Taughannock Falls

by: Zoë

This was the last  stop on our trip and every one was anxious to get home. How ever that doesn't mean that Taughannock wasn't enjoyable

 Lady of the falls

She graces the water with her beauty

the light shines through her athletic shorts and tie die t shirt

she is as elegant and dainty as a flower until 

PLOP!

she lands in the stream

According to legend an epic battle took place here between the Delaware and Cayuga Indians. 

The Cayuga won.

They tossed the Delaware chief Taughnnock over the falls.

 The Snake

"SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!" Shrieks Kinsey 

"Where?" We all want to know.

She points to a tiny wiggly line slithering across the dead leaves.

The baby garter snake paid us no attention.

The hammock

made for relaxation 

swish in the breeze

drift of in its rhythmic sway

leaving our last campsite of the Mcclelland 2015 tour!

A visit home.

by: Kat
By home I mean my parent's house, the place where I grew up. We had spent the day hiking in Shenandoah and arrived at the house around 7:30 Saturday night. We weren't sure at the time how long we would stay but we were all looking forward to showers and full sized beds. It was nice to laze around a bit and visit with my parents. The girls love visiting Grand Mar and Popov. Kinsey spent her Sunday messing about with "potions" which means she mixes up random things in plastic bottles that Grand Mar has supplied. Zoë commandeered Grand Mar and her sewing room so she could make some "crafts" which turned out to be a dream catcher and a medicine bag. Ry and I worked on the blog and doing some laundry. The girls got a bit of swimming in, despite the lake being half the size it used to be. (long story about a leaky damm) Ry and I decided we would do one more stop before home and made a reservation at Taughannock Falls State Park in NY for Monday and Tuesday night. Well rested and fed we rolled out Monday morning ready for our last stop on our trip.

Some fun pics of Zoë jumping into the lake.

This is my favorite.

Ry tried to get Zo to jump into this "hole," didn't work.

A quick pic before we left.

Shenandoah: I'll be Back

By:  Ryan

     There lots of places that we visited on this trip that I have made it onto my "Need to go back there someday" list.  Most of them have earned that place by virtue of the fact that they have much more to see than we possibly could have covered in our whirlwind travels or because I'd love to introduce a family member or friend to them.  Shenandoah National Park could have claimed a rightful spot on this list on it's own merits. The fact is, in addition to being a truly beautiful place and an incredible  work of landscape architecture, it has landed on this list due to the fact that it came near the tail end of what has been an amazing but fairly tiring trip. By the time we reached Shenandoah, we were taking fewer pictures, seeking out fewer things to see, and generally doing everything with less enthusiasm.

     This is what Shenandoah is all about; wide, serene vistas that look as if they could have been constructed of layers of blue gray paper or stitched together on a quilt.  The spine of the park is the 105 mile Skyline drive along which there are many overlooks like the ones pictured here.  This park was the centerpiece of the CCC initiative as it was close to the country's political center, it employed more men and boys than any other CCC project, and it's scope was unmatched elsewhere. What you might mistake for virgin forrest as you drive Skyline is actually a huge CCC garden.  An unfathomable number of trees were transplanted along the length of the road to create the tunnel of forrest that you drive through today.

     We arrived in the park late enough in the afternoon that we didn't want to do much more than set up camp and get dinner going.  We got a nice spot in the Loft Mountain campground, which crams a lot of campers into a fairly small area, but each site is carved out of thick brush giving them a private and almost secluded feel.  As a dinner of chicken and corn on the cob cooked over the fire, Zoe and Kinsey played games with the three girls from the next site over. After a decent dinner and a good night's sleep we felt more ready to do some exploring. At 35 mph it took quite a while for us to get from the campground to Big Meadows and the visitor's center. We watched a video about the CCC and the building of the park before getting lunch. It's worth noting that this was the only park we had encountered where the food offerings consisted almost exclusively of fried food; primarily fried chicken. After devouring a bucket of fried chicken, biscuits, french fries, and cole slaw, we were fueled up for a nice hike. There's nothing quite like a big greasy gut bomb before a hot and humid hike. While the Dark Hollow Falls hike is pretty verticle, it's only 1 1/2 miles round trip and has a nice little waterfall at the turn around point as a reward.

     We might have stayed and seen more of Shenandoah, but after this little hike, everyone was feeling the pull of comfortable and familiar place that was only a few hours drive away. With the gravity of the grandparents' home tugging at us, we said our goodbyes to this beautiful and only partially appreciated place.

From the Sky Down to the Earth

by: Kinsey

We left Giant City's big sandstone streets along with Pushko behind.

When we arrived at the campground, finding a spot was a bit hard, we went around the site three times and then finally decided. Our site had fire wood. We looked around and checked out the general store. Soon we had dinner, pork loin and potatoes. after that we used the rest of our marshmallows. We brushed our teeth and went to bed. Mom woke us up at midnight to see the meteor shower. We walked out out to the grass fields and before we got there we saw a guy who was watching the shower as well. We walked further and then started to go in the grass. It was wet. Dad spotted a platform walkway to put the blanket on. We saw a group of deer. It was cold. We saw bright, we saw dim, we saw thick, we saw thin. There were long, there were short, it made me feel like I watching air planes go by at an airport. 

