Six Mile Creek

After hiking the Six Mile Creek area, my (former) roommate and I have hiked pretty much everything there is to hike in Ithaca and seen all the waterfalls listed in guidebooks. In the summer of 2015 alone, we went to Treman, Buttermilk, Taughannock, the Plantations and Fall Creek (via the Cayuga Trail), Lick Brook, and finally, Six Mile Creek. I had forgotten that I had visited the Six Mile Creek area with my hiking class a couple falls ago, but on our summer adventure there, I extended my hiking experience by travelling both farther up and downstream.

We started out about midmorning and located the area where we were supposed to be able to find a trail pretty easily. Then as we walked along, we pretty quickly lost the path and ended up wandering in the woods right behind some peoples’ backyards (sorry). It turned out that the path was much closer to the creek edge, and we had a pleasant walk to Businessman’s Lunch falls. What’s unique about these falls is that they’re right next to an abandoned mill. Six Mile Creek was formerly used as a power source, and the mill and some hundred year old pipes are still hanging around as evidence.

Businessman's Lunch falls, with mill beside

From the falls, we walked up to the road and crossed the street to the Mulholland Wildflower Preserve for the next stage of our adventure. There are several waterfalls created by dams along the trail, all of which are pretty cool. After the early parts of the trail, the path became somewhere . . . less well defined. Still easy to follow, but it was pretty obvious that it was less travelled, sometimes muddy, and often close to rather steep inclines. It was never dangerous, as long as you were aware of the fact that you were indeed hiking, as opposed to lounging on your couch, and weren’t fooling around.

Double waterfalls early along the Six Mile Creek trail system

Ithaca has a good mix of walking options, ranging from paved paths to single track, steep, muddy, rock-strewn, lesser trekked trails. The number of people you encounter is roughly inversely proportional to how developed the trail is. For example, the Gorge Trail at Taughannock, which is flat enough for strollers, tends to be swarming with people. Similarly, on the heavily advertised gorge trails at Treman and Buttermilk, you can’t turn a corner without running into someone*. If you hike the Rim Trail at Taughannock or around Lake Treman at Buttermilk, however, it’s much quieter, but still on state park lands, so the trails are maintained, with steps and fences on the steep parts.

If that’s still too established for you, the Cayuga Trail, Six Mile Creek, and Lick Brook offer a more natural experience, though the Cayuga Trail has an interesting mix of wandering through random forest and suddenly appearing on a road. Lick Brook is undeveloped, and has the longest steep section of anything I’ve hiked around Ithaca. I’ve already mentioned what the trail at Six Mile was like. In our hours of hiking these three trails, we saw maybe a few dozen people, which is what you’d see just at the trailhead of a popular state park trail.

Back to our Six Mile Creek hike – we continued along the trail until we came to a lake/reservoir. At that point, we turned back and retraced our path to return to the apartment, completing what was to be our last great adventure of the summer.

If you keep going almost to the end of the trail, you'll be rewarded by these falls

*Exception: Hike early in the morning. My roommate and I started out before 10:30** at Treman and had a quiet hike on the way out. By the time we headed back the trail was getting pretty crowded.

**Apparently tourists sleep in on Saturdays? 10:30 is mid to late morning for me.

13.1

This one was my idea. I’d been on the Cayuga Trail a few times, but always around the same area. Naturally, the way to remedy that was to hike the entire trail in one day. It’s 8.5 miles one way, but moderately-fit backpackers with full loads can pretty easily hike 20 miles in a day, so at most 17 miles with light loads sounded very doable. As usual, my partner in crime adventure was my long-suffering junior year/summer roommate, who thought that hiking the Cayuga Trail in a day was a great idea.

We set out early on a Saturday morning just in case it turned out to be harder than we thought and we needed to hike into late afternoon/evening. We arrived at the trailhead by 9, at which point my roommate discovered that she had forgotten the memory card for her camera. I was really surprised because my roommate is a mature and responsible adult who’s on top of things. Except that time she forgot her ID card to go to the dining hall, and the time she had her ID card holder but not her ID card at intramural soccer, and that other time she left her ID in the suite when we went to breakfast, and – never mind.

