Day 2 is the discovery day. Whilst our mobile gin palace is equipped with a shower and a toilet, I still like to use the facilities provided by the site; after all, we have paid for them. The bath house (lovely name, I think) was just a couple of yards away down the slope and looked OK. Inside it smelled very sweet, which is not a word you can generally associate with campsite bath houses! It looked clean, too, which was another good sign. The showers, though, left a little to be desired. Only two for starters, one with no shower head and one with no lock on the door; not so good, then. I opted for the lockless one, thinking that with my towel over the door then anyone who did miss it and came bursting in would get everything they deserve! As it happened, no one came in the building and the shower was very nice.
Getting back to Towed Haul, we set the awning and rigged the fairy lights, which are mandatory for all camping trips. I had a look at the damage on the coupler and saw that yes, it was very sick. I went to work with my pliers, though, and straightened it all out as best I could. Because the cap/retainer assembly had dis-assembled itself I thought that having a slightly skewed coupler would create a very tight fit and at least help to keep the two parts together when travelling home; very convenient! I also went to the Park Office to register and, once the lad behind the computer had worked out why I was registering on a Saturday when I was due to register on the Friday, all was hunky dory. Indeed, our Taughannock Falls car pass gave us access to all the other State Parks in the region, which was a real bonus.
A quick look around the campsite showed that a good half of the trailerites were Ontarians, no doubt escaping the youthful boozing that would be going on in Canadian campgrounds this weekend. Fishing seems to be the popular pastime on Cayuga as there were a couple of groups of young men who headed out early each morning armed to the teeth with fishing tackle.
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| Taughannock Falls from the look out |
Breakfast dispensed with, we set to exploring Taughannock Falls. We started by driving up the hill to the falls lookout point high on the rim of the valley (it didn't look that steep at night as we pulled Towed Haul up there) and then headed down to the mouth of the valley, or Canyon depending on how dramatic you want to be, and walked the river path back to the falls. It was a glorious day and the walk was marvelous; Mrs T and the tadpoles even dipped their toes in the water. It's a gentle walk, flat and safe, and to be recommended if you're ever in the area.
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| Taughannock valley |
For lunch we drove into Ithaca, the nearest town of any size. Ithaca is home to Cornell University and the town had a vibrant air, especially in the fine weather. Some of the shops in the Commons were selling some slightly iffy items related to smoking but the whole place had a young feel to it. Lunch was in Simeon's, a nice bistro selling reasonable food at reasonable prices. We encountered some good American service there and it made the lunch all the better.
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| Simeon's in The Commons, Ithaca NY |
Parking, it turned out, was free on the weekend; no wonder everyone was giving me the evil eye when I stopped to get a ticket at the pay booth!
I'll gloss over the bit where we went to Walmart and move straight to Wegmans. Wegmans is a store that is based in Upstate New York but is venturing south and east (sadly, it's not going north into Canada). It has a wide variety of fresh goods and a bakery to die for, and that's on top of it being a pretty good shop anyway. Sure, it wasn't cheap, but where else can you get home baked bread (still hot) and HP Brown Sauce (imported from the UK) under the same roof? The only disappointment was that although they sold beer, there was no wine. This was, we were told, because of the many wine producing outlets in the region; other Wegmans stores did sell wine. Never mind, I was able to get my beer!
Back to the camp ground and it was a relatively early night, for me at least. It was quite domestic at one point, with all four of us sat in the trailer occupying ourselves in our own individual ways. I had to go to bed because in the process of downloading photos to the Netbook PC I nodded off and nearly dropped it!
The morrow promised more sightseeing, and a cooked breakfast; what tourists we are!
