July 26, 2021 Letchworth Waterfalls

Letchworth State Park Castile, New York

Yesterday, when we biked through Victor, I saw a laundromat.  I had already thought that I wanted to drive into town for my morning exercise.  I didn’t want to walk along the busy road.  So, it was decided that I would take the laundry with me.  I went to the laundromat and threw the clothes into washers.  Then I walked for 30 minutes and returned just as the wash cycle was finishing.  I threw clothes in the dryer and went back out to walk again!  Tim did his morning workout and then met me in the laundromat parking lot with the RV…we were ready to roll with clean clothes!   It was multitasking at its finest and it saved us lots of time!

We were not really sure where we were going…that happens frequently.  Tim saw a scenic highway on the map and so we went to find it.  On our way, we saw a propane company.  I had been searching for campsites and Letchworth State Park popped up.  The guy at the propane place was super helpful and when he heard we were considering staying at Letchworth…he got really excited!  He told us what loop to camp in and he gave us really good directions.  We booked a site online and we had a destination!  We arrived at 11:30 and we were not able to access our camping spot until 1pm.  We took a hike on the Flatwoods Trail, rated easy and 1 ¼ miles.  This trail was not flat…it was in the woods…it was NOT easy!  As we neared the 1-mile mark, the trail became slippery with mushy, sticky, mud.  We could see mud on the lower branches of the trees.  We realized that we were seeing a water level.  With all the recent rain, the water had rushed down into the gorge and the Genesee River had risen really high!  We could see where the water level had risen at least 50 feet, onto the hillsides and into the wooded area.  The water is now receding.  We picked our way across the sloppy section.  We saw lots of little animal prints, but it was clear that no other hikers had gone on past the slick as grease section!  It took us over an hour to walk 2.5 miles.  It was all downhill on the way in and all uphill on the way out…though Tim tried to convince me otherwise!

See the residual mud on the trees? We had a picture of the gorge but the picture did not show the magnitude of the flooding in the way that we had hoped.

We settled into our camping site and the first order of business was to wash my tennis shoes…they were covered in thick and slimy and smelly mud.  We both took naps.

This afternoon, we packed stuff to make omelets and toast and went to see the rest of the park.

Overlook views of the gorge.

Lower Falls…to get there, we had to hike down 127 steps.  It was worth it.  The falls were really pretty.  To get to the footbridge, it was another 50 steps.  To get back to the parking lot, we climbed back up. 

Middle Falls.

Upper Falls.

We found an overlook where we set up the cookstove and prepared our dinner.  It was wonderful!  This park has been voted the number one state park in the US.  The waterfalls are a treasure and we enjoyed our day here.