Today started early as usual and we hit the road to get out of the house and not get stuck with her relatives for another breakfast. Our first stop of the morning was to go to the famous Letchworth State Park, which is know for its beautiful waterfall that has a famous train bridge crossing it. The entry fee for this was $8 and it took about an our to get there from Rochester. This was nice drive in the morning as we left early enough to beat the traffic and not suffer on the way out of the city.
The park itself of Letchworth is relatively small with picnic areas and short hiking trails. I am not sure its as worth the entry fee, but for us to say we saw this and cross it off our bucket list, it was a good thing. It was time to head to one of the more sought after pats of NY state we came for, and that was Watkins Glen State Park.
This was about an hour form Letchworth, and it was just starting to become popular on social media. The area around this park had all the amenities on would expect of a camping state park, form showers, to a restaurant and gift shop. This proved to be one of the best stops not he east coast. the canyon/ gorge that makes it up, features multiple cascades with a stream flowing annually. This is perhaps the most beautiful part of it, but there are various areas, where man made bridges and heart shapes natural pools are along the trail, and furthermore, cascading small waterfalls explain. This took us about an hour to complete the walk, and we were ready to eat. With that in mind we stopped at the local town and had shrimp and grits, and a full meal for lunch.
Our next stop on the way was Taughphanock Falls and it was a state park located near the Thousand Island and Finger Lakes region. This proved to be a nice hike, though it was longer than expected. I enjoyed this however we were starting to get tired. There were two cascading waterfalls in this large canyon where there was a tall waterfall at the end. This was free to observe, and after we were done we headed to Ithica, which I found out at this point was the home of Cornell University. All I could think of was the Andy from the show The Office Either way, we went there and walked the campus, with the intent to find Ithica Falls. This was not hard to do, but it was worth the short was to a gorges cascading series of falls.
From here we headed up to the finger lake region to a small town that I do not even remember the name, but we found a free campsite. We grabbed food, and beer, and enjoyed the night in a random park in NY State. We were able to sleep at peace, and have no one bother us, which was nice. We also stopped at a local bar in the town. We were to enter Canada the next day yet again.
EXPENSES
7.98 Dunkin Donuts
8 state park
20.67 gas
25 lunch
2.03 coffee
7.98 snacks
16.32 grocery
7 beer
Total – 94.98