NEW YORK: ITHACA, CORNELL UNIVERSITY SITES, AND RETURNING TO NYC

 July 28, 2021

We spent our last day of sightseeing in Upstate New York in Ithaca, home to Cornell University.

We started out with a delicious vegan lunch at Maru Ramen.

I love how colorful each dish is. Everything was very good.

After lunch we drove to the Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary, which is part of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. It is a free, 220-acre natural habitat for the study of birds.

Two sculptures are near the entrance. The first is this bronze of a passenger pigeon, almost spirt-like in concept.

I learned a lot from the onsite information:

NEW YORK: WATKINS GLEN STATE PARK

 July 28, 2021

As I mentioned in the last post, the number of beautiful places in the United States that I have not heard of before visiting them never ceases to amaze me. Watkins Glen State Park in Upstate New York was another one of those places.

The park is located at the tip of Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes.

The park has three trails, two that run along the gorge's upper rim, and the main two-mile trail, the Gorge Trail, which is the closest to the stream. Hikers can start at either the top or the bottom of the gorge. It descends 400 feet, so it was a no-brainer for us. We drove to the upper end of the trail and started from there. 

Here we go! The second photo is looking back at the stairs we had just come down. Altogether, there are 832 steps on the Gorge Trail.

NEW YORK: LETCHWORTH STATE PARK

July 27, 2021

When we travel in the United States, I am always surprised by how many truly incredible places there are that I have never heard of. I know our country is vast in comparison to many countries of the world (we are the fourth largest geographically, or the third if you count our overseas territories), so why should I be surprised? And yet it happens all the time.

We hit two such spots in a row on this trip, Letchworth State Park and Watkins Glen. I'll start with Letchworth State Park, located between the Alleghany foothills and the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York and known as the Grand Canyon of the East. (Note: We also traveled to the "Grand Canyon of Texas" earlier in the year, Palo Duro State Park.) I was surprised to learn that Letchworth State Park is "America's #1 State Park," at least according to a public poll. Why hadn't I ever heard of it?

Of course, it took about two seconds for these two to find a ginormous puffball, the first of many great fungi discoveries.

Letchworth State Park is famous for its series of three falls, creatively named Upper Falls, Middle Falls, and Lower Falls.

The park is named after American businessman and humanitarian William Pryor Letchworth (1823-1910), who in 1859 purchased a large tract of land around the gorge created by the Genesee River. In 1906 he bequeathed what had become a 1000-acre estate to New York State. It was eventually joined to other lands to form the current 14,427-acre state park.

NEW YORK: WOODSTOCK

 July 26, 2021

In August 1969, 450,000 people descended on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in the small town of Bethel, New York, for a four-day rock concert. The organizers had originally hoped to hold the event in Woodstock, New York, but local residents refused to host it. (For some reason, however, the name "Woodstock" stuck to the event.) Organizers then contracted with a site in Wallkill, New York, but those residents also protested, and eventually the event was moved to Max Yasgur's farm near the town of Bethel.

Planners assured the locals that the crowd couldn't possibly be larger that 50,000 people, but word spread quickly and 50,000 people arrived before the concert even began. 

Today there is a museum on the site, and visitors can walk to the giant natural bowl where spectators sat over 50 years ago and listened to more than 30 different acts, including Arlo Guthrie; Joan Baez; Santana; The Grateful Dead; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Janis Joplin; Sly and the Family Stone; The Who; Jefferson Airplane; Joe Cocker; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; and Jimi Hendrix.

We noticed a definite hippie-flower-child feel the moment we got out of our car.

NEW YORK: KAATERSKILL FALLS

 July 25, 2021

We rented an Airbnb in Kingston, New York, for a couple of nights. It turned out to be a brand new house built specifically to be rented out. We could even smell the fresh paint. It was perfect for the four of us. 

Having an equipped kitchen was very important . . .

. . . as were the extensive woods and trails located behind the house, which produced, among other things, this:

NEW YORK: THOMAS COLE HISTORIC SITE, THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY, FREDERIC CHURCH'S OLANA, AND PEEKAMOOSE RESTAURANT

July 24, 2021

We continued to make our way north, farther and farther away from the wonderful craziness of New York City. Our next stop was the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. 

Thomas Cole (1801-1848) is considered to be the father of American landscape painting as well as the founder of the Hudson River School of Art.

His home in the Catskill region has been preserved and restored and is now a national landmark.

I got a kick out of these signs.  I can see that second one still being taped to the wall four or five years from now.

My favorite thing on the property was this purple gazebo with its fancy Victorian sofa.