Ep. 360: Finger Lakes | New York RV travel camping tourism gorges Watkins Glen
Greetings friends, and welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and this week we're bringing you to Upstate New York's beautiful Finger Lakes region, so stay tuned! This episode of Grand Adventure is sponsored by etrailer.com, where you'll find thousands of products for RVing, towing, camping, outdoor recreation, vehicles, boating and more. Use the link down below in the video description to shop etrailer with Grand Adventure! Our eastward march on our Northeastern Tour 2024 continues this week, and our drive from our last stop in Erie, Pennsylvania across New York State's Southern Tier to the Finger Lakes Region largely follows Interstate 86 through rolling, bucolic farmlands and forests. These rolling hills provide the first real grades we've encountered since we left Wyoming, and if it's truly possible things are getting even more green. Our destination this week, the Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north/south-oriented lakes located directly south of Lake Ontario in Upstate New York. We're spending our week at their southern end, known as the Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges ecoregion where small towns and villages dot an agrarian landscape that is now home to New York State's largest wine producing region.
Over 400 wineries and vineyards surround Seneca, Cayuga, Canandaigua, Keuka, Conesus, and Hemlock Lakes. These glacial lakes originated as a series of northward-flowing streams. Around two million years ago, the area was glaciated by the first of many continental glaciers of the Laurentide Ice Sheet as they moved southward from the Hudson Bay area. Subglacial meltwater and glacial ice widened, deepened, and accentuated the existing river valleys to form subglacial tunnel valleys.
Glacial debris, possibly terminal moraine left behind by the receding ice, acted as dams, allowing lakes to form. The deep cutting by glacial erosion left some tributaries hanging high above the lakes. Both Seneca and Cayuga Lakes have tributaries hanging nearly 400 feet above the valley floors. These tributaries have since eroded their way through the layered shale, limestone and sandstone ancient sea bed of the Finger Lakes Uplands, often with truly spectacular results.
Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca has a full-time population of over 32,000 residents. The area was first settled in 1789 along the flat ground created by the silt deposited by the Cayuga Inlet where it empties into Cayuga Lake. While Ithaca's downtown area may be flat, it's surrounded by ridiculously steep hills onto which the city has grown.
These hills inhibited Ithaca's early transportation development when railroads following easier routes began to bypass the city. Ithaca is a college town, boosting the city's population well beyond the number of full-time residents. It's home to both Ithaca College and the ivy-league Cornell University, which sits atop one of the steep hills on the east side of Ithaca. Whether you need products for your RV, boat, trailer, vehicle, hunting & fishing, off-roading and more, our video sponsor etrailer has you covered.
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For our week in the Finger Lakes we're doing something that we've only done once before, and that's moochdocking. Our Grand Adventurers met our friends Catherine and Frank when they joined us last fall at Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico. They own a beautiful 30-acre spread outside of Ithaca, and we're enjoying a week on their property with their generous companionship. The hardest part about staying here was backing our trailer down the entirety of Frank's long, narrow driveway, for there wasn't enough room to get turned around near the house.
I was sure happy that I'm not new to backing up a trailer! A short walk through the woods leads to a pond on our friends' property which has become something of a great blue heron sanctuary. They own a little slice of heaven here outside of Ithaca, and we've had a wonderfully peaceful and relaxing experience RV camping here. A great dog-friendly diversion for lunch or a light dinner is Brookton's Market, in the quiet nearby village of Brooktondale. Here you'll find a wide assortment of local craft beers and ciders on tap, and a delicious assortment of tasty sandwiches served hot or cold.
The patio here is bustling with locals on this Thursday evening. Zoe approves! A short hike up Cascadilla Gorge begins right in downtown Ithaca. Here, the Cascadilla Creek ascends 400 feet of elevation in only a third of a mile, resulting in six separate waterfalls right through town. It's a remarkable geologic gem right in the heart of a bustling small city, but it's presented with a minimum of fanfare, part of Cornell University's 3,600 acres of protected natural areas throughout Tompkins County managed by Cornell Botanic Gardens. As Frank told me, this southern region of the Finger Lakes is all about nooks and crannies. Topographic anomalies here are nearly hidden from view, but reveal themselves to those willing to spend the time to seek them out.
