Finger Lakes – Watkins Glen/Treman Park/Wine Trail

Previous: Finger Lakes – Ithaca

Watkins Glen Gorge

July 14

We woke up around 8:00 a.m. The race cars at the speedway had already begun. If that didn’t wake anybody at the campground, then the 8:30 a.m. freight train blowing its whistle along the tracks about 50 yards behind the campground surely did. The night in the tent was comfortable, but somehow our brand new Intex air mattress had lost some air in the night. Is there such a thing as a great air mattress?!?!

We boiled water on the Coleman stove for coffee, and poured milk into our Mini-Wheats cup-of-cereal…glamping cooking done!

We began this adventure-filled day by hiking to the 3-mile roundtrip Watkins Glen Gorge Trail. This is considered the king of the gorge trails in the Finger Lakes.  We could pick up the trail right from our campground, so we didn’t need to drive anywhere. Most hiking trails in the area were made into one-way trails due to COVID this summer, so we picked up the South Rim Trail from the campsite and took it down to the very busy and touristy main entrance of the Gorge, where there is also a gift shop. Fortunately, there was a point we could pick up the Gorge Trail just before we got to the main entrance.  We really wanted to minimize close encounters with other people due to COVID, and we had no burning need to visit the gift shop.

This Gorge Trail was definitely the most impressive of all the gorge trails we did on this trip, and being the most popular it was the most crowded. It wasn’t overly packed, but there were almost always people near us…lots without COVID defensive face masks.  But we just managed it, and enjoyed the truly amazing waterfalls (all 19 of them!), stone bridges, carved out rounded gorge walls, artistically weaving rushing water, and unique landscape. The hike was more of a riverwalk, but whatever category, it is a remarkably beautiful highlight of the Ithaca area.

It took us about an hour to walk the trail which included being down at the bottom and up along the North Rim Trail (called Indian Trail) for varying perspectives. We walked the Gorge Trail a second time as a way to get back to our campsite, this just meant taking the South Rim trail off of the end of the Gorge Trail.  A benefit of camping at Watkins Glen State Park, for sure.

Buttermilk Falls

From our campsite, we got in the car and set out for Buttermilk Falls State Park about 30 minutes away in Ithaca. Here there was another gorge trail, but with the added bonus of being able to swim at the base of the falls.  It was while entering this parking lot that we were pleasantly surprised to learn that the Watkins Glen State Park campground tag hanging on our car mirror provided access to both Buttermilk Falls State Park and Robert Treman State Park (which we hit later), saving $8 at each.

This Buttermilk Falls Gorge Trail was more of an actual dirt hiking trail than at Watkins Glen Gorge.  It was an easy 1.5 mile hike up along the horseshoe around the gorge.  There were people in various unofficial swimming holes along the trail, and we were very tempted to stop and swim.  Instead we enjoyed the hike’s views of waterfalls and amazing rock formations with the intention of swimming at the end in the sanctioned swimming hole.

When we got back to the bottom, we changed into our swim suits at the car.  We used our new pop-up changing tent to conveniently change out of our hiking clothes right there in the parking lot.  A great purchase!!  We then walked to to swim at the lifeguard attended swimming hole at the base of the falls. The Buttermilk Falls park swimming hole is a popular place with the locals.  It’s not a quiet swimming hole, and it’s not very large.  On this day, one half of the swimming area, including the diving board was closed due to only having one lifeguard.  We found a spot on the grass for our towels and went for a nice swim on this hot day.  We only stayed about 30 minutes but it was a refreshing post-hike respite.

Robert Treman State Park

My research had informed us that we really needed to see nearby Robert Treman State Park, and its Lucifer Falls, but we also wanted to do some more swimming.  I asked the lifeguard at Buttermilk Falls whether the swimming hole at Robert Treman State Park was fully open or only partially like this one.  She told me it was fully open, including the diving board.  So, we headed there right away since it was already 4:00 p.m.

After a ten-minute car ride, we got to Robert Treman State Park.  We first checked out the swimming hole which is about a 5-minute walk from the parking area. We found it to be much larger and even more scenic than Buttermilk Park’s.  Better yet, the diving board was open in the deep area.  We both sprung from the diving board, and we really enjoyed clinging to the rocks along the base of the waterfall as the falls poured over us.  This was definitely more like swimming at a waterfall swimming hole than at Buttermilk Falls…really fun, and satisfying on such a hot summer day.

Check out my perfect 10 swan dive in the video:

Lucifer Falls

After about an hour hanging out at the very busy swimming hole, we decided to hike to Lucifer Falls within the park.  This is considered one of the most impressive waterfalls in the Finger Lakes region. A park ranger near the parking lot (which is close to the swimming hole) told us that we would have to hike about 90-minutes from this point to get to Lucifer Falls.  Considering it was getting late and we would be losing light we decided to not do the hike.  We got in the car and figured we’d tool around a bit before heading back to Watkins Glen for dinner.

As we were leaving Treman Park we saw a road sign pointing to Lucifer Falls.  We followed the road and signage to the upper section of the Park and found a parking lot with a trailhead to Lucifer Falls.  From this point it was only about a 20-minute hike to the Falls.  We don’t know why the park ranger didn’t tell us about this option.  Part of this hike was a riverwalk-type hike like Watkins Glen Gorge Trail, but unlike that trail there were very few people here. We were treated to some equally impressive waterfalls, stone bridges, and heavy flowing water through the gorge. The highlight was Lucifer Falls and the long stone staircase carved out of the gorge that led over it and down along it.

