More steps

Along the road from Ithaca to Glen Watkins

After the hotel breakfast, we drove to Glen Watkins at the southern end of the next Finger lake along, west of Ithaca, Seneca Lake. It too had waterfalls. Having parked by Colonial Laundromat and visited an Information Centre we realised we could walk to Glen Watkins State Park five blocks away, passing a building labelled Improved Order of Red Men Chequaga Tribe. I'm not sure what that meant, or means, though it sounds rather derogatory.


We walked up Glen Creek with plenty of other tourists along a trail that led through tunnels in the rockfaces, including a "spiral tunnel", and many steep flights of stone steps, some very wet. Another couple took a photo of us by a waterfall we could walk behind. Bridges crossed high above us, and cliffs rose into the sky. Swirling, fantastic rock formations formed the sides of the creek, the rocks carved by the water of centuries. I thought of Coleridge's poem about Kubla Khan ...

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy an enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover …

This watercourse must be a tremendous sight in springtime when the snow melts.

Keeping our eye on the clock, because we aimed to set off on our flight home around 2pm, we drove a few 100m back along the Glen Creek streets to the Lakeside Park, to eat our Subway sandwiches at a picnic table there, under tall trees. We returned to Ithaca the way we'd come, along the Scenic Highway (as opposed to Scenic Byway of yesterday?) -- Route 79, through Ulysees and Tompkins counties. The car's GPS took us to Tompkins Regional airport where we'd left the plane. We returned the car, sat in the comfortable FBO, filed the EAPIS and took off for home. It was a two hour 1 minute flight, bumpy at the start and toward the finish because of gusty winds aloft, but smooth mid way, over Syracuse and Watertown, perhaps because of the proximity of the large, calm mass of water in Lake Ontario.

A most satisfactory trip.