Cayuga Lake and Taughannock Falls, NY

Most of our time the last couple of weeks has been spent catching up with relatives and friends in the area, some of whom we had not seen in almost 10 years. Yesterday we decided to play tourists and revisit some of the natural beauty in this part of the country. We drove down by the shore of Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes, which was carved by glaciers. For our next stop we picked Taughannock Falls State Park. It was cloudy and looked like rain might come soon, so we went to the overlook at the top. There is a trail you can take which goes close to the base of the falls, but we decided against that for now.

Fall colors are everywhere.

Looking across Cayuga Lake at some of the cottages on the west shore, surrounded by trees hanging on to their many colored leaves.

A look at Stewart Park at the south end of the lake.

Taughannock Falls

The water plunges 215 feet, which makes this the tallest free-falling waterfall in the northeast US. If you look closely, you can see where the lower falls trail ends at the bottom right.

The Texas tourists.

The water fills the pool at the bottom of the falls.

The following are a sampling of the beautiful trees in the state park down by Cayuga Lake.

Travels from Montana to New York

After spending the summer in the Yellowstone area, we left abruptly in the middle of the day on Oct 3, to avoid the 1 to 3 feet of snow and very cold temperatures they were predicting. The weather was chasing us, so we had longer days on the road than we normally plan on. Our first overnight stop was in Billings, MT and then on to Minot, ND to spend 3 days visiting our youngest. The weather was cold, wet and dreary, but we had a great visit.
Our next destination was the central NY area and with the cold weather at our heels, we covered that ground in 4 long days, with nights in Minneapolis, MN, Davenport, IA, and Sandusky, OH.
Here are a few sights seen along the route. The weather was not the greatest and most of the shots were taken out the window of our truck while on the move.

Crossing the Mississippi River very early in the morning. It's been quite a while since we've been on the east side of the river.

We were glad we were not too late to see the show of fall colors in the east.

Now that we have stayed in Iowa, we only have 5 states left to visit. We should be able to cover New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine without too much trouble. Alaska and Hawaii, who knows? You can make your own map at www.visitedstatesmap.com