Part Seven, Gouverneur and the North Country

On our way out of Syracuse, we traveled up to Gouverneur, north of Watertown by about a half hour. It was going to be a long trip in any case, but made a bit longer as I was driving. Getting off from I81, I remembered that I was to take Rte 11 North that would take me directly to Gouverneur. Getting off the exit I saw a sign for Rte 12. As I saw the sign I couldn't quite remember if it was 11 or 12 that I was looking for. Melissa was alseep and so I decided to take 12 figuring that I must have been mistaken about 11. Well, needless to say about 30 minutes later we found ourselves heading northwest towards the Thousand Islands. By the time we got to Alexandria Bay we got back towards Gouverneur.
My grandmother and grandfather lived in Gouverneur once upon a time a long time ago. I went up to Gouverneur to see a house where they lived when I was a teenager. While I also had family in the Watertown/Black River area, we've all fallen out touch. Despite it all, it was nice to be back in that area. But the main reason why went to Gouverneur was to look up my great-grandparents cemetery just outside of Gouverneur at the New St. James Cemetery. I had never been there and had never even met them, but since I am going through my family tree it was an important thing to see.

















Though M thought that all of the photos in the cemetery were sort of macabre, I like them. The boys were happy to run around and Byron communed with his great-great grandparents, Frank and Isabelle, though he was really more interested in the lichen growing on the stone.



And then the boys had to play airplane.











Leaving Gouverneur it was a scenic drive through little out of the way Northern New York towns. We stopped at a Stewarts for ice cream somewhere on Rtes 58/812 (somewhere around Croghan?).











A Jeep in someone's driveway!



Burke's! I wish that we had stopped for some.