Saturday, October 24, 2009

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.