Grand Opening Demonstrations at the New AMAI Utica Location
Hiking at Moss Island, Wintergreen Park, and Five Rivers Environmental Education Center
Saturday, July 15, 2006
more info about Little Falls & Moss Island
more info about Wintergreen Park and Canajoharie Falls
Moss Island photo slideshow
Definitely a long day. A little after 6 AM we hit the road in Rochester.
1st stop - the new Utica location for AMAI (actually, it's in New Hartford, just west of Utica.) After a brief instructional staff meeting, the Grand Opening celebrations started. All day long instructors would be performing katas, breaks, meditation demonstrations, and self-defense demonstrations. In addition, the iaido students did a brief demonstration. Ann and I had to leave not long after that, so we missed most of the day's events (I would have liked to see the cane and escrima demos, but so it goes.)
After that we stopped at Moss Island in Little Falls. Walked across a HUGE lock on the barge canal and then explored the park a bit. Got to see some very cool rock formations and read about how the whole area was once an enormous waterfall (which is what gouged out the cool rock formations.) I hope to go back someday and explore a bit more. but I think we saw a lot of the best parts of the park.
From there we went to Canajoharie and eventually found Wintergreen Park, along the Canajoharie gorge. Hiked the footpath down to the Canajoharie Falls viewpoint - kind of neat, but nothing spectacular. I suspect the view from the creek bed is probably much more interesting, but the many signs in the park made it clear that creek walking is not permitted. I'd also been hoping to see the Boiling Pot, a large circular hole in the rock creekbed, but didn't have directions to it (I've since found out we needed to park in town and walk upstream a ways to see that. Oh, well.)
Once we got back to Albany we headed to Five Rivers to walk along the peaceful Vloman Kill for a bit, then headed down to the two beaver ponds. Saw a couple of big snapping turtles and lots of red-eared sliders swimming around. It was very buggy but lots of fun all the same.
JMH
