Cayuga Trail Adventures
Fall in Ithaca is a beautiful time, and it means fun adventures before the
snow comes. (Luckily we missed out on the record early lake-effect snow
that pounded Buffalo, although Kristina's parents got stuck overnight on the
Thruway because of it...)
As always we went to the Ithaca
Booksale and added to our already huge book collection. I'm running out
of titles to get, but there are always infinite Mystery books for Kristina.
Afterward we went to Purity Ice
Cream because it was their 80th anniversary and they had 23 cent ice-cream cones.
We also picked apples, once at Baker's
Acres with Kristina's family, and then later at
Grisamore Farms where we picked
30 pounds of Yellow Delicious:
The weather was pleasant (though a bit chilly) so Kristina and I went for a walk along the
Cayuga Tail. Apparently this trail was blazed 60 years ago by two young brothers
and it cuts through a large amount of pretty scenery.
It was interesting trying to find a trail head for this trail. We parked just off
of route 366 in Varna and had to follow a future rail-trail that eventually
the Cayuga Trail joined.
We then followed the trail off into the woods. There was a decrepit Scotch Pine
grove, which apparently was planted with
"defective European stock".
The trail winds around Fall Creek, a stream you've seen elsewhere on this
site due to the number of waterfalls on its lower end. On this part though,
in an area known as Monkey Run, the stream is known for its impressive cliffs.
These cliffs look much like the ones at
Chimney Bluff Park, and as always in northern New York, if there is a
strange geological feature, you can guess it was caused by glaciers (in this
case depositing piles of silt that have since eroded away).
Here is another view:
The trail spends a lot of time going up from the stream, to the top of the
cliff, around a farmer's field, then back. Also, the blazes can be hard to
follow, often when you most need them. It is a very nice trail though, and
extremely convenient to where we live.
The next weekend we went back and followed the part of the trail we hadn't
gotten to the previous week. There had been lots of rain, so the trail was
underwater in places, and Fall Creek was full.
Here is a view of trees along the trail:
We took the trail down until we reached the Suspension Bridge at Cornell
Plantations:
We have walked most of the trails at the Plantations already,
so we decided to stay on the far side of the brige and press on along
an un-named trail. This quickly
became water-covered, but we found a nice grassy side-trail we thought would take
us back to the road. Instead it turned out to be the route from some sort of
recent footrace, and it took us straight up the hill and dumped us
out in the middle of the Cornell golf course. We dodged the golfers and
took the long way back to the trail.
Eventually we got back to the trail, and made it safely home before the rain came.
Back to Fall 2006 Adventures