The first part of the Cayuga Trail goes through campus, so the Cayuga Trails Club had to get a little creative with the blazes:

Later on the trail, but same idea.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but that is indeed duct tape.

From campus, we continued on to the Plantations, making it to the visitors’ center before it was open for the day. Then through the wildflower garden by a very circuitous route, up Arboretum Road, and to the suspension bridge. From the bridge, the trail goes through a wooded area for some time. When we entered the forest, we were joined by some friends. Lots of friends, who wanted to get to know us by sucking our blood. In other words, vampires mosquitoes. (I finished the day with a mosquito kill count of 14 and a dozen mosquito bites on my right arm alone. Other highlowlights included the bite on my ear and the one on my palm.)

Suspension bridge

Most of the trail isn’t very scenic if you’re looking for waterfalls or overlooks, but there’s a section with some bluffs/cliffs. The trail’s actually been rerouted farther away from the edge because of erosion, but you can get a bit of a view from there.

Awhile after that, we found the trail register, signed it, and headed on our way. A couple hours and several thousand trees later, we emerged from the woods, crossed Fall Creek on the shoulder of the bridge shown above, and shortly found ourselves walking along a former railway. The rails weren’t there anymore, but it was a very clear and straight path running directly behind peoples’ houses, so that was a little strange. It would be convenient and easy if you wanted to get onto the Cayuga Trail, but you’d also have random people passing right by your backyard all the time.

About a mile later, we found ourselves in the woods again, on a part of the trail that was even less frequented than the previous six miles or so. Many parts of the trail hadn’t been very wide, and we’d walked through some very large Jurassic-looking plants and enough poison ivy to make a small town very uncomfortable, but here we found ourselves burrowing through a tunnel of undergrowth and tree branches. Emerging from the last of the foliage, we spotted the triple blazes on a tree that signifies the end of a trail. We’d made it. One way.

Our next decision was whether to take the Cayuga Trail back or to find an old railroad, take that partway back, walk along the road for a bit, connect to the East Ithaca Recreation Trail, and walk the remaining mile or so back to Collegetown. In the spirit of adventure, we chose to venture out into the unknown and search for the railroad. So, no . . . we didn’t really know where we were going.

We found the railroad without too much trouble, then had to navigate through a field we weren’t expecting and ended up on a different road than we had planned. It was fine though, because we knew where we were. When we reached the East Ithaca Recreation Way, we finally decided to stop for lunch. The bench we found was too hot so we sat on the grass to eat. About two minutes later, we felt a raindrop. Within fifteen seconds, it had turned into many raindrops. Naturally, we pulled out a raincoat (me) and backpack cover (my roommate) and continued to sit there eating our sandwiches.

After another three minutes, we decided it would be a good idea to go stand under a tree to finish lunch, so we did. From there, it was an easy couple miles back to Collegetown, where we passed out on the living room floor for awhile. We were gone about six hours and our total mileage for the day ended up being right around a half marathon – 13.1 miles.

Cars are Fast

Not having a car in Ithaca forces you to plan well and be creative. Sometimes you also have to be willing to expend some energy and walk farther than thirty feet in the un-air-conditioned outdoors with the sun beating down on your back. Oh, the horrors. I’ve done my share of bus riding – to Wegmans almost every week this past summer and to all three state parks the bus goes to during the summer, but I’ve also branched out into using my bike as transportation instead of just recreation.

It started because I didn’t have a ride to church in the summer. I next found out the church I attend during the school year was closer than I thought (only about 4 miles from Cornell). Thanks to Google maps, I then discovered a way to get there that only had me biking on the highway for about a mile. I decided to test bike the route on the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend because I took the afternoon off from work and didn’t have anything else to do.

It turned out that although the way to church is almost entirely uphill, because most of it isn’t on busy roads, it’s very bikeable, even with my questionable biking ability. For most of the summer, I biked to church every two or three weeks, and besides burning some energy, it was nice being able to leave as late or as early after service as I wanted to.

