Finger Lakes 2021

We have the best grandparents/parents/in-laws and got ANOTHER parents-only weekend trip. This time we went back to our roots and went back to Finger Lakes for the third time. We went first in 2012 and again in 2016. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to go back since 2016. We decided to stay in Geneva, NY again, as our hub for the couple of days, as it is located at the top of the biggest lake and thus is a nice place to go places from and it has pretty good restaurants.

Apple Festival

We started our trip at the home base Syracuse. We went to one of my favorite events, Apple Festival. We have been before, but it has been awhile given Covid and other items. It was as glorious as we remembered, with 500 crafters in 9 of the biggest event tens you have ever seen. Permanent buildings, all painted the same red walls and green metal roofs, had stalls for food. Because this is a community event, no two stalls sell the same food. All the stalls are fundraisers for the town’s various groups, the firefighters, churches, scouts, sports teams, etc. We had the deep fried apple fritters as our indulgence and then Hoffman hotdogs (the best hotdogs, from Syracuse) for lunch.

1890s House – Cortland, NY       

We took a slight detour to the Finger Lakes to see a house museum in Cortland. Check out that post here.

Gorge / Waterfall Hikes

Everyone had heard that Ithaca is gorge-ous, which has to due with the topography and there are many gorges and waterfalls. In the past, we have been the Watkins Glen State Park. This year we went to two new waterfalls. In total, we did about 7 miles of walking/hiking between the two parks.

The fascinating thing about these two waterfalls is that while they are mere miles from each other, and from my untrained geologist eyes have the same type of rock (shale), the waterfalls were completely different. One was a huge 215ft drop waterfall, while the other was a set of 10 waterfalls with no big drops, but many staggered layers of slate.

Taughannock Falls State Park: This was our first stop. The waterfall here is 215ft of single drop, the largest east of the Rockies! This is 33 ft taller than Niagara Falls. We decide to do the “rim walk”, which was up around the gorge vs. going into the gorge on the ground floor and looking up at the waterfall. There was a steep set of steps at the beginning, but after that was pretty flat. The amazing part of this was how deep the gorge walls were, hundreds of feet high. The waterfall was cool too, but I thought the cliffs were more impressive.

Buttermilk Fall State Park: This was our second stop, this park located slightly below Ithaca. We filled up on yummy ramen and headed here. Wiki tells me the name comes from the frothy appearance of its churning waters. However, before I read this, I thought it was because all of the waterfalls looks like stacks of uneven pancakes. I’m sticking with the pancakes. This waterfall looked completely different. Instead of a single huge fall, the entire 600ft elevation change was a set of 10 waterfalls of staggered pancakes. It looked like a thrill seeking individual could actually ride the waterfall down on butt or tube.  Of course, not allowed today. There was no flat trail leading to the waterfall, it was right at the parking lot. The walk up the side of the waterfall was many steps and seemed endless, much longer than the first trail we went on. While the waterfall wasn’t a dramatic single drop, I enjoyed walking by it more as there was more to see and the water cascading over the pancakes was beautiful and each level different from the other.  I could also envision 100 years ago people swimming in the small deep pools at the bottom of one of the 10 tiers. Also not allowed today.

Food & Drink

The only new alcohol related spot we hit up was Lucky Hare, a brewery on the east side of Seneca lake.  David tried an IPA as we sat on picnic tables and overlooked the lake.  We quickly stopped by Lamoreaux Landing to buy a few bottles, a place we went to in 2012 in our first trip and liked, and also bought a Hermann Wiemer riesling (when in Finger Lakes, you must Riesling), a spot we went to in both 2012 and 2016, at a local shop (FLX Provisions) in Geneva. We also stopped by Lake Drum Brewing, a bar in downtown Geneva we went to in 2016, that has a lot of different brands, just for a drink.

On the food front, we didn’t do anything too fancy.  I considered reserving FLX Table, a pre-fixe farm to table 20 person restaurant, but the menu didn’t fit my fancy, so we had to pass this time. Instead, we had breakfast both days a Monaco’s, a small hipstery coffee shop with breakfast sandwiches (and of course avo toast) on a residential street a few blocks from downtown. It was cozy and we enjoyed just sitting there, no time constraint, eating our food. We tried to go to Opus for breakfast, where we went in 2016, but it appears to be closed.  For dinner, one night we went to FLX Fry Bird, which is a quick serve fried chicken spot (and a surprisingly delicious salad with pickled veggies!), and the next night we opted for Beef & Brew, a heartier fare after all our hiking, where we got beef stew and chicken pot pie.  Our one lunch was in Ithaca at a ramen shop, Maru Ramen, on the west part of Ithaca, far away from downtown and Cornell.