The Grand Canyon of the East

Letchworth State Park has a branding problem.  It sounds more like a penitentiary than a natural wonder that has been voted the most popular state park in the United States.  You don't have to drive far from the entrance to see the gorge that encourages boosters to call it the "Grand Canyon of the East."

What it lacks in grandeur it makes up in waterfalls.  We visited the Lower Falls first.

An off-limits ledge offered a better view.

Magda wanted to trek from the Lower Falls to the Middle Falls, something the lecherous ranger said nobody had done in his fourteen years at the park.  Tom's footwear was more suited to swinging than hiking in any case.

A Corvair Monza was parked in the Middle Falls lot.  My father would have been thrilled.  He shipped his red one to France in 1961 and promptly totaled it in a collision with a hay truck on a country road.  C'est la vie.

The Middle Falls were just a short walk away.  Couch potatoes, listen up:  you can see all the sights at Letchworth without exerting much effort.

Magda and Thom wanted to dine at Glen Iris, the estate of William Letchworth, a successful Quaker businessman.  He donated the house, built in the Greek Revival style, and the surrounding land to New York State in 1907.  It overlooks the Middle Falls.

The zinnias at Glen Iris looked much happier than those at our house in the Pines but I had my doubts about the food quality in a state-operated concession.

Instead, Joe and I pressed our inclination for thrift with a picnic of leftovers from the delicious pork loin and vegetables he roasted the night before at the Rose Cottage.

Fully sated, we drove on to Buffalo through miles and miles of harvested cornfields.