305 actual miles; 5 hours 38 min
Got to start off Sunday morning with church!
big fog in the valleys getting here, and I saw a red-tailed hawk!
And then a nice walk across the Penn State campus to their Palmer Museum of Art, which opens at noon on Sundays. Some nice 19th Century Landscapes include:
Russell Smith - Allegheny Forest, c. 1860
Sanford Robinson Gifford - Long Branch Beach (Summer Day on the New Jersey Coast), 1867
a nice John Kensett - Flinstone, New Hampshire, c. 1850
I then headed north on I-99, which was sort-of exciting - I have this gut-sense that North/South Interstates are (generally) odd-numbered 2-digits, and go from 5 out west (which goes from Canada/Seattle, Washington down to Mexico/San Diego, California); I was feeling "pretty East" driving on I-99!
but how does this fit in with the fact that I-95 goes from the Maine/Canada border all the way down to Miami, Florida??
It was beautiful driving through the New York State countryside:
It is nice getting off the Interstates.
Watkins Glen State Park is basically a HUGE Gorge, carved out by Glen Creek running through it, plus some land surrounding the gorge. You can park "at the top", then walk down to the bottom-and-back, or park at the bottom and come up (I started at the top/west):
I think MayMyWalk got a little funky down in the gorge - it was just a little over two miles down, and then two miles back - I don't know where the extra 2 miles came from?
With AWESOME WATERFALLS
It is the driest time of the year, but the unimpressive spill over the left path is Rainbow Falls, which gets its name because, when the sun shines from behind, a small rainbow forms (um, I didn't see it).
Art Note: the Minnesota Marine Art Museum has a painting by James Hope (1818-1892) - Rainbow Falls, Watkins Glen, New York, 1871
I didn't get his exact angle - I should have brought the image with me.
Huge Crevices
and cool bridges
Mark Twain, in his 1872 book “Roughing It”, wrote:
In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataract of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high; but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmetic rather than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by a poem of Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque rocks, glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, and failing water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent is the charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such an experience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (N.Y.), on the Erie railway, is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if the callous tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for the honors simply on scenic grace and beauty—the grand, the august and the sublime being barred the contest—it could challenge the old world and the new to produce its peer.
Seneca Lake (the Finger Lake that runs north from Watkins Glen, NY) is beautiful in the Fall afternoon sunlight:
As "the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done."
Pizza (last for a while!) and the Patriots beat the Cowboys - Thank You God for a great day!
Music today - albums:
Sade - Promise, 1985
Sade - Lovers Rock, 2000
Dido - Life For Rent, 2003
"Sand In My Shoes" lyrics:
I've still got sand in my shoes
Because I'm going to Watkins Glen, The Band - Rock of Ages, 1972 (double album)
The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen was a 1973 rock festival, an estimated 600,000 rock fans came to the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway outside of Watkins Glen, New York on July 28, 1973, to see the Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead and The Band perform.
"The Shape I'm In" lyrics:
Has anybody seen my lady?
This living alone will drive me crazy
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in
The Allman Brothers Band - An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set, 1995
The Allman Brothers Band - Idlewild South, 1970
"Midnight Rider" lyric:
And the road goes on forever,
Shameless Plug: if you enjoy this blog, you may like my other one about Hiking the 4,000 footers in New Hampshire (I have done 39-of-48 thru September 2015)
hyperlink: dixonheadingnorth
http://dixonheadingnorth.blogspot.com/
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