We saw one family swimming underneath the impressive and dramatic 115’ falls. If we had our swimsuits, we probably would have joined them (or at least attempted to…as we never did figure out how exactly they got right under the falls).  There were some steep parts on this trail, and some long distance vistas as well.  It was a nice mix of hiking trail and stone walkways.  This was a great finale to a great day filled with gorges, waterfalls, swimming holes, and hiking.

We headed back to Watkins Glen and caught a sunset dinner at the Village Marina Bar & Grill overlooking Seneca Lake.  Food was fine, service was excellent, and the view was great.  After dinner we sat around our campfire for a bit. We tried unsuccessfully to see the Neowise Comet that was overhead, but there were just too many tall trees in the way.  Then off to bed.

Seneca Wine Trail

July 15

We slept in this morning and had our usual glamping breakfast of coffee and a cup-of-cereal/oatmeal, and then headed out.  This was our day to visit some Finger Lake wineries and drive up and around Seneca Lake.  We made reservations for three wineries along the famed Seneca Wine Trail: Atwater, Lamoreaux Landing, and Warner. I chose them based on proximity to lake views, though I was already partial to Lamoreaux Landing’s great Cabernet Franc.

Our first stop was the Atwater Winery at noon.  This was about 15 minutes from the campsite.  We enjoyed this wine tasting because here we had a friendly, dedicated server at the inside bar who then allowed us to take some of the sampled wine out to the Adirondack chairs overlooking the vineyard and Seneca Lake…ahhh!  A wine purchase is usually required to use the lawn chairs, but there was nobody in any of them so he was nice enough to let us. The wines weren’t exceptional, but they were fine and enjoyable.

Our next stop was a 2:00 p.m. tasting at Lamoreaux Landing.  I was looking forward to this one the most because I love their Cabernet Franc.  Unfortunately, this was the least impressive of the tastings.  Our servers were slow, inattentive, and not knowledgeable about the wines at all.  I asked one of the servers about the varietals in the red blend we were tasting. She just read the bottle’s label to me, but it didn’t answer my question.  I went online and got the answer and let her know which varietals made up the blend.  I think she was appreciative, but Emilie doesn’t think so.  We interpret eye rolling differently.  Other than the Cab Franc, the wines, like the tasting experience were not noteworthy.

The last tasting was at Warner Winery at 3:45 p.m. But first, we ate a late 3:00 p.m. lunch at their adjacent restaurant.  The views on the patio here overlooking the vineyard and lake were great, and the service and food were excellent.  This was a great choice.

We then walked over to the winery’s indoor bar for our tasting (appropriate COVID precautions were in place). The bartender was great.  When she learned that I had pre-paid for two wine tastings even though Emilie is a beer drinker, she spoke to her manager and was able to swap out the wine tasting for a beer tasting for Emilie.  Great, engaging bartenders at this place.  The wine was pretty good, too.  We each bought a full glass of something or other and took them out onto the covered patio to enjoy on this beautifully sunny summer afternoon.  This was the best tasting experience of the three.

After the Wagner tasting, we headed north a short distance to Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake.  Along the way we saw several Amish horse buggies.  There was one guy who was training the horse to pull the buggy.  We stayed back to be sure to not spook the horse.  The guy was obviously good at training them and it was cool to watch him keep the buggy in control on the road with a less than cooperative horse.  We passed only after he had stopped on the side of the road.  I gave him a thumbs up, he gave us a big smile.

Sampson State Park itself is not impressive at all unless you have a boat at its marina, but we did manage to somehow find the well-hidden 3.5-mile lakeshore bike trail that started there.  The trail was unexceptional only because we could hardly see Seneca Lake due to the trees and bushes that were between the trail and the water just about the whole way.  This was consistent with what we found to be the default view of the Seneca Lake while driving up the east side of it…not enough lake view.

The highlight of this bike-trail stop at Sampson State Park was accidentally finding a nice spot to swim in the lake near the start of the bike trail.  We found an unofficial small stony beach via a small path in the woods. When we first got to this dead-end road in the Park and somehow found the bike trail, we saw two people come off that path, and they obviously had just been swimming.  So when we returned from the ride, we changed into our swimsuits in our changing tent, and checked it out.  We found a really great, secluded spot…only us.   It was our only swim in a Finger Lake, and it was wonderful.  The water was clean and not too cold.  It was also our only bike-ride for the whole trip.

After our swim, we continued to drive north toward Geneva to drive completely around Seneca Lake, back to Watkins Glen Sate Park. We stopped to get ice cream in Geneva around 7:30 p.m. The homes on the lake in Geneva are beautiful and large. We found the drive down the west side of the lake to be more scenic than the drive up the east side. There were more lake views, more beautiful homes, and more gorgeous green scenery.  We found it odd that so much of Seneca Lake is obscured by trees on the east side.

We considered the ice cream in Geneva to be our dinner, and so went straight to the campsite for our final night there.

July 16

We had coffee and bfast at the campsite and then packed up the tent. Before leaving Watkins Glen we drove through town to the neighboring village of Montour Falls to find the namesake waterfall in town. We found it easily. The falls are located right in the middle of town, just as though it was any other house on the street.  Very cool, but for upstate New York, fairly common.

We then drove to find the Watkins Glen International Speedway since it sounded like it was right outside our tent for the past three nights. We were surprised by how vast the Speedway grounds were. They obviously get quite a crowd there.

We then set out for The Adirondacks.  Specifically, we headed to the Lake Placid/Whiteface KOA in Wilmington, NY about 5 hours away and about 10 miles outside of Lake Placid.

Next: Adirondacks – Hiking/Swimming