Ithaca Trip - Saturday
We woke up Saturday morning in Elmira to pouring rain. Should we dare walk
outside? We decided to stall and go to the
Corning Museum of Glass.
The science part was quite interesting, and the
opening movie was bizzarre to the point of being hilarious.
In the exhibit
rooms everyone else quickly tired of looking at object after glass object,
including a huge array of paperweights.
Luckily the rain cleared a bit, so we dated to continue on to
Watkin's Glen.
Along the way we stopped for Cheese.
We originally sped by the sign on Route 414, but like a siren song it drew
us back. We then procedded to harass some poor farmer, but we did buy plenty
of cheese so it worked out in the end.
Sorry, I took the picture from a moving
car through a rainy windshield, so you cannot see the cheese sign in all
of its glory.
Watkin's Glen was amazing. Sadly, the batteries in my camera were all but
dead so I lost most of the pictures, and those that survived aren't the best.
The glen is an amazing gorge, with waterfall upon waterfall as you climb
800+ steps. Here's a glimpse of the gorge.
You get to walk behind a waterfall at one point. It was what I imagine
Henneth-Annûn must look like.
Here's rainbow falls, a smaller fall you can walk behind. Sadly, with no
sun, there was no rainbow.
We reached the end of the trail, climbed a huge stairway called "Jacob's
Ladder" and then turned around and went back. The park is heartily
recommended.
After visiting
Seneca Lake,
we hit all of the waterfalls in
Montour Falls.
One is right by the roadside, Aunt Sarah's Falls.
Kris and I were there during the drought of '02 and it was completely dry.
Then we went to
She-Qua-Ga falls, which also was mostly dry the
last time we saw it.
This time it was more impressive, but
not as much as the "spring flood" picture they had at the info booth.
Then on to
Eagle's Nest Falls at Havana Glen park.
The placid fall we stood under
in September was now a roaring torrent.
It was sad the water was too rough to approach the falls, but
there is a nice park there as well. There was first-rate playground
equipment, including a trapeze-bar! I haven't seen one of those
since my elementray school days.
And that was the end of Saturday. We headed to a rather run-down
Super 8 in Binghamton and spent the evening there.
On Sunday we returned yet again to Taughanock for the
benefit of Kris's family. I managed to get my shoes soaking wet fording the
river, which took an impressive week to dry. The water was much higher than
it had been on Friday, and many stick-boats met their untilmely demise over
rapids by our hands.
We returned to Maryland Sunday evening. I only got us slightly lost trying
to get to route 15.
And thus ended another chapter of our journey to gather all of the sacred
scrolls needed to rebuild the Mako reactor we need to generate the
mystical vorpal knife of +10 buttering that is prophesied will kill the
insufferable llama of the plains.
[well ok, I guess that's inaccurate
but it sounds much more dramatic than the actual ending, which was a lot
of well-needed sleep].
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