Ithica is Actually Gorges

This morning started out with around 4 hours of driving from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey to Ithica, New York.  It was fairly early for me.  I’m not usually one to get up around 500am.  5 o’clock, like 6 o’clock is a time that generally only comes around once per day for me.  But Charlie and I wanted to get on the road early as there was quite a few things we wanted to see.

First stop, Ithica, NY.  I wanted to go to Ithica to see the waterfalls and the gorges. One of the things I learned was that there is no single way gorges are formed. In fact, one of the larger gorges that we visited in the Ithica area had a waterfall called Taughannock (taug en ock) Gorge.  It is a 215 foot waterfall that used to be deep under water.  The dead algae and other plant life formed a base and as the water drained, the limestone that was formed over thousands of years began to crack and make way for a river leading in to the larger Cayuga Lake ecosystem.  The falls are a short hike from the lake and amazing when you get up close.  Another interesting fact about the water here is that the entire ecosystem is based on the amount of rain the region gets. When there isn’t much rain, the area under the falls and the stream between the falls and the lake will basically run dry.

The last thing we did in the Ithica area was find another small hidden away waterfall a little ways off the beaten path.  It ended up being a little underwhelming given we walked a ways to get there.  But it was still a fun hike through something that wasn’t a state park.  Every time we got near some falls, it seems as though Charlie was having a crisis about whether or not he should drink from the falls, run through them, or run away completely.  Since this one would have required him to swim to the falls, the decision to sit and stare at it seemed to the better one.

The whole gallery of pictures from Ithica is available on Google Photos.

Here’s a video of the random things we did and saw throughout the day.