The Finger Lakes

I am going to summarize the whole week in one (long) post:

The view from our motel room balcony:

On our first day, we hiked the Watkins Glen Gorge, which is about a mile and a half and showcases 19 waterfalls:

At the top of "Jacob's Ladder"

Abby taking pictures of the waterfalls with her camera

On one of the bridges over the gorge

Both kids spent a lot of time taking pictures during the hike

There were several loooong staircases

Kevin lifting Benji for an aerial view of center falls

After the hike (and a rest) we went for a boat cruise on lake Seneca and hung out near the harbor. After dinner, we took a walk on the jetty and saw this little guy scampering around.  Turns out minks run wild on the rocks:

At the end of the jetty

Day 2 - Corning Museum of Glass:

The museum has an extensive collection of ancient and modern glasswork. I especially liked the blown flowers:


Tthe kids were mostly interested in the do-it-yourself projects. We started with a family sandblasting project:

Our plate, before the sand blasting

Benji using the sand blast machine

Here is the finished project

We signed up to do a glass blowing project with Abby, but at the last minute she decided she was scared to do it.  Benji stepped right in:

Benji blowing the glass while the artist keeps it rolling so it does not fall off

Benji admiring the finished product

Day 3: Ithaca:

We decided to drive to Ithaca on our third day, which turned out to be rainy, spoiling some of our plans.  We did fit in a quick hike to a gorge on the Cornell campus before the showers began:

 

Followed by lunch at Moosewood.  Since we own many of the Moosewood cookbooks, we were all very excited about this: 

After lunch, we visited the museum of the earth, which turned out to be a history of the creation of the planet and its species.  The kids were only mildly interested, although they both liked the part where they got to hunt for fossils:

On Friday, we drove to Hammondsport, recently voted "the coolest small town in America."  It was cute.  And small.  We thought we would do some boating in the afternoon on Lake Keuka, but the weather did not cooperate again.  We did get in some swim time early in the day, though:

The lake was very cold

We headed back to Watkins Glen after lunch and the weather cleared enough that we were able to go to the Italian-American Festival in Clute Park (5 minutes from our motel) that evening. We ate fair food and the kids rode a few rides and played some games:

 

The kids especially liked the older style playground it the park.

The merry-go-round was a hit

Until Benji fell off into the puddle

 Benji really liked the classic rock band (the grey haze is the smoke effects they set off), but Abby insisted on getting as far away as possible:



They had fireworks later in the evening, which we were able to watch from our motel balcony after the kids went to sleep.

On Saturday we headed to Penn Yan, which is the heart of agriculture in the finger lakes region.  The highlight was picking blueberries from bushes that were overflowing with ripe (and very tasty) berries:

This chicken will peck the blueberries right out of your hand, which Benji thought was awesome

On our last day in the finger lakes, we decided to stay in Watkins Glen and check out the rest of the waterfalls around town (of which there are quite a few).  Our favorite was the first of the day at Havana Glen:

 
The lower falls were pretty, but after a short but steep hike, you are treated to this:

 

 

The pictures don't really do it justice, but the waterfall was huge, there were no fences, and it was completely deserted - we were the only people in the whole park.  

We did run across a few folks at the playground near the hike, where the kids fell in love with this see saw:

We checked out a few wineries in the afternoon and got ready to head to Niagara Falls.  Shorter post on our travel day tomorrow.