WELCOME TO ROYCROFT

Today was sort of a travel day, but only from Buffalo to East Aurora. We arrived here at about 10:30 but rooms weren’t available until later (which turned out to be 3 p.m.). We took a little walk downtown. East Aurora is a place that is known because of Roycroft and Elmore Hubbard and the founding of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and is also the birthplace of President Millard Fillmore. However, there isn’t a lot here now. They obviously have made an attempt to make the place a tourist attraction, mainly by repaving the main street with bricks. It looks quite cool, but I wonder how bricks will hold up with snowplows. The biggest store in town is Vidler’s five and dime which is sort of like an old Woolworth’s or something, but has more modern products. I took a picture of a sign on the back of the store that looks like it sticks out from the store (a trompe de l’oeille). I thought it would be entertaining to make a video of the sign so you could see what happens to it as you come around the sign. Well, of course, I was so busy looking at the sign in the viewfinder that I stepped into a puddle rather spoiling the video and soaking my shoe. DUH. We looked in a couple of other open shops, but they don’t have much open on Sunday here, so we ended up eating lunch for something to do and a chance to sit down. This place was a big coffee shop called, I think, the Grind. It’s one of those places with comfy chairs, menus on chalk boards, and a wall outside covered with huge murals. We came back at 2:30 and our room still wasn’t ready, but at 3:00 we checked into our Exploritas (aka Elderhostel) and met some of the people. We are apparently from the furthest away, and seem to be the only people who didn’t come by car. Turns out not all the stuff we will be doing is going to involve buses, so we will have to carpool with other people for some parts of it. I hope we don’t get stuck with somebody who’s a scary driver. Anyway, we finally made it to our room. The rooms are wonderful but they are COLD and you can’t turn off the AC. They have two thermostats in every room, but they set the range downstairs of about 6 degrees and you can only move it up or down from that. You can’t turn it off, Right now we have the windows and the door open which is probably just making the AC work harder to try and cool off the hall (which is about the right temperature as far as I’m concerned).
Our welcome treat today was a Syracuse cake made by local lady who was a real hoot. Think Betty White personality vs. appearance. Dinner tonight is Ahi tuna with sesame seed crust, hoisin sauce, pickled ginger & wasabi horseradish over soba noodles and Asian vegetable salad. Can’t tell you how much I need some vegetables. Tomorrow night we have a slow food dinner from whatever is available at the morning farmer’s market.