36 Hours in Rochester, New York
While our older daughter was away at camp this year, we took our younger daughter on a small adventure to Rochester, New York. The main reason for the visit was to go to The Strong National Museum of Play. I won’t bury the lead on this one: the trip was absolutely worth it for this place. But we were also looking to get a feel for the city and to see Lake Ontario from its New York shore. My only Ontario experience prior was Toronto in summer 2023.
We arrived early afternoon on July 4th and headed directly to Durand Eastman Park which is 977 acres of land sitting right on Lake Ontario (see here for my introduction to Lake Ontario post). The 5,000 feet of waterfront was hopping for the holiday. After a picnic at a shelter area deeper in the woods, we strolled part of the Lake Trail. While there were some strips of narrow sandy beach, a lot of holiday activity was happening on boats that had been anchored close to shore, sometimes connected to each other. This is sometimes called a “raft-up”.
We stayed at The Woodcliff Hotel & Spa in Fairport, a suburb southeast of downtown. The hotel sat high on a hill offering a lookout over wooded lands stretching southwards to the Finger Lakes and westward to the distant skyline of Rochester’s downtown. We enjoyed the hotel’s indoor-outdoor interconnected pool. The indoor portion came in handy as temperatures rose over the weekend. We are a family that seeks shade!
Saturday July 5th we headed to downtown early. We took a drive through the University of Rochester campus and had pastries at a new bakery called The Pastrymancer.
We then proceeded to spend over six hours at The Strong and could have easily spent longer. Initially conceived in 1968 by Margaret Woodbury Strong, an heir to wealth from flour mills and Eastman Kodak and a collector of dolls and toys, the museum opened in 1982. The museum is two things at once, both highly interactive and highly collections-driven, making it a place of interest and engagement to all ages.
A few highlights for us:
Skyline Climb: This was the highlight our daughter keeps sharing with others. There is a high ropes course in the museum’s atrium for children of a certain height and adults. She and I traversed the walkways and rode the zipline, looking down at my husband and other visitors below.
The National Toy Hall of Fame: The Strong launched this HOF in 1998, and there are new inductees each year, some reaching far back in history. 2024’s inductees, still on display, were well known to me as a child of the 1980s: My Little Pony and Transformers.
World Video Game Hall of Fame: I have lived a life of limited video and computer game engagement, but even I was fascinated by this exhibit as well as a separate one about digital worlds. It was mind-bending to consider the technology evolution that in my lifetime has taken us from the Oregon Trail computer game to the current day of Minecraft, Twitch, and new AI driven experiences.
Playful Putters: The History of Miniature Golf: We played the 9-hole course inside the museum while learning about the history of this quirky American pastime.
The above is a small sampling of what is at The Strong and the experience of being there. An overarching part of the experience for us was the transmission of memories from one generation to the next. We played and we remembered play and the way it has shaped us over the years. It’s a meaningful reflection for mid-life.
