I do some writing for the tourism bureau here in Chautauqua County, which, by the way, does an excellent job marketing our area.

And they proposed a few writing ideas for a fall blog post – including a piece about driving around the lake.

It got me to thinking about that ride – something I’ve done often in my life, especially when I was young and made the trip with my grandmother and great-grandmother on the occasional Sunday.

Make no mistake: this was a big excursion.

We’d pick my great-grandmother up at her house with the apple tree out front and she’d slowly walk to the car and get in the front seat with her wrinkled cotton dress and a little sweater folded over her arm.

I remember that her ankles were often swollen and that I had this idea that she couldn’t have ever been 10-years-old. There was no trace of any child-like behavior in her, except when you asked her what she wanted to do that day.

“I’d like to get an ice cream sodie,” she’d say, and for the rest of my life I would remember the way she pronounced the word soda.

So, we’d set off from the big city, headed towards Mayville via the north side of the lake and I can’t remember where now, but somewhere along the way we’d stop and get an ice cream sodie.

I think it was chocolate and it probably cost a dime, which now makes me feel about as old as my Great-Grandma Johnson.

I don’t think we stopped much on our way around the lake but we never cheated by taking the ferry. If we said we were riding around the lake in my family, then by golly, we were going the whole way.

My mother’s family used to own a cabin above the Long Point sign and that was an important landmark – peering through the trees up on the hill as we drove by. In my whole life, I’ve spotted it just a handful of times which only adds to its mystery.

My mother had never liked going there in the summers because it was “boring” and too far removed from her circle of friends, and she’s never had one nice thing to say about the place since I was born. So, even today I look for it and assign it all sorts of negative adjectives as I pass it by, still uncertain if anything is actually standing there.

People from Jamestown had summer houses by the lake back in the early to middle 1900’s. It’s not that they were pretentious sorts, but that’s just what folks did back then. Land was cheap and so were taxes, so why not have a second home by the lake? Even my Great-Grandfather Johnson had a little bungalow in Lakewood. My mother still tries to pick it out when we’re driving down East Terrace, to which I always say, “Why did they ever sell it?”

The Mar-Mar restaurant was a landmark too because that’s where my mother professes to have spent many nights at a certain age having fun with her friends. It seems to conjure up happier memories than the cabin ever did.

We’d usually stop at Stowe and watch people fish or to spy the ferry as it made its way across the lake – a line of cars waiting their turn.

“You know,” I tell my kids about the lake, “there wasn’t always a bridge here.”

I don’t think they understand the significance.

“Well, there wasn’t always a bridge anywhere there’s now a bridge,” the oldest says.

In later years we’d pass the mall in Lakewood on that ride which was a much more welcome addition to my life than the bridge ever was.

I remember once walking with friends across the frozen lake from Greenhurst to Lakewood to go to that mall and look for jeans which was a crazy idea – even at that time.

“Am I just imagining that I did that?” I ask my mom, “because I can’t imagine any parent saying yes to that.”

She doesn’t remember and to be honest, I’m not sure it ever really happened.

I remember sometimes ending the trip around the lake at Johnny’s Lunch or stopping at a bakery so my great-grandmother would have rolls to dip in her coffee the next morning.

And it seems to me now, when conjuring this all up, that our trips around the lake were highlighted by my family’s own landmarks and memories – that whatever spots had significance to us became a part of the trip – those things we would look for when we passed by years later.

I’d love to hear what landmarks are significant to you on your own trips around the lake for a future column.