Saturday, July 23, 2005
Chimney Bluffs State Park
more info on Chimney Bluffs State Park
photo slideshow
Another active day. Ann wanted to go over to visit her parents and then we planned to hike the lake shore out at Chimney Bluffs, so I decided to ride my bike from Rochester to Newark. It was a great day for the ride - not too hot and humid. Rode through Genessee Valley Park and along the Erie Canal Path. Got lost briefly in Palmyra when I hopped on a paved path that didn't go where I expected it to, but eventually found my way back to Rt 31 and pedalled the last 10 miles or so the Newark along the road. (That was probably the least pleasant part of the ride.) Made decent time - a little under 3 1/2 hours to ride about 45 miles.
After we'd had a bite to eat and visited with her folks for a while, we headed over to Sodus Point and spent a while hiking along the lake shore at the Chimney Bluffs. We had visited there three years ago, and I was glad we were going back, because I think it's a pretty cool place. Chimney Bluffs is a glacial moraine, or material deposited when the continental glaciers of the Ice Age melted ten to twenty thousand years ago. Originally the material was deposited in the form of drumlins (elongated hills) which over time have eroded, leaving behind an ever-changing array of knife-edged clay-and-rock formations. With an average erosion rate of 3 feet per year, the bluffs can change quite dramatically from one visit to the next. (see the entry in Wikipedia for more information.) Ann's father remembers the bluffs extending quite a bit further out, and the first time we visited there it was clear that the road/parking area used to run out further a ways and has since eroded away.
The bluffs were as cool as I'd remembered... Ann didn't want to hike along the upper edge, so we stuck to the lakeshore. Probably just as well, since my legs were pretty tired from riding and so it was rather slow going. At times there were a few too many people for my taste, but we were there late in the afternoon and it did really start to clear out. Overall, it was a fun walk in a really neat area, and I hope we get to go back again someday.
After that we drove to the nearby town of Wolcott to visit Wolcott Falls. I don't have my waterfalls book handy, so all I can say about the Falls is what little I remember - that they had once been harnessed to power a mill, which has long since disappeared, and now are part of a small park in Wolcott. Not a bad little waterfall, but nothing I would go out of my way to go visit. The park itself was pretty small, with only one real path that ran down to the falls (the rest was pretty swampy, and there was a decent amount of poison ivy visible along the path itself.) But it was a good place to visit while we were in the neighborhood.
So all in all a day well spent... got in a good training ride, and got to walk around some nice places with my sweetheart.
JM
