With the recent passing of baseball hall of famer Harmon Killebrew, I reflected back on a visit to Cooperstown, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum. Killebrew was enshrined at the Hall in 1984. Located just over 200 miles north of New York City, Cooperstown is also part of a marketing effort on the golf front. The New York Golf Trail (http://www.nygolftrail.com) is a collaboration of several highly rated upstate New York golf clubs, restaurants, and hotels clustered around six of the state’s most popular vacation destinations, including Cooperstown. Other destinations on the trail include Lake Placid, Saratoga, Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley, and central New York.
Just this year, an additional seven golf clubs joined the New York Golf Trail, bringing the total to 22 courses. In Lake Placid, for example, visitors will appreciate the stunning courses of Whiteface Club & Resort, Saranac Inn Golf & Country Club, and the Malone Golf Club. In addition to golf, the 1980 Winter Olympic venue Lake Placid offers visitors year-round Olympic experiences like bobsledding or skating on the same sheet of ice where the “Miracle on Ice” took place. Don’t miss a ride on the Cloudsplitter on Whiteface Mountain, one of the most scenic gondolas in North America.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum is a must-see. It is home to thousands of the game’s most important and unique artifacts. The 2011 induction weekend is July 22-24. Don’t miss experiencing Doubleday Field, which is only a few blocks away, and Main Street is filled with baseball 
shops and great restaurants. Annually, on Father’s Day Weekend, the Cooperstown Golf Classic takes place. This year it was held at Leatherstocking Golf Course with several Hall of Famers participating, including Andre Dawson, Goose Gossage, Phil Niekro, Tony Peres, Jim Rice, and Ozzie Smith. The event is an annual fundraiser for the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum.
Harmon Killebrew once said, “In baseball and everything else, you do the best you possibly can and leave the field with no regrets.” You won’t regret a visit to Cooperstown or the historic New York Golf Trail.
Rick Stedman is an avid golfer, RVer, and writer who lives in Olympia, Washington. Rick writes a golf column, “The RV Golfer,” which is published every month in rvlife.com. He can be reached at rstedman@gmail.com.
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