Waterfalls and Gorges and Wineries, Oh My!

Monday, July 3rd I took a trip to Ithaca NY for my sister Kathy's Birthday. Her eldest daughter Alysa is there this summer working before her Senior year at Ithaca College so she was our gracious tour guide. We (Mom, Kathy, Erin and I)saw her off-campus apartment and headed out to explore the beautiful Gorges and Waterfalls in and surrounding Ithaca.

The first placed we hiked to see was Treman Falls. I was a dumb-as and forgot to bring my cell phone to take pics, but Erin had her camera so I will have to post the good pics of that later. The walk through is wonderful, we did the easy end and I would like to go back and do the whole thing. I did take one pic of the tiny waterfall near the mill at the entrance/parking lot of the park:


Next was Taughannock Falls which is a very flat walk that is about 1 mile or so. It's a nice walk and you are not expecting to turn the corner and see huge shale cliffs leading to a beautiful waterfall. This waterfall plunges 215 feet and is the tallest free-falling cascade east of the Mississippi. It is 3 stories higher than Niagra Falls!!! Here I have posted sequential pics from Shale cliffs to amazing waterfall reveal:








I wanted to go swimming under the waterfall, but because of the falling shale and rock, you could only get so close...I think falling shale is a sham...I think they don't want you discovering the cave of treasure behind the waterfall!

Next we headed through the Cayuga Lake area to eat lunch at a winery. The Winery was called AMERICANA. We had a lovely lunch on the terrace and made friends with two chocolate labs that obviously run the place named Ruby and Max. They had a white table wine that I wanted to purchase called "Apparition". I will definately have to stop back and buy a few of those for the Halloween season if I go back to do more extensive hiking in the region!

Kathy enjoyed her Birthday and everyone had a great time. Hopefully I will have more pics soon from Erin to post so you can see Treman Falls and how amazing it was.

BTW, all of these pics were taken by my cell phone camera. Click the images to enlarge them. Not bad, eh?