The Fire Bar at Hawkeye’s

Recommended by our hosts at the B&B: The Fire Bar at the Hawkeye Bar & Grill at Cooperstown’s Otesaga Resort Hotel. Perfect spot to chill with a glass of wine, a bite to eat, and maybe even a game of bocce on the lawn, if you’re not too mesmerized by the view. 

The Otesaga Resort Hotel is located at the south end of Otsego Lake in the Village of Cooperstown, New York, and hearkens back to the day when people from the City spent their summers at grand hotels such as this. 

James Fenimore Cooper referred to Otsego Lake as Glimmerglass in his Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels featuring the character Natty Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, one of the Leatherstocking Tales. The lake also happens to be the source of the Susquehanna River, the 16th largest river in the United States, according to Wikipedia.

It’s no coincidence that Cooper’s stories took place in the area around Cooperstown. His father founded the village, and James grew up in what was then a 19th-century frontier town.

the sun setting on Glimmerglass (Otsego) Lake

The weather was perfect on this particular evening, a cloudless, late-spring promise of blissful summer days ahead. As the sun set we drew our chairs closer to the fire and watched for dugout canoes gliding silently across the Glimmerglass.