Letchworth State Park

Laura:
Before moving to Rochester, we were completely unaware of the amazing natural scenery in Upstate New York. Our first taste came during our excursion to Chimney Bluffs State Park back in September, and now that we have time to kill this summer we're exploring our immediate surroundings even more.

One of the surprising aspects of the landscape up here (at least to me) is the number of waterfalls. They're everywhere! Of course you know about Niagara Falls, but there are a number of smaller waterfalls all within a 50 mile radius of Rochester. Here's a link to a map showing all the falls, big and small, surrounding our new home town. Who knew?!?

Of course, now that we know there are so many falls we've gotta find them all! First on the list: the falls in Letchworth State Park. There are three main waterfalls (Upper, Middle, and Lower falls) plus some smaller ones sprinkled throughout the park. The park itself runs along a portion of the Genesee River (the same river that runs up through Rochester and dumps into Lake Ontario) about 50 miles southeast of Rochester.

We drove down to the park and entered at the northern end, which if you want to see the falls right away is a bad idea since they're located at the southern-most end of the park. No worries though! Since we'd never been to the park we just took our time driving through and stopping at a number of vistas along the main park road. Our first stop was at the Mt. Morris Dam. The dam was built in 1948 by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent yearly flooding from destroying lands further downstream. Wikipedia pic of flooded valley behind the dam. This is not a constant state though for the river. When we visited, the valley upstream of the dam was very dry.

Next to the dam viewing area there was this giant chair...

Here are some more pictures from another vista along the river valley...

The next place we stopped had a few small waterfalls, so we stopped to take some fancy "water-smoothing" pictures (click to enlarge!) and relax next to the stream.

After another short drive, we finally arrived at the Lower Falls - the first of the three waterfalls along the Genesee River. We walked along the trail and found a bridge a little downstream that was great for a photo shoot. There were also some really interesting rock walls along the river that we think are made of shale.

Then we walked a little further up the trail to get some closer shots of the waterfall...

Next we pulled off at another vista to look at the Middle and Upper falls together...

Finally we reached the pull-off for the Upper Falls! We spent a lot of time taking pictures and even hiked to the top of the ridge to check out the old railroad bridge spanning the river just above the Upper Falls. 

 

All of this hiking, driving, and picture-taking took 3-4 hours, so when dinner time rolled around we were starving! We left the park and started heading north back towards Rochester. On the way we stumbled across a small town, Nunda, NY, where they were having a parade and fair. It was really neat to see all the local people lining the streets while the high school band, sports teams, and a number of fire trucks rolled along. We tried to take a picture, but not sure you can really tell what is going on.



We maneuvered our way through the town, going pretty far out of our way driving-wise since the parade was running along the main highway, and finally ended up in Mt. Morris, NY where we spotted this cute little Italian restaurant along their picture-perfect Main Street. Being lovers of lasagna, we just had to stop! The lasagna was very tasty and so were the chicken/red pepper ravioli and garlic bread. Never would have expected such a lovely little restaurant in this tiny town.

All in all we had a really great day! Got some good exercise hiking through the woods, snapped some nice pictures of all the waterfalls, and enjoyed a delicious meal at a local restaurant. First summer excursion into the villages and state parks of  Upstate New York was a great success!!



Alex:
Laura really liked the camera on a stick.  I snapped this picture of her holding the camera aimed in my direction.

The "stick" is a gift from Hugh (Laura's dad, but that's not his real name...  That's George...  It's like how Laura is aka Foof...  anywho) it's for taking self pics without the funny arm angle.  Laura was carrying the camera around everywhere on the stick, so I thought this was a funny shot.  Little did I know she was actually shooting a video, and she wouldn't stop anytime soon... [Laura: Best video ever!]

Lorax portraits using "The Stick"

 -The Lorax-