The Best of Upstate New York

After sleeping off our night at the bar we headed out the next day to Letchworth State Park. I figured we'd done the Grand Canyon of the West this summer so we should complete the duo by viewing the Grand Canyon of the East. I haven't been to Letchworth since I was a kid and I only vaguely remember it. Well it is amazing and I would love to go back and do some hiking. The Genesee River flows north through a deep gorge with some waterfalls and despite the sewage brown color it is a beautiful site. There was no one else there so we drove to all the viewpoints of the Lower, Middle and Upper Falls. We were lucky because when we stopped at our first lookout, a train was crossing the trestle above the Upper Falls. Many of the walkways were icy but that just added to the adventure. Jess had the brilliant idea for me to limbo underneath a broken sawhorse. Having never said no to a great photo op I grabbed on intending to pretend since I am not very flexible. However, I slipped into the road (on a blind curve) and took the sawhorse down with me. Jess thoughtfully pointed out that my hair was the exact same color as the leaves.
The Trout Pond was frozen over but we did stop by a really old cemetery which was pretty creepy. Jess was not at all fascinated with the engineering marvel that is the Mount Morris Dam. I stopped by the Hoover Dam this summer (and committed every fact about it to memory) and it was wonderful and all but it doesn't protect my home from a flood like the Mount Morris Dam does. I had to force her to take a picture of it but she was distracted by the white tailed deer in the parking lot (which was actually the cutest deer I've ever seen). We drove through the back roads and stopped by the Abbey of the Genesee where they make their famous Monk bread. It was closed so we just used the place for a bathroom break and when we were leaving a monk came out and asked if we wanted to buy bread because he would open the shop up for us if we wanted. We declined and headed back home to watch Harry Potter.
The next day we kept low key in preparation for the city. We went shopping (I of course showed off Wegmans) and then headed downtown to High Falls. We walked to the Visitor Center where a lady basically turned us back around and said "the power's out and I'm leaving so get out". Well, we still walked out on the bridge for a view of the falls since apparently our trip had turned into seeing all of New York's waterfalls. Who knew?We decided to head down Lake Ave to the Charlotte Genesee lighthouse which I had never been to. After touring the North Carolina shore and seeing those famous big ones, it wasn't much to look at. We blew by and took a few pics before I made an executive decision to go to Ontario Beach Park. We had swung by Silver Lake the day before (which is technically not a Finger Lake but it gave Jess the general idea) so I figured we'd see a Great Lake. Unfortunately, Jess was wearing a sheet of canvas for a shoe and could not feel her feet anymore so I drug her out to the pier (through foot deep snow) and snapped a pic. After all that we headed back home to pack our gear.