waterfalls of upstate ny

Upstate New York has some amazing scenery, and I was fortunate to be landing in the area near the peak foliage season.

First stop on this road trip was to Ithaca, New York. I met my friend Bo at the airport in Newark, and from there we went to visit Caleb in Ithaca. He’s there finishing up his studies at Cornell. Ithaca is a nice little scenic college town, with a waterfall right in the middle of town.

Our next stop was to Rochester, to visit some friends there, but along the way Caleb led us to another waterfall called Taughannock Falls. This one was pretty amazing, with beautiful fall foliage surrounding the waterfall.

After visiting friends in Rochester, and after a quick stop in Buffalo at Anchor Bar for the original Buffalo wings, we arrived at Niagara Falls. Technically we were on the Canadian side, so technically the title of this post should be “Waterfalls of Upstate NY and Canada.” We arrived at night at our hotel. Our hotel room had an amazing view of the waterfall, which was lit up with colored lights.

Waking up to this view was pretty amazing.

The park on the Canadian side of the waterfalls is very developed– it’s almost like a theme park. It’s much different experience from when I visited the American side in winter, when everything was closed.

We wanted to ride the Maid of the Mist, but when we arrived at the ticket stand they were closed due to ‘high water.’ It had rained earlier in the day, so I’m guessing the river was running high, making it unsafe for the boat to go out.

I took a panoramic on my phone– it ended up being one of my favorite pictures from the trip. I found out that the panoramic mode actually uses the camera in lower resolution. So I’m actually better off using a wide angle lens on my SLR and cropping if I want an image that I can print.