks to check out before we went to the dam, but Tom declared after the first that we would not make it to the dam tour by 2PM (the one and only tour each day) if we visited the second one.  Given the general lack of cell coverage, we couldn’t know how right he was.  We arrived at the dam visitor’s center at 1:59:30PM, and dropped Tom at the door to the visitor center to plead our case while Scott and Steve parked Polo and ran as fast as old guys could. We passed the park ranger as we entered and he lead the tour, but Tom had us registered so we simply showed our ID, signed, and ran as fast as old guys can to catch up with the group.

The dam tour was very good, although since this dam was just for flood control (largely to save Rochester), it has no electricity generation capability.  Interestingly, Steve had inspected a similar dam with a VideoRay in the Philippines (in worse shape.) 

Before dinner Steve walked around the campground taking great pictures of wildlife and offering the only fast internet around to our fellow campers by sharing the password for the Starlink. After dinner we realized that there were 12 devices on the Starlink router, and only a bit more than half of them were ours (phones, computers, tablets, and such.)

We returned to the campsite, and (with more supplies from the store) ate an excellent meal of hamburgers (grilled by Tom on our ancient portable grill,) Ray Bentley corn on the cob picked, husked, and cooked by Scott on the Khan Instant pot (first use – eventually sorta successful, Scott thinks,) and microwaved beans.  While looking for a pot to cook the beans, we realized we have left the Pyrex bean-cooking bowl in Florida.