Tuesday October 3rd
In contrast to the previous day, I had an ambitious schedule for this day, looking at quite a few waterfalls along the Finger Lakes, and some hikes. I had done some timings and thought everything could fit in, but as usual, things took longer than expected, and I didn’t get through it all. I realised fairly early on that I would need to pick and choose what to do from my schedule on many of the days. At least I knew I would never be short of things to do!
I left pretty early again, and drove back toward the park, then past it, for about an hour and a half to my first destination, Watkins Glen, mostly along rural roads at 55mph, with a brief stint on I-390 at 65mph. The glen was recommended as a sight not to be missed. I drove to the town of Watkins, and found a parking lot right off the main street, that seemed to be for the glen. This seemed strange, I wasn’t used to a park like this being right next to a town, rather than out a bit from it. There seemed to be a road on the map that led further in, but it didn’t look as though you were meant to go along it. I concluded in the end that this was in fact the right spot.
I got there around 9.15. The gorge was pretty impressive, entered through a tunnel carved into the rock, with stairs ascending through it, almost like a mediaeval castle. It was very narrow, with a stream going through the bottom, quite a way down, and waterfalls here and there. It reminded me a bit of the gorge I’d gone through near Banff.
The stream didn’t have a lot of water in it, but it was still very pretty. The path went along the canyon part way up, but it still towered well up above. There weren’t too many people around at that time of the morning.
The track was a steady climb, going behind a small waterfall, through another tunnel with stairs, and under a footbridge quite a long way above. I wondered how you got onto that one – it turned out there was a track running along the top of the gorge, which I took on the way back.
There were some stone embankments and a quite old looking stone footbridge, and pools with small cascades down to each one. There wasn’t a lot of autumn colour, but further up the hike I hit a quite colourful patch.
The track came out at the top of the gorge, up quite a decent flight of stairs, with a rail bridge going over above, and exiting to another car park, and a picnic area. I headed back on the other route, which went along the top of the gorge. This was probably quicker, but not as scenic. It was interesting to see it from above though. Getting back to the van, I drove along more rural roads to Taughannock Falls. Some of these places were very hard to spell, let along pronounce!
These falls have a longer drop than Niagara Falls, though they are miniscule in width by comparison. There wasn’t much parking to be had at the car park for the falls, but I managed to get a spot. From there you could walk to a lookout at the top of the gorge, looking across to the falls.
There wasn’t a lot of water going down them at that season, but it was still an impressive sight. There didn’t seem to be any way to get to the bottom of them from there, and I found that to do that you had to keep driving down the road that led through the park, and then down to an entrance at the bottom of the gorge, and walk in.
I perhaps would have been better off going on and looking at other falls, but they may also have been a bit depleted, and it was a nice walk through the gorge, with some colourful trees along the way. It wasn’t permitted to get too close to the falls, but it was interesting to see them from below. There were huge slabs of flat rock that people were walking along, on the early parts of the gorge walk.
Once I’d got back, it was around 12.30, and I was next to one of the “finger lakes”, lakes which are very long, and relatively narrow, and scattered through that area. This one was Cayuga Lake, and even had its own lighthouse.
It was another beautiful day, and I parked at the car park next to the lake, just across the road from the gorge car park, and made some lunch, and ate it by the lake. It was clear by this time that I wasn’t going to fit in much else, if I wanted to do a hike I’d planned towards the end of the day. I still had nearly four hours of driving all up, to the RV park I’d planned to stay at. There weren’t a lot of RV parks around in the area I was spending the night, and none that would take bookings, but when I rang up the owner of this park months before, he was pretty certain there would be space. They were actually shutting down for the season a few days later. I rang during the day, and found that there was indeed space, thankfully!
So I set off from there, through the town of Ithaca, around the bottom of that finger lake, with some nice views along the road, and seeing houses that also would have had lovely views, then after a while, getting onto I-81, skirting the decent sized town of Syracuse, then briefly onto I-90 before heading off up into the Adirondack Mountains, or just the Adirondacks, as everyone called them, a mountainous area in the north-east of New York state. I had been wondering if I would see really good autumn colour, but it started to show more and more brightly as I went up.
There weren’t a lot of settlements along this part of the road. I had probably half a tank of fuel, but I was looking out for somewhere selling fuel, without much success. It would not be a good place to be low on fuel! After three hours or so, stopping briefly for a look at the Hinckley Reservoir, I turned off on a small road that went by Piesco Lake. The lake was mostly hidden from the road, but there were views through in a few spots. It led to the trailhead of the Echo Cliffs hike, which was listed as taking about an hour. There wasn’t a lot of parking on the road, and I was surprised by the fact that there were quite a few cars parked in a trailhead so far away from civilisation, but I was able to squeeze the van into the fairly shallow parking space, not sticking out too much into the road.
The hike was quite a climb to the top of a hill, and it felt pretty warm – the temperature was in the mid to high 20s, which though not terribly high, was warmer than I was expecting, and I think it was probably humid as well. I was pushing pretty hard, because it was already about 4.30, and there was still over three quarters of an hour drive after I finished, and I wasn’t keen to be driving at dusk when there might be animals around.
It was interesting, on a number of the hikes I did around that time, including this one, when I walked through forests, the foliage of the trees at the bottom where I walked was quite green, though the tops of the trees were colourful, when I saw them from a summit. It seemed the trees changed colour from the top down.
I got to the top and was rewarded with a spectacular view of miles of forest with a lot of colour in it, interspersed with lakes. This was the kind of view I had been hoping for when I came to this area! I chatted with people at the top, then legged it down again in a hurry. There wasn’t a lot to see along the way up or down, mainly at the top.
I continued my journey, along roads lined with amazingly colourful trees. It was almost painfully beautiful to see all the continuous colour as I drove along. I stopped for a few quick photos, then came to Mason Lake, near sunset, with beautiful reflections. Along here I met a couple who were walking their dog, also on a journey, I think in the other direction.
Not far from the campground was Indian Lake, another photo stop to capture reflections and autumn leaves, with the pink sunset sky. A further 15 minutes or so got me to the turn off to the road where Thornbush Acres RV park was. The owner was staying at the park, and saw me drive in (I had let him know roughly when I would arrive), and came to the office to receive payment – cash only, and drove along in front of me to show me where my spot was, close to the facilities which was nice. There was still a bit of light left, and I could see it was also pretty with autumn colours.
It was pretty much dark as I was eating dinner. I had a magnetic light which I could stick onto the side of the van, to see to cook and eat. The van also had a solar-powered light over the cooking area, but the danger was that it would attract insects into the van, while the back doors were open. My little light had an orange mode, which apparently didn’t attract insects, and that was handy on warm nights.
While I was eating I could hear rustling here and there, and thought it might be squirrels. When I went to the toilet block to brush my teeth later, and turned on my phone torch so I could see the way, and I spotted what was making the rustling noise: what was I suppose a toad, about the size of my hand. They didn’t seem very afraid of people, and there must have been quite a few around. I didn’t see them any other time.
I had been looking forward to meeting my cousins, aunt and uncle in Prince Edward Island in a bit over a week, and my aunt had cancer, and was not well. She was still following along though, and I was expecting to be able to see her. But my cousin messaged me that she had gone downhill fast, and she was not responsive any more. She passed away not long after that, and I was sad to have missed her, and by such a short time. It seemed strange timing, to have missed her (if only on this earth), and to be visiting them so soon after their loss, but I knew the Lord was in control of everything, including timing.
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