Ithaca is Gorges

Maybe you've seen a bumper sticker or tee shirt before that proclaims: "Ithaca is Gorges" (if you don't know what I'm talking about a quick Google image search will enlighten you). I'm here to tell you it's true. Ithaca is gorges. And gorgeous.

The day after Thanksgiving we decided to go on a little day trip to Ithaca. David's brother Sammy was here visiting from Indiana so it seemed like as good a time as any. We equipped ourselves with a picnic lunch of leftover turkey and cranberry sauce on homemade rolls, cheese, SunChips, Doritos and Cheetos, candy cane Hershey's Kisses and Gatorade. Ithaca is about a two hour drive from here, but it was a scenic jaunt and the company was pleasant so it went by quickly.

There is a lot to Ithaca that we didn't get to see in the few short hours we were there, but we did visit Robert H. Treman State Park. It normally costs $7 per car to get in; we got in for free so we decided the park service must be running a Black Friday special.

My feeble words are insufficient to describe the superlative beauty of the area. The scenery was awe-inspiring--very "Last of the Mohicans" (James Fenimore Cooper was from this part of the country, after all). As LeVar Burton would say, "you don't have to take my word for it". Although my pictures don't really do it justice, you can still kind of see for yourself.

We couldn't have asked for much nicer weather for this time of year. It was a little overcast, but temperatures were in the low to mid 60s. We even worked up a little bit of a sweat with all the climbing and had to sit down and take a breather (and to take in the views).

Of course it wasn't all just hiking, resting, and marveling at the magnificence of nature. There was some standing around looking like LLBean models too.

 

After a little hiking, we decided to go try to find a suspension bridge that we had read about on the Internet. With Sammy's GPS as our guide, we made our way to the bridge.

When we arrived we were underwhelmed. The bridge didn't look like too much more than someone's overly-ambitious Eagle Scout project. It was only about ten feet above the river--not what we had expected, but we enjoyed running back and forth across it and making it bounce and sway and shimmying up the cables.

We also played Poohsticks and spent a good 20 minutes skipping rocks. I found this lucky rock. I read somewhere that rocks with rings all the way around are considered magic or wishing rocks, so naturally I had to keep it.

After at least half of the family had had a chance to fall in the water, we decided to go drive around Cornell's campus a little bit, because when you're in the neighborhood of an Ivy-league University you want to check it out. It is a beautiful campus. I could have walked around the campus for a couple of hours taking pictures of all the cool buildings but instead I had to settle for a couple of drive by shots because the family was getting hungry and we are susceptible to hanger in our family.

Before driving back to the OC (Oswego County) we made a stop at the Ithaca Bakery and everyone got to choose a treat. If you are ever in the neighborhood you need to go there. I highly recommend the chocolate Bavarian turnover and the chocolate covered pumpkin cheesecake brownie. 

On our drive home we saw our destiny, so we had to stop and take a picture of that too.

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After we got home I tried to look up the suspension bridge we had gone to and figured out there was more than one and we chose poorly. I feel like we really need to go back now and rectify this. 

We went to THIS ONE. 

Below is the one we meant to go to:

Photo via.

Not quite the same, eh? Nevertheless, we had fun. I doubt we would have been able to get this bridge rocking like we had with the smaller one. I doubt we would have wanted to.