We hit the road from our great campground in Shenandoah State Park, to attempt to outrun the rainy weather by heading north a day earlier than planned. Destination: Taughannock Falls, near Ithaca, NY. Lynn finagled a change to our camp reservation, so boom, we split.
“Rainy" is a polite way to describe the conditions most of the day during our drive. A massive dump of H20 constantly on the road, and on all our road companions, for 5 hours was the reality. Scenery? Hahahahahaha! Mostly it was the “scenery” of spray from the wheels of wall-to-wall 18-wheel truckers. It got so bad I actually wore out my windshield wiper blades, and had to stop at a small-town Chevy dealer to replace them.
We blasted through several states in one day: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and finally arrived in New York. The last hour or so of driving was sublime, with beautiful scenes of farms, swollen rivers (the Susquehanna was incredibly high, fast and muddy), and almost NO TRAFFIC! Pennsylvania included a stretch in Amish country, where one intrepid buggy driver passed us at high speed as Lynn tried to take a photo of the offender!
Hunger and low-gasoline overtook us a couple of times, so we made some unscheduled stops. Once I got us lost and turned around, so we accidentally visited the uniquely-named town of Quiggleville. Sort of expected it to look like Munchkinland in Wizard of Oz!
We DID stop at a chain gas station called “SHEETZ” twice. They have a big take-out food operation inside, but both times we couldn’t bring ourselves to trust the quality of the burger/dogs/tacos they cooked, because of the name of the place. I wasn't going to load a bag of Sheetz in my truck, and Lynn feared having the Sheetz while driving. Hahahaha, I crack us up! Anyhow, Sheetz is apparently all over the place up here, it may happen yet.
We made it to our campground at Taughannock Falls State Park in time to hike out to see the Falls just before it got dark. Wow! I think it’s the tallest falls in the East, or something to that effect. We took Sheldon on our mini-hike, and he wasn't too happy being at the base of the Falls with all the noise and spray enveloping us. Again, recent rain in the region from Hurricane Florence meant the Falls was carrying much more water than usual, so it was an impressive sight.
Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy here too, so we have contingency plans: Explore Ithaca, Watkins Glen, and try to sneak in a kayak paddle on a nearby lake (Hey, this IS the Finger Lakes Region, there should be one handy). Sunny predictions for the following day, so maybe some hiking and biking? Hope so! Negative Inertia is going to kill me on this trip: sitting while driving is OK if you can get out and move vigorously a lot when you arrive somewhere. Rainy weather hampers that regimen. Otherwise, this trip is going great, and we’re seeing good stuff!
Not too many new pics today; because of the rain we couldn't see anything! However, here's the link to our pics if you'd like to see them: TRIP PICS ALBUM
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