Special Mom’s blog

We were at Watkins Glen State Park yesterday. First time in the finger lakes region of New York. The drive along Lake Seneca was beautiful as we drove to the park. It was so crowded that we were asked to park at south entrance. I watched numerous videos for the gorge hike but no one told us clearly were to park 😊.

We began our 1.5 miles one way hike on the gorge trail. It is a beautiful trail and yes one need to be careful with winding stone trails bridges and cascades with 832 steps. The trail ends with a steep 180 steps called the Jacob ladders that land us in the north entrance. If you can’t make the trip back, you can get a shuttle back to south entrance parking lot. Yes, we had that option but we chose to walk back on the same trail with steps, stone bridges and 19 waterfalls. Yes, we did do 832 steps twice!😊

The suspension bridge. Warning was not to throw stone into the goege since it can hit people walking down.

Yup, the view of suspension bridge from below.

So many of these 19 cascades were cute and beautiful.

Rainbow falls, we walked behind the falls. First in our life walking behind one in a safe way.

The last or first portion is the Jacobs ladder or the 180 steep steps. Glad we did it the first half and did our tunaround climbing down.

We had wonderful people on the trail who helped my son as he climbed down the multiple stairs.

A hike for our memory.

We also visited the Taughanook Falls. Okay we had no energy to hike down the falls as we had already climbed 45 floors and walked nearly 4 miles. So maybe another time but it was a beautiful scene from the overlook area.

See the tiny people there? We could have gone down there.

With this our summer travel concludes. It all began in March with a trip to the Smoky Mountains. We have hiked and walked trails now from New York to South Caroline to Arkansas and Texas. We have covered almost 10 states this summer alone and is definitely a feather in the cap for my son and me of course.

The travel plans now pause as I see a forecast of very cold snowy winter. But we have plenty at home to do and keep us busy for the next few months.

I became a member of National Parks Travelers Club 🙂. With 10 National Parks and around 20 sites under our belt we can safely say we are fans of National parks and sites 🙂. So, our travels do not end here. I will be watching for an opportunity to move around with my young man.

By the way what was our secret to doing 832 times two, it was Tim Hortons and Timbits 😊.

The hotel we stayed had substandard free coffee or should I say they just marketed for the Tim Hortons next door. Who knows. We were pumped up with Tim Hortons caffeine when we went to the trail and it just paid off.