We explore a few more of New York's famous waterfalls on our way home.
Our final day of our second finger lakes trip began by exploring Fillmore Glen state park in a wonderful sunrise hike. The rest of our day was spent driving home but we went the long way and hit a bunch of small parks with notable waterfalls along the way.
The first stop was to visit Tinker Falls, one of the few waterfalls in the north east that you can walk behind. Located in the Labrador Hollow Unique Area, well south of Syracuse, this waterfall hike takes only minutes from the parking lot. A small gravel trail ends with a quick hop over the stream before you ascend stone stairs to get behind the fall.
It should be noted that the stairs to the waterfall are extremely small. While Nina was able to ascend with no problem we witnessed several men have distinct trouble coming back down. In fact, the stairs were very wet from the mist off the falls and were therefore extremely slippery.
It's hard to tell how big the falls are from the photos online, so I made sure to snap a photo of Nina behind them. Here you can see they're actually quite large.
Don't expect to have this place to yourself at all. Despite being essentially in the middle of nowhere, there was a full parking lot and hoards of families the entire time. Don't let this put you off though, people came and went from the falls quickly.
We even encountered this little snake while crossing the stream so keep an eye out!
The park itself also features longer hikes. The majority of people seemed to be doing the skyline hike which has a wonderful vista point and even lists on the map as a paragliding spot. I would have like to have done this hike, oh well, next time!
Our next stop, and probably fastest of the day, was Pratts Falls. This is another park located in the middle of nowhere that was absolutely packed. Despite that, we lucked out and had the falls to ourselves for about 5 minutes... after which 20 people swarmed them.
The hiked from the parking lot to the falls is all down stairs and takes less than 3 minutes. The hike back up is probably going to take longer :)
The top of the falls feature a water canal and mill stone. This was the historic first site of a Mill in the area. There is also a longer hiking trail down to the falls that is supposed to clock in at over a mile long. Other than that, there isn't much to this park. We didn't luck out with the placement of the sun while we were here unfortunately, it was shining directly on the falls at the time. This park is definitely worth a quick look.
Our Final stop of the entire trip, Chittenango Falls state park is another small park centered entirely around a water fall. This was the busiest park of the entire trip, full of tourists fighting for parking spaces at the same time a little league game was happening in the park was not a pleasant way to start.
The falls themselves are not the tallest I've seen but they are incredibly powerful. The hike down is once again all stairs and a pedestrian bridge provides the perfect angle for a photo. This is ranked among my all time favorite waterfalls, it really is that good! We quickly left to get home after this photo as the day was getting late and we had a solid 4.5 hour ride left to get home. Heading north to the highway we discovered the World Boxing Hall of Fame so if you're into that it might be worth adding to any itinerary in the area.
On to the next one!...
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