Life in the Slow Lane (The Pearl): June 1

Allan H. Treman State Marine Park

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” – Pema Chödrön

Ithaca promotes itself as having 150 waterfalls within ten miles of town...we've seen 13 so far. So blog followers, you might get tired of seeing waterfalls this summer, but I hope not. Today we rode our bikes up to Ithaca Falls and the Fall Creek Gorge. In the early 1800’s, half-dozen mills were operating near Ithaca Falls and you can see their ruins along the south bank of the creek. The plunge pool of Ithaca Falls is famous among anglers for lake-run trout and salmon.

Ithaca Falls

The path up to Ithaca Falls

Looking up Fall Creek to Ithaca Falls from the Stewart Ave. Bridge

Fall Creek flows through the northern part of Cornell University and into Cayuga Lake. Between Beebe Lake in the east and Ithaca Falls in the west the creek flows through a deep rocky gorge with four other dramatic falls. Ithaca Falls is the largest with a drop of 150', it's the most powerful and impressive waterfall in the region. Fall Creek and its associated gorge are an integral part of the Cornell University Campus and the surrounding communities. The gorge provides scenic views, recreation, trails, plant and wildlife habitat, hydroelectric power and a source of drinking water for Cornell University and the hamlet of Forest Home.

Getting to Ithaca Falls wasn't too difficult, but to see and hike the rest of the gorge we had to go uphill...WAY uphill, past Gun Hill where the Ithaca Gun Company use to produce world famous shotguns. A little further up the hill from there we found the trail head that leads along the gorge, through part of the Cornell campus and to Beebe Lake. From Beebe Lake we walked through the campus and back to our bikes and then road back downtown...hiking and biking we did almost nine miles today. We rewarded our morning efforts with a hamburger at the Ithaca Ale House for lunch.

This was the beginning of our up hill climb, it went on for about a mile...straight up. I don't think the picture gives the full effect of how far up we really had to go. It was much steeper than it looks. but riding our bikes back down to lunch was a lot more fun than going up.

Looking up to Foaming Falls and Rocky Falls

The view from the top of Forrest Falls...you can see the breakwater into the marina in the top center of this picture. What a great view from up here.