Cody’s blog

Westcott Beach State Park
Route 3
Henderson, NY 13650

(315) 646-2239

June 13 – 18, 2025

We left our previous campground around 10 or 10:30 AM and drove the short 75 miles to our next campground, Westcott Beach State Park. Found my site just as John and Jill were parking their trailer at the next site. It was a nice little grassy area with looooong shallow sites, all grass with no pads marked out for parking, so it was a bit difficult to figure out where the borders of the sites were. I backed in at first, and ended up with my back door right against the trees. Stayed that way one night but discovered that there were birds sitting in the branches right by my back windows that decided they wanted to come into the van, and they pestered me constantly banging against the windows. The next day, I moved the van and parked it lengthwise on the site, hoping that moving away from the trees would cut down on the bird attacks. It did help quite a bit, but I still found myself chasing birds away from the windows. There was a Gray Catbird that was especially determined to come in, along with some smaller American Redstarts. Ah well, at least it wasn’t mice.

Aside from the birds, the sites were nice and level and reasonably private, with trees behind the sites on both sides of the road, and not that many other campers on our loop.

Since we’d arrived at our campground fairly early, we took a drive out to the Westcott Overlook, a turnout area with a view of Lake Ontario over the hill, although the bushes were so overgrown we could only see a small sliver of the lake from the spot. There was a viewer you could look through for some quarters, but we didn’t use it.

There was also a bench at the overlook, which Jill stood on in order to get some better pictures of the lake over the bushes. It was a very pretty area, and someone went to a lot of work to line the entire grass belt alongside the road with boulders.

Sunday (June 14), we drove out to Southwick Beach State Park. There was a slight delay at the entrance to the park, when we pulled over to take a photo and the van got stuck in a ditch. Oops! I went across the street to buy orange juice and a cookie at the corner store while we waited for the tow truck to arrive. They popped us right back onto the road with no trouble, and we were on our way again.

Once in the park, we walked along the beach, where a sand castle competition was being held. There weren’t a lot of competitors — we counted maybe six to eight entries — but it was the first year the contest was held, so maybe it will grow in time. The beach was lovely, anyway.

We had lunch at Colleen’s Cherry Tree Inn. I had a delicious fried haddock sandwich with fries.

(That morning, I’d awakened early, around 5:30 AM, so I stayed awake to watch J-Hope’s second Hope on the Stage Encore concert at 6 AM. The other members had attended the previous day’s concert, as I found out on FaceBook, and Jin and Jungkook performed several songs with J-Hope, so I was really hoping to catch the replay of that concert on the 20th. No members were there the second day, but it was still a great concert! He did have one guest, Crush, who sang Miguel’s part in Sweet Dreams.)

Sunday (June 15), we drove to Sackets Harbor for some sightseeing. We stopped at the Visitors Center, where they had information about the history of the area. During the War of 1812, there was a battle between ground troops on the shore and British Navy warships in the harbor.

We drove over to the Sackets Harbor Battlefield to look around. There were a lot of historic buildings from the military base, but they were all closed on Sunday.

We walked around the site, which was very pleasant, looking out over the harbor with lots of pretty trees and paths.

A large stone memorial stands in the middle of the battlefield.

Then we tried to drive to the beach, thinking we’d be able to stop somewhere to eat our picnic lunch, but we kept getting lost, and there didn’t appear to be any public beaches. So we drove back to the marina, but the few picnic tables there were occupied. Finally we just parked and ate in the van. I’d brought a can of tuna and bread to make a sandwich, but thought it would be too messy to try to make it in the van (I didn’t want to make it ahead because I thought it would get too soggy), so I ate my carrot sticks and chocolate and waited until we got back to camp to eat.

Monday (June 16), Davey decided to climb up into the “pizza oven” above the cab in the van to hang out. I pulled him out, but he went right back up there. When he decided to come down, he kept reaching for me to come and get him. I told him, you got up there, you’ll have to figure out how to get down by yourself. Eventually, he did.

Jill and I drove into town to make a grocery store run, then drove down to Sackets Harbor to sight-see a bit. Out of curiosity, I started looking up homes on Zillow to see how much a home at the harbor would cost. Not surprisingly, lakefront homes were in the $1.4 million range, but farther out in the country, a small 3br/2ba home was $595k. Then I saw a big 6br/4ba house on 20 acres with a pole barn and detached garage for $350k! We decided to drive over and take a look at it. It was a “historic home,” built partly out of limestone in 1820, formerly a B&B. Pretty cool, but that old it was bound to have… issues. We joked about buying it together—there would be plenty of room for all of us, with guest rooms to spare!

On our return to the campground, we saw a spotted fawn in the road leading to the boat launch. Didn’t see the mom deer. So cute and tiny! We drove down to see if we could spot the mom. We didn’t, and the baby finally ran off into the woods.

Tuesday (June 17), we spent the morning at the campground. I walked around and took some pictures. The campground had a stretch of beach along the lakefront that was very pretty and not at all crowded (I think I was the only person on the beach when I walked out to it). There were some campsites right along the lake, but they were primitive sites with no hookups. Lots of people camping in them, even so. I am not set up to boondock, especially camping with my cat. I need to have air conditioning in the van if I’m going to leave Davey in it while I sight-see, and the lithium batteries and solar panel I have are not powerful enough to run the air conditioner for more than a couple of hours. I would need to upgrade my system with bigger batteries and more solar. So I always get an electric site when I camp.

After lunch at the campground, we headed back into Sackets Harbor for some shopping. First stop was the Lake Ontario Gift Shop 2, which had a lot of souvenirs and clothing, many with a nautical theme. Some nice things, but I wasn’t inspired to buy anything.

Across the street was the Handmaiden’s Garden, a woo woo crystals and incense kind of shop. Lots of cool minerals and rocks, and tea and soaps and witchy stuff. I bought a really pretty bornite crystal and some crystallized ginger. The crystal was $30, which is more than I usually spend on rocks, but I decided to splurge and get the really nice one this time, instead of a couple of smaller, inexpensive ones as I usually do.

Next stop was the 1812 Brewing Company for a few beers before dinner. John and Jill shared a tasting flight, and I had a small glass of St. Stephens Stout. It was really tasty, turns out I like stout, who knew? I drank about half, and that was my limit so I gave the rest to my brother. I am such a lightweight, but I like the taste of beer.

After that, we had dinner at Good Fellos Restaurant, which I apparently did not take a picture of. Oh well, it was your basic pizza and Italian food restaurant, with friendly staff and good food. I had a veggie pizza with garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, spinach, and other yummy stuff. (Looking at their menu on the website, I see that it was called the Carceofi. I remember pointing at it on the menu and saying, I have no idea how to pronounce this. The waitress laughed and said whenever someone points at the menu she knows what they want, no one else knows how to pronounce it either.)

Then it was back to the campground to spend our last night at Westcott Beach.

Geezers on the Go – Westcott Beach State Park