We didn't have any pictures from that night but I found this one online.


Cave time!

We checked in at the Visitors Center for our cave tour. The bus got there with a thump.We jumped on. It drove us to the entrance of the cave. Our guide started to talk about how The cave is the longest cave ever, it's over 400 miles long and they keep finding more every year. 

he said that you need to turn your flash off if you have it on. We started down the long narrow stair case, our guide said the stairs were built by people that make stairs for submarines. You had to duck and dodge all the rocks sticking out of the walls. When we got to the bottom we all sat on wooden benches while our guide, Rick, talked about the man who first owned and explored the cave. We walked a bit more until we came to another room with benches. Rick  talked about a little girl a long time ago who saw the stalactites and thought it was a little Fairy Castle upside down with a fairies going into it and a fairy road. So they named that spot the Fairy Ceiling. He also said that Godzilla was there and he got his toes stuck in the wall. He showed them to us but I wasn't very impressed they just looked like three triangles of rock. My favorite part of the tour was when we got to see the Frozen Niagara Falls. I was amazed how it had been formed by dripping water over millions of years. I wondered if there are any real water falls in there. When we left we had to walk across the mats of cleanliness just like we did at Mystery Cave in Minnesota. The bats here at Mammoth have the white nose disease so they are trying to keep it from spreading.

Photos, photos...

Taking a rest

Loooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww............

Our Guide, Rick.

Ooooooooooooooooo!!! Niagra Falls!!!!

Stalactite

Wow

Hmmmmmmmmm...

Bbbbbiiiiiiggggggg

Bug.

Historic entrance!!

Giant City

by: Ryan
 
  With the exception of our stop at S.P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden, which I totally recommend if you ever find yourself anywhere near Lucas, Kansas, we raced across Kansas and Missouri as quickly as we could.  Both are "purdy" in their way, but as far as I can tell, there's just not that much there.  We arrived a little before dinner time at the campground of Giant City State Park in Makanda, Illinois.  We found a nearly empty campground, one sign stating that the ranger was off duty, and on other instructing us to make reservations online.  Luckily the sign also had the ranger's number on it.  The ranger told us just to pick out a spot and he'd come by to register us later.  Sometimes, you can have too many choices.  We must have done three laps around the campground before settling on a spot.  There was one other group in the campground, which was lucky because after watching me walk around for awhile gathering damp firewood a nice guy named Kelly came over and gave me a great big pile of his leftover firewood.  Upon arrival, we had been greeted by huge and crazy horseflies and black flies that careened kamikaze style into the truck and trailer.  We  thought we might have to spend the night hiding from the bugs, but for whatever reason, they had no interest in us; they just really hated my truck, I guess.  We actually spent as very comfortable night in the unpopulated camp around the fire, getting showered, and enjoying the nice sleeping weather.

 
    In the morning we checked out the visitor's center where we were besieged by the resident naturalist who clearly could do with a bit more tourist traffic.  After watching a short video, he took us and an other family through the highlights of the park and warned us about the copperhead snakes and poison ivy.  He informed us that while the snakes are there, it was very unlikely we'd see one, and that the poison ivy is everywhere.  The park does have a ridiculous amount of poison ivy; it took Kinsey about 15 minutes on the trail to drop her sunglasses into a nice patch of it.
     The first stop was the lodge, built in the 30's out of hand hewn timbers and locally quarried sandstone by the men and boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps. We found the lodge and attached restaurant as empty as the rest of the park and wondered how it is that places like this can afford to stay open and maintained.  The lodge itself is a truly masterful piece of work.  Every surface, from the limestone block, to the wooden beams, stair treads, and floorboards showcases it's maker's mark.  We explained to the girls a little bit about the New Deal and the CCC.  We talked about how much of the national and state parks' trail networks and facilities that we had been enjoying all summer were made possible by that legislation and by the hard work of so many young depression era men.  It really is amazing how well so much of their work has held up for over 70 years.

     The attraction for which the park is named, Giant City, is an odd assembly of limestone rock formations that call to mind the buildings and streets of city blocks.  Geologists believe that mildly acidic rain over many millions of years have cause crevices in the rock to erode evenly into the "streets" that we find separating them today.   Deserters from the Union and Confederate armies hid in the shelter of these rocks together, and their names are among the first of many inscribed on them.   Some of the overhanging caverns have ceilings that are still stained by the smoke of native American fires.  We went for a hike around and through these strange rocks and beautiful woods.  Despite the  historical richness and mystique that surrounded us, the girls were probably more taken with the cute little cat that followed us around as we explored the trails.  They named him Pushko.

A grown over "Giant City" street

Strolling down the street

Hanging out under balancing rock

The limestone erodes strangely where there is veins of some tougher mineral running through it.

More weird erosion.  These rock "webs" reminded me of my friend Joe's microscope paintings where he paints or draws what he observes through a microscope. They often have the quality of  otherworldly landscapes.

http://josephyetto.com/home.html

Pushko.