Day 2: Marathon to Niagara Falls

Today's driving distance wasn't too far, so it ended up being a pretty liesurely day, full of detours. Yesterday afternoon my mom suggested we head out of Marathon through Ithaca instead of taking the interstate, so I gave Tom "DJ Trouble" Holowka a call to see if he was around to hang out for a little bit. I told him I'd call him in the morning before we rolled into Ithaca. When I called it turned out we were only about a mile or so away from the Holowka household, so we stopped by there, chatted with his parents for a little bit, and then rolled on into town. We got a brief tour of Cornell and then my Mom and I grabbed some lunch at "the Commons" with Troubs. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of Ithaca or of DJ Trouble. Both seemed to be doing well.

After leaving Ithaca, we took Rt. 89 along Cayuga Lake. My mom surprised me with her impetuousness when she saw a sign for a waterfall overlook and pulled off to check it out. It was called Taughannock Falls. It has the distinction of being the highest "free-standing" waterfall, or something like that, but I'm not really sure what that means. At any rate, it was impressive, especially the way the gorge was carved into such a bowl-like shape.


As we continued north, we eventually came across signs for Seneca Falls, the site of the first women's convention in 1848. My mom, being champion of all things progressive, was very eager to go, so we pulled into town to have a look around. It is one of those old mill towns that you find a lot in upstate New York and New England, very pretty. The Cayuga-Seneca canal runs right through town.

A view of the canal. One of the surviving mills is on the left.

A bit of Seneca Falls. This doesn't really do justice to the nice, small town feel.

We went to the Seneca Falls Historical Park, which is basically just the remains of the chapel where they held the convention, the adjoining lot, and a visitor center with a museum.

Not much of the original chapel survives. For a long time it was commerical property, and served variously as a movie theater, a skating rink, a car dealership, and a laundromat.

Mom, posing proudly for women's rights.

The women who called the convention wrote a document modelled after the Declaration of Independence. They called theirs the Declaration of Sentiments. That doesn't have quite the same ring to it, I think. The text of the whole thing, along with the names of the hundred pepole who signed it, is carved into a fancy water wall on the grounds of the park. At least 23 of the people who signed were Quakers. There was a pamplet in the museum about the Quaker contribution to the women's suffrage movement.

This house is in Waterloo, next to Seneca Falls, and is where the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted. It was owned by the M'Clintock family, prominent Quakers, which meant we were obligated to go inside.

Leaving Waterloo, we took some uninteresting back roads for a while, and then the New York Thruway into Niagara Falls. In order to get better gas mileage, I popped the cruise control on and we chilled on in at 65 miles per hour. Going slow actually makes driving pretty easy; you don't have to worry about passing anyone, since they just go right around you. Not a bad way to go when you're not in a rush. My dad somehow scored us a free hotel room in Niagara Falls, thanks to some points he's accumulated or something. Pretty posh by our standards. Check out those hard wood floors. No view of the falls though.