Adventures In and Around The Finger Lakes

The Grand Canyon of The East

We drove down into northern Pennsylvania to visit The Grand Canyon of The East because it is listed as a place to see in most of the tour books.  It is a gorge near Wellsboro, PA, which has acquired the nickname which, in my opinion, does an injustice to the real Grand Canyon.  It is rather a "Deep Valley" rather than a canyon, but it was picturesque.  I can imagine that in the Fall it is even more impressive since all the sides of the gorge are tree covered.

 

 

As we walked along the trail above the west rim of the gorge, there were lots of ground covers, ferns, moss, and plants of all sorts.  The area is obviously part of the eastern forests and the forest floor stays moist and damp because of the high crown of tree foliage.  Here is a couple of pics from our walk along the trail:

 

 

Montour Falls

We have traveled in lots of sunshine--it has been very dry throughout the upper East Coast:  some places haven't had any real rainfall in 30 days or more.  The locals are becrying the drought.  This was very evident by the low flow of water over the falls in the area.  We stopped to see Montour Falls near Watkins Glen and saw merely a trickle, which was a disappointment.

 

This is the plaque at Montour Falls--but it isn't named Montour!

Without any rain for a good number of days, the falls just weren't very spectacular!

 

What do you suppose our Odyssey Group is staring at???

 

 

 A couple of small turtles enjoying the quiet pool below the waterfalls, of course!!



 

The Gorge at Watkins Glen

We did take a walk up the gorge at The Glen, but like Montour Falls, there wasn't much water flow.  We climbed up about half-way--lots of steps going up the gorge!  Naturally, we learned that we could have taken the shuttle to the top of the gorge and then walked down--would have been much easier on our old bodies!

 

As you can see, the gorge is finely chiseled and deep--it is a long climb to the top!

The walkway from the parking lot is visible as folks stroll up into the gorge.

 

About halfway up the climb to the top, one comes to a falls you can walk behind (the formal name escapes me now, but safe to say, with the low water flow, it was a lot drier walking behind it this day!) 



 

And there's Jack posing beside the waterfall--the rest of the Odyssey elected not to traipse that far!