Even in the middle of a state park, surrounded by 19 majestic waterfalls, signs of Covid-19 were present. Literally. Signs directing visitors to stay six feet apart, to hike in one direction. People wearing masks, keeping their distance. But still, the area offered us the best chance of a brief escape from the lockdown and the health crisis.
Our first vacation in a year, just me and my husband, in a rural Finger Lakes region of New York that’s 16 times larger than our suburban New Jersey hometown, has more than twice as many people and half as many Covid-19 cases. I had been working full time from home for more than three months. My husband already worked from home, and our six adult children (blended family — I have two and he has four) spent varying amounts of time at our home. We slowly had figured out a way to not kill each other while under the same roof for 24 hours a day. But everything was different when it was just the two of us, hundreds of miles from home. 
We had last been to this region six years earlier, and fell in love with the nature, the wineries, the food. Any hope of traveling somewhere different, exotic and/or international by had been dashed by the risk of contracting coronavirus on a plane, in an airport or in a foreign land.
So we returned to the Finger Lakes. After careful researching of Covid-19 protocols, I had booked us in a hotel on one of the 11 lakes we had not visited before. It looked nice from the outside. I thought I had booked a clean hotel with open dining, swimming and a gym. We got none of that. The next day, soon after an unapologetic manager finally returned my call, we checked out and headed to the town and the hotel we knew and loved.
The switch was well worth it. As we neared the town of Watkins Glen, my anxiety dissipated. We stopped at a hops farm and brewery. With our masks on, we waited six feet behind the person in front of us and then ordered a flight of eight. We sat outside at a Freshly sanitized picnic table with our beers, our own chips and salsa and a view of the lake and farmland.
When we checked in at our new hotel about an hour later, the place was clean, the restaurant was open as promised.
Later we walked through the town, made famous by its car racing history . We stopped at a BBQ place that had one-way arrows directing people through the restaurant. We sat at an open-air bar. One of the bartenders, Abby, was the niece of the owner of a nearby winery and had a wine — Abby Rose — named after her.
Later we walked to the waterfall park. We were alone and wondered for a minute if the place had closed and we missed a sign. But we wandered anyway, just us and nature’s beauty, until it grew close to dusk. 
The next day we hired a masked taxi driver to chauffeur us to the wineries and breweries. We wore masks in the car and inside the stops but spent more of our time outside, enjoying the view and the samples.
That night we tried a Thai restaurant in town. We walked inside and the friendly owner took our temperatures. We contemplated whether to sit inside or outside. We were the only ones in the one side of the restaurant so we agreed to sit inside.
For our final day on vacation we returned to hike the waterfall park. We were not alone this time. Many people wore masks; many did not. We took more than 100 stairs up to get a high view of the scenery, then followed the one-way signs around the park, over bridges, under waterfalls, up more steps and then down the hill and back to town. 
Later we took a cruise of Seneca Lake and then chanced it at the indoor hotel bar. We were the only ones in there other then the two masked bartenders. We almost felt normal. We sipped drinks, shared a cheese plate. Then we decided to order Italian food in and spend our last night doing nothing but reading our books. Because we could. So we did.
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