Wednesday 16 July 2008

Ithaca

About once a week, maybe a little less, the staff at camp get a day off. Now normally we drive into Scranton, watch a movie or two, shop for a while, and then get some really nice food, to make up for the abysmal stuff they serve in camp. Which is all very well, but after a while it can get a little..well, dull. So this week we (that is, Seth, Laura, Sparkles, Sparkles' girlfriend Kim and I) decided that we could do better. And better we did, when we discovered Ithaca, NY, famed for the Buttermilk Falls, a series of waterfalls that drop about 500' in total.

It took us a total for three and a half hours to drive there (two legs - we took a hotel the first night, just to get out of camp), and the weather was absolutely abysmal. It was rainy - not just rain, but a proper downpour, all day. Anyway, after some faffing about with the Navsat we found it. By now it's raining more heavily than it has done all day, but we decide to walk up anyway. The walk to the main fall, which has to be about 150' high, is about 300m walk away, and by the time we get there I'm wishing I'd changed into my swimming shorts because I'm soaked through, and panicking because I've nearly been brained by a rock the size of my head during a rockfall. But it was worth it. The falls are utterly breathtaking, but it gets better. The entire group decides that as we're here, and as we're soaked through already, we may as well swim in the splash pool. Which was cool.

After that we ended up changing into the only dry clothes we had, our swimming stuff, in the porch of a kindergarten, the most private place we could find, and then driving to the mall to buy new clothes, with all the hilarity that ensued.

So all in all, a great day out, but that won't compare to the next one, a double day off in New York! Woop!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Adam What's the weather like? It's not very special here. Cold and windy. School has broken up so I'm hoping it will improve.Are you still enjoying camp? If the food is rubbish and you can't wait to get away for a day it doesn't sound too good!
Mum:)

' said...

Camp's still great, but the food is pretty abysmal. The work's hard, but interesting, but it's just good to get away from the kids from time to time, and take some time out. The weather's a little odd here. It's usually hot (low 90's), and amazingly sunny, but from time to time a storm will roll in from nowhere, and then blow away in 30 minutes. Very odd.

Unknown said...

Are you still alive?