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:

The second is a shiny steel whooping crane stretching its wings. On a trip to the Texas coast a few months later, we would see about 30 whooping cranes in the wild, so this statue has even more meaning to me now.

What a beautiful sanctuary. If I were a bird, I would want to live here.

Yet another bench and shade structure I would love to have in my yard.

Lush woods surround the pond.

Per usual, our mycologists found plenty of fungi to examine.

There were a few other people strolling the grounds, but most of the time we had our portion of the trail to ourselves.

We were there in the afternoon, not a good time for seeing sapsuckers or other native birds, but we did spot a couple of lovebirds.

We drove around the perimeter of Cornell University on our way to our next destination. According to the internet, it takes a 4.07 GPA to get into this Ivy League school, which is ranked 17th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

Judging by the bird sanctuary that we visited first and the botanic garden that we visited next, Cornell University has a robust environmental studies program. Fischer Old-Growth Forest, which  covers 42 acres, is actually just one of 40 different nature areas covering a total of 4,300 acres that are maintained by Cornell. 

Unlike the bird sanctuary, Fischer Forest was no "walk in the woods." It was much more rugged and required a lot more energy than the flat, shady paths of the bird sanctuary. It was a very hot, humid afternoon, and we were feeling it! And apparently we needed to watch out for trees that might fall on us.

However, it was worth the physical output.

When we got into the forest, it was much cooler.

The trail criss-crossed the shallow stream several times, and I saw several rainbows.

A fallen giant gave us a better idea of how tall the trees really are. It is hard to tell how tall a tree is by looking up into the canopy.

The Frog Whisperer does it again . . .

. . . as does the Mushroom Hunter.

We didn't realize how far downhill we had gone until we had to go back up. The trail was so steep that we really did need the rope tied to trees alongside the trail to pull ourselves up to the top. The further we climbed, the more we emerged from the forest and the hotter and more humid it got.

The trailhead was really hard to find, and the hiking was taxing, but views like this make it all worth it, right?

The next morning we cut through eastern Pennsylvania on our way back to Manhattan. It had been fun to travel with a couple of naturalists.

Bob took a little detour up the mountain, but we got caught in some weather very unlike what we had experienced in Ithaca.

There were supposed to be some pretty good views from here, but that wasn't going to happen the day we were there.

It's mind-boggling that all of the wilderness areas we visited during our time in Upstate New York are just hours from this:

A random shot of a NYC street--with cobblestones. Who knew?

We headed back into Chinatown to drop off Andrew and Michaela, where the traffic got worse and worse.

It took us over forever to get through this light. Because of backed-up traffic, only one car got through each time the light changed.

But the great thing about NYC (at least for me as a passenger) is that there is always plenty to see out the car window.

Our 15 minute drive from Andrew's apartment to JFK took almost three hours. It's not a good idea to drive to JFK during rush hour. Face it, it's not a good idea to drive in NYC at all, but we needed the car for our time outside the city.

Farewell, Manhattan! We'll be back!