Watkins Glen

In the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York is a lovely little state park named Watkins Glen. Watkins Glen contains many a waterfall, the picturesque Glen Creek and fabulous stone stairways and trails courtesy of the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s.

Glen Creek has carved its way through layers of sandstone and shale to create a narrow gorge full of rapids and pools in the water-smoothed rock. A different climate exists on each wall of the canyon; one side is the shade-loving wet side, the other is dryer, exposed to the sun all day.

After hiking from the main entrance to the upper end of the Gorge Trail, and stopping constantly for picture, we climbed Jacob's Ladder: 180 steps that lead to a grassy picnic area and Hallelujah! a restroom. Here we rested, ate lunch and wondered how the long the couple waiting for the shuttle bus would sit there before realizing that it wasn't scheduled to run that day. Later, we saw the man leave to hike alone back to the main parking area, so answer turned out to be: at least an hour.

On the hike down the gorge we found this flower from a poplar, or tulip tree, on the path. The species of tree this flower came from was featured on JLB's site earlier this month. I kept seeing the spent petals of these flowers on earlier hikes and couldn't figure out where they were coming from. This was the only intact one I found, but it's pretty clear where the name "tulip tree" came from.


The picture above is of Rainbow Falls. Apparently, there was more than the usual amount of water flowing through the canyon, so the waterfalls were bigger than usual. This is one of two falls on the path that you can walk behind. Mainly I jogged through, hunched over my camera to keep it from getting wet, although the view from either edge of the waterfall is just as interesting.

I think it's safe to say that although brief, our trip to New York was memorable.