Sunday: Started my time in New York off by hiking a portion of the finger lakes trail. The entire trail runs 580 miles end to end but including the entire network is 950 miles all in New York. Of course New York State isnt that wide but the trail is very wiggly. Did a 7 mile hike which was gorgeous and forested. Lots of good scenery and only passed 2 other hikers the entire way! Even on a Sunday afternoon and 75* I thought more people would be outside. Whats odd is getting to multiple sections where the forest is clear cut for electrical work. Its very drastic and suddenly sunny- quite the contrast to being in the shaded forest.
Monday: Downtown Ithaca is super cute! Though a lot of shops are closed on Mondays. There were tons of pride flags everywhere since its June. Lots of colorful murals too. Definitely a refreshing liberal college town feel. Ate diner at Ithaca Ale House and was impressed with their food and drink.
Tuesday: Going right through Dryden is Drydens Rail Trail which is 10 miles of trail that historically was a railroad and now has been turned into multi purpose
recreation. The trail is relatively flat but very scenic with creeks and nature around. Continuing on in 1 direction would actually connect you to a part of the finger lakes trail system. So its all really nice connected outdoor recreation. The Rail Trail is less than a half mile down the road from where Im staying so its really convenient. Check out my photo of the student art too. A section has elementary school art posted along the way. Overall Im super impressed with the amount present in the area.
Thursday: Ithaca has a free summer concert series on Thursday evenings in the downtown commons. is a 3 block foot traffic only area full of shops and stores downtown. The band described themselves as and it was pretty enjoyable. It was lucky too because it had been raining most of the day but the rain stopped just in time for the evening. Someone told me they thought in Ithaca is stronger than anywhere else in New York and I can definitely see that being true.
see a free roaming cow directly in front of the dentist office as pictured Intentionally free roaming and owned by the dentist himself. The cow lives a good life
Saturday: As witnessed with the dentists cow, Dryden is a dairy town. Dairy day is the 2nd Saturday in June and the largest event for the village of the year. The morning started off with a dairy parade. Yes there were cows in the parade and yes most floats were passing out samples of cheese instead of candy 😊 Copper had high expectations of parades set in Dothan where he got a years supply of dog treats tossed at him from the floats. Alas, Dryden (as well as Ebensburg) had no dog treats (he did get some cheese). Some of the farm equipment in the parade was impressively big and some of the baby cows were super adorable. Another similarity to Dothan was there were wooden cows local businesses bought and decorated to be in theme with their business. For dairy day (and days leading up to) they put them outside the business so they arent there year round. They were far less impressive than the dothan peanuts but
still quite amusing. Unfortunately the park hosting the event with dairy day booths and such was crazy crowded. I heard locals saying there hadnt ever been this many people there. So that was a no go for many reasons. They did have the standard guess the weight of the cow, guess how many gallons of milk I produced last year kind of fair fun going on though.
Probably the best thing I have encoutered yet on my travels was Saturday afternoon in Trumansburg called Porchfest. Porchfest actually originated in Ithaca over a decade ago and is starts just as a bunch of musicians playing on peoples porches. Essentially homeowners in the downtown region volunteer their front yard and porch and the porch of the house the stage and people sit in camp chairs or on the grass and sidewalk to listen.
