Across Seneca Lake from the loops at Sampson State Park, vineyard rows run down the far shore to the water and fade out one at a time as the lake goes from blue to pewter. A couple of nights later the same light is on Cayuga, and after that on Keuka, the lake shaped like a Y with vines climbing its hillsides. Three state parks, three shorelines and one family motorhome moved between them make the week, with the awning rolled in and the bikes back on the rack each time camp breaks.
Sampson is the first night and the anchor, a big campground on Seneca's east shore that RV owners come back to summer after summer. Its pads are back-ins spread over five electric loops with 30- and 20-amp service and no water or sewer at the site, per the park's ReserveAmerica campground listing. That listing gives the site dimension as 40 feet back-in and states no overall maximum, so measure the motorhome and anything hitched behind it against that number. Lock the site in before choosing the rig, since reservations open up to nine months ahead and the pad you land decides how long a motorhome makes sense.
Cayuga Lake State Park takes the middle nights, the lake running south from the shore farther than you can see. Keuka comes last, its slopes steep enough that the vineyard rows look stacked one above the next. Only 53 of the park's 150 tent and trailer sites have electric, and none are full hookups, per New York State Parks, so it's the second reservation to make the day you book Sampson.
The days between moves belong to the Seneca Lake Wine Trail, tasting rooms looking down the rows to the water. Sampson has the dump station on the grounds, which sets the rhythm for the rest of the week: empty the tanks on the way out of Seneca, ride out the Cayuga and Keuka nights on what they hold, and finish somewhere with a sewer connection.
Finger Lakes RV Resort in Hector, on the Seneca Lake Wine Trail
Hector's big gravel yards each come with a fire ring, the lighting is kept low enough for the stars over Seneca, and the wineries and a diner are right next door. It works as the whole trip for a group that would rather stay put with the air conditioning running, or as the last two nights of the circuit once the tanks need a proper dump. Every site is full hookup with 50- and 30-amp electric, water and sewer on at least 70 feet of compacted gravel, designed for RVs up to 45 feet, in both pull-through and back-in layouts, according to the resort.
Race weekends at Watkins Glen International, which the resort puts about 20 minutes away, fill these pads and the motorhomes in the listings on the same dates, and holiday weekends do the same, so reserve the site and the rig together. For a race week camped at the track itself, within earshot of the cars, see the Watkins Glen RV page.
Corning glass and the Ithaca gorges by day
In Corning, south of Seneca, the hot shop at the Corning Museum of Glass throws furnace heat across the benches while a gaffer turns a gather of molten glass on the end of a pipe. Ithaca, at Cayuga's south end, is the other day out, about 30 minutes from Hector by the resort's count, with gorge mist drifting over the trails below the falls. Neither is an overnight on this trip: unplug after breakfast and the rig is back on its pad at the lake by dark.
Sleeping beside the falls at Watkins Glen, Taughannock, Robert H. Treman or Buttermilk is a trip for two in a smaller rig, and it's covered on the compact-rig Finger Lakes page.