Sampson State Park, Romulus, New York
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. ~ Psalm 119:11
Today’s adventure took us to the town of Seneca Falls, where we encountered several surprises. First of all, there is no waterfall. At least not anymore. There used to be a small one on the river, but former industry removed it. I guess the town councils have never wanted to change the name of the town. 😊
Not much here but a few antiques and a couple of brochures.
We enjoyed what we could.
We’ve never seen one of these before either.
and took this picture which shows Seneca Falls.
No one was too interested in speaking with us,
and there wasn’t anything else of interest here, so we left.
Don’t quite understand all the rubber duckies . . .
Looks nicer on the outside. : )
Did Shirley, Keith and Laurie, et al live here at one time?? : )
Imagine our surprise when we ran across a sign that said, “Welcome to Bedford Falls”.
At least we had a bit of warning about it, because people on Tripadvisor had mentioned a museum dedicated to the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. We weren’t particularly interested in paying to see it, so we walked by.
At one time, it was the town’s theater.
On the way back up to downtown, we decided to give it a quick look – – if it was free. It was, and we did. But the place was much larger than we expected! Who knew there could be so much stuff about one old black and white movie! Now don’t get me wrong, we love “It’s a Wonderful Life”. We watch it almost every Christmas. But an entire museum?
A look into the making of the movie, and afterwards.
That’s interesting to read, but we didn’t read all of it.
We never knew . . .
Once we were finished walking around, I just had to stop and ask the volunteer working there – – “What does all this have to do with Seneca Falls?” “Nothing.” Well, that explains why we didn’t see anything about it, although granted we didn’t do a thorough investigation. But then the woman went on to say that one day, Frank Capra (the director/film maker) stopped in the local barber shop where the barber and patrons regaled him with stories about their town, including the fact where an Italian immigrant saved a woman who’d jumped from the bridge (the green one in our pictures) and although she was saved, her rescuer drowned.
that got people wondering if Capra got his inspiration from Seneca Falls.
They believe that story and others, inspired Frank Capra to base parts of his movie on Seneca Falls. Who’s to argue? The movie came out in 1946. The museum opened December 10, 2010. It seems this town now bases quite a bit of tourism sales around this little museum and movie. There are all kinds of theme based paraphernalia for sale, festivals and races.
Our last big surprise, was the discovery that the National Woman’s History Museum was based here. We don’t know why, because all the window ads and information boards were quite nasty and geared more towards man-hating. Which made us wonder why our government would declare such a place worthy of National Park status. We understand the need for the women’s suffrage movement (which took over 100 years for them to gain the right to vote). Women are plenty smart enough to vote. And we understand equal pay for equal work (The key word here being equal work. Blaine encountered several women who weren’t up to the task of pulling their weight as an electrician.) And we agree that women shouldn’t have to put up with sexual harassment either. (But no one wants to talk about how some women encourage it and send mixed signals, especially in the way they dress.) What we don’t get why they think they have to be so angry and bitter – especially about men. There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll refrain. This isn’t that kind of platform. 😊
I was very pleased to discover that this museum isn’t really a National museum. They just put the name in the title. And I came to find out that it’s not even really a museum yet. At this stage they’re wanna-be’s and trying to raise funds. But they’ve managed to put up a few plaques around town and have a very small area that they call a park.
I probably wouldn’t have even taken any pictures.
But it’s here, and we saw it, so I guess that makes it blog-worthy.
Following our visit to town, we stopped at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. (This really is part of our National Parks system. 😊)
but the nest is no where near the correct size. : )
However, you get the picture.
We managed to spot Great Blue Herons, red wing hawks, osprey and one juvenile eagle who was eating a fish, but it was so far away, we had to use binoculars to see it.
There was a short trail. . .
And a loop drive.
You can see why there aren’t better pictures. Much too far away.
We were actually sitting a little higher than this picture shows, so we could see better.
We didn’t spend time here, Blaine just took a quick picture,
because people were driving up behind us and we didn’t want to block the road.
Plus a family was getting out to look at it up close.
They were kind enough to wait until Blaine took his picture. : )
The ospreys were at their nests on top of power poles on the road by the Refuge. The nests were so large, we thought they were eagle nests at first!
Another good day! It’s a Wonderful Life we live! 😊 And we thank the Lord for the privilege!