When we come right back following a quick ad break, we'll bring you along on a wine tasting, and visit the world famous Watkins Glen, so stay tuned! No visit to the Finger Lakes would be complete without sampling its world famous wines, so we're stopping by Six Mile Creek Vineyards. Having first opened in 1987, Six Mile Creek Vineyards is one of the oldest members of the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail. They now produce over 10,000 gallons of wine annually, as well as a full line of grape-based spirits and liqueurs. The climate of the Finger Lakes more closely resembles that of France, Germany and Austria than that of, say, Italy or California, so the varietals grown here more closely resemble those of northern Europe.
You'll find an abundance of Rieslings, Chardonnays, Pinots and Grüners produced here. A tasting of six wines costs $8, and bottles are available for purchase to take home, or enjoy on premise. The next Finger Lake to our west is Seneca Lake, which at over 38 miles long and covering nearly 67 square miles is the largest of New York's Finger Lakes, in terms of total area. Much like Ithaca on Cayuga Lake, the village of Watkins Glen sits at the southern end of Seneca Lake.
It was first settled in 1791, but with a population of only 1,800 today it's significantly smaller than Ithaca. The village was renamed from Jefferson in 1852 to honor Dr. Samuel Watkins, whose older brother John purchased property around the town's nearly hidden gorge in 1794 and constructed mills. After his brother's death, Samuel Watkins inherited the property and spent four decades building up the area with roads, shops, and a hotel.
Watkins Glen State Park opened to the public right on the edge of the village in 1863, and was privately run as a tourist resort until 1906, when it was purchased by New York State to become a State Park. The 778-acre park's centerpiece is a 400-foot-deep narrow gorge cut through rock by Glen Creek, a stream that was left hanging when glaciers of the Ice Age deepened the Seneca Valley, increasing the tributary stream gradient to create rapids and waterfalls wherever there were layers of hard rock. The park features several hiking trails, open from mid-May to early November, by which one can climb or descend the gorge. The Southern Rim and Indian Trails run along the gorge's wooded rim, while the Gorge Trail follows the stream and runs over, under and along the park's 19 waterfalls by way of stone bridges and more than 800 stone steps. Those 19 waterfalls occur within a mere two-mile stretch of Glen Creek.
Admission to the park costs $10 per vehicle. There's a large 276-site campground within the park, and many of those sites have electrical hookups, but it hasn't yet opened for the season. The third Saturday in a row for us has arrived dreary and wet, scuttling any plans I may have had to kayak the Finger Lakes. To be honest, though, their straight shorelines were rather unappealing to me for paddling, so it's a good day to do chores instead.
A common misconception is that full-time RVing must be like a full-time vacation. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are chores to keep up on, just like in a sticks-and-bricks home. Sometimes those chores are the same as for those living in a conventional house. Others, though, can be a bit different. Mrs. Grand Adventure always says that summers in the mountains
always require that I drag her to closed ski areas, and it's not any different here. This is Greek Peak ski area in Virgil, just northeast of Ithaca. We're here to dine with our friend Carol. The last time I saw Carol, we were skiing together in Utah about 10 years ago. At a spry 88 years young, Carol is still an active member of the Greek Peak ski patrol.
So we hope that you've enjoyed visiting the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York with us! Coming up next week we're going to be headed for beautiful Lake Champlain, so if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer I can't think of a better time than now for you to go smash that little "subscribe" button right down there in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, and ring that notification bell to be sure that you never miss a Grand Adventure, which we Premiere every Wednesday evening. We'd be honored if you shared the channel with your friends, family, and on social media. However, it's extremely important to us that if you liked this episode, please be sure to give us a big "thumbs up" down below! And while you're down below, that's where you'll find the comments section where we always love to hear from you.
So until next week from Lake Champlain please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.
2024-05-27 17:28