Arrival at Treman

My next biking destination was Treman State Park, with my roommate. The fellowship I’m in has a lot of people staying in the same apartment building and there was an end of summer picnic planned for a Saturday at the beginning of August. My roommate and I, hearing that the Gorge Trail was finally open, wanted to hike at Treman, and we didn’t have a ride, so we decided to bike. It was about six miles, with a couple miles on a highway (with a very wide shoulder). After biking six miles, we immediately hiked up steep steps, which my legs and lungs absolutely loved. A note about biking to Treman: if you’re looking for the bike rack, it’s by the changing rooms for the swimming area, not by the ranger station, the parking lot, or the bathrooms by the trailhead. Why . . .?

Got a little help from a friend on the way to the Lab of Ornithology

Having gained experience biking to places, my last biking exploit of the summer was to the Lab of Ornithology (4.5 miles). There is something extremely satisfying about reaching your destination and knowing that you made it there under your own power, even as you gasp for breath and your legs want to hurt your brain for putting them through physical activity. There had better be, because it takes two or three times as much time to get anywhere, because cars are fast.

A Midsummer Evening’s Play

Although there were plenty of free events to attend in Ithaca during the summer, I can, every couple months or so, be persuaded to use actual real money to buy things. On this occasion, my roommate and I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the Ithaca Shakespeare Company at the Plantations. Our other choice of production was Henry IV, and as much as I love history (I don’t), I thought I’d rather see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We went on a midsummer Thursday night, which was five dollars cheaper than a Friday or weekend. On top of that, students received a five dollar discount, so our tickets were only five dollars.

I packed dinner and made the trek out to the Plantations on foot after work. When I got there and met my roommate, there was already a decent sized crowd camped out in front of the stage. We paid our five dollars and found a spot near the back/middle of the audience where we could see. Having brought neither a blanket nor chairs, we sat on the grass. Having brought neither wine nor a fancy home-cooked dinner, I settled in to eat my oatmeal. At least I fared better in the dinner department than my roommate, who forgot her dinner in the fridge at work.

Once the show started, I will say it really helped to have read A Midsummer Night’s Dream before, even if it was in eighth grade. I remembered the basic storyline of the play, which was enough for me to follow what was happening onstage. They kept the set simple, but it was still effective. The sound was the only disappointing part of the performance. The sound effects were nice, and not obnoxious or intrusive, but the basic mike/speaker system was not working well. During the first act or so, it mainly seemed to pick up the actors’ footsteps(. . . ?) rather than voices, though it improved later. If it had been the first showing, I could have understood sound problems, but this was at least the second week of performances. (It was outdoors and also the first show of the weekend, but I would have hoped they’d worked things out after a full weekend of performances.)

Right after the play ended, with everyone packing up to leave

Even with sound problems, I could still hear most of the lines, and the play was overall highly entertaining. I’m glad I went, and I would recommend it, with the addition that it would be helpful to read the play beforehand.

Mostly Alive

So in the last two months, I started classes, committed to applying to grad school, took the GRE, wrote lab reports, did problem sets, went to a conference, graded, played with the pep band at field hockey, sprint football, volleyball, hockey, and a wedding, ate peanut butter and jam sandwiches, went rock climbing, and spent many happy moments long arduous nights in the Olin lounge. My state of being can best be summed up as “mostly alive,” and if anyone’s seen my brain, please send it my way.

In the midst of all the craziness, the wireless adaptor/card on my laptop decided to go ahead and die, so for awhile I could only connect to the internet in my apartment using an Ethernet cable. At least it wasn’t dial up. For now, I’m using a new (cheap) laptop. Besides its lack of processor power, nonexistent memory, horrendously dysfunctional touchpad, and low quality audio, I like the computer. It works, and it has a touchscreen.

I actually still have half a dozen or so posts about what I did this summer that I’ve just never gotten around to editing and posting. As the northeast sinks into six months of winter, expect these posts of sunshine and carefree days reminding you of everything you’re missing by not living in California. But at least we have water.

One of the other effects of having to switch computers suddenly is that I don’t have any of my most recent pictures on the flash drive I’m working off of. So instead, here’s a two-year-old picture from my favorite vacation spot, Acadia National Park:

Hopefully will get the rest of my summer posts out “